[ad_1]
LAS VEGAS – At one end of the Bigelow Aerospace plant is a model of a gigantic home for future astronauts. With a unique design – it could be packaged in a rocket and then deployed in space – it would comfortably accommodate a dozen people as a large space station or serve as a base for a lunar base.
"It will be a monster spaceship in every way," said Robert T. Bigelow, founder of the company, at a press conference earlier this year.
It is Olympus, named after the mythological house of the Greek gods and Bigelow's ambition to build settlements in space.
The B330 module
Further down, in the factory, a long, lean metal structure. It is a developing version of the spine of a more modest B330 module, which the company plans to build. Light in appearance compared to Olympus, it would still be much less crowded than the metal cans that make up the International Space Station.
Bigelow said he was determined to have two B330 aircraft ready to be launched in 2021, which could herald the passage of half a century of manned flights to government-run agencies, such as NASA, to a free capitalist. -all. The Trump administration wants to accelerate this transition by ending direct federal funding for the space station after 2024.
"We also want many suppliers who are competing for cost and innovation," said Jim Bridenstine, NASA Administrator. "We would like NASA to become a unique customer for many customers."
If commercial stations proved less expensive to operate, NASA will have more money to pursue other goals, such as sending astronauts to the moon and on March, said Bridenstine.
But betting hundreds of millions of dollars on companies that do not exist yet could be a quick way to lose a fortune. And traveling in space remains a dangerous job.
Home office in orbit
Today, the International Space Station is the only place where people – no more than six at a time – live far from Earth. This is a technological feat and the most expensive thing humanity has ever built. The 15 countries involved, led by the United States and Russia, have spent more than $ 100 billion over the past two decades. The United States spends between $ 3 billion and $ 4 billion a year on the station.
Permanently occupied for nearly 18 years, the station is a test bed for studying the long-term effects of radiation and weightlessness on astronauts. NASA has become proficient in operating the station, largely eliminating outages such as clogged toilets, unstable cooling systems and failed computers.
Perhaps the most remarkable is life on the International Space Station: it's a home office, even though it's more than 200 km away and travels 17,000 km / h, where astronauts work, eat, sleep, exercise, perform housework.
It happens that the crew performs, as an exit in space, activities that seem really extraordinary.
The possibility of removing the International Space Station, which is part of the administration's budget request, surprised many. Companies such as Bigelow need several years to launch their space stations, and such expensive and costly projects often fall behind.
Critics fear that the International Space Station will be abandoned before its successors are ready. An interruption without space stations would disrupt NASA's studies, as well as emerging commercial activities. The new space station companies could hurt if the desired customers are slow to come forward.
The destiny of Mir
Almost two decades ago, there was a commercial space station for a short time. It was Russian, and an American named Jeffrey Manber directed it. Maybe he could have succeeded – but NASA killed him.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Russian space program was short of money and ready to consider ideas that might have seemed crazy for a formerly communist country. Mir, the Russian space station, was considered dilapidated and dated, about to be replaced by the largest and best international space station.
But in the United States, Manber and other contractors saw Mir, destined to be destroyed, more like a defender. Energia, the maker of Mir, agreed to partner with the Americans to create MirCorp, a commercial company that leased the station to the Russian government.
But the Russians succumbed to NASA's insistence on the dumping of Mir, who had been expelled from orbit to the Pacific in 2001.
Space junk transformed into habitat
Since then, Manber has carved out a prominent place in the space station ecosystem as the managing director of NanoRacks, a small startup based in Houston. NanoRacks has simplified the process of sending experiments to the space station and also launches small satellites called CubeSats from the station.
A few years ago, Manber asked his engineers to investigate a strange idea that NASA had abandoned: could the rocket parts used in orbit after launch be converted into a low-cost space station?
The idea is to add a small robotics module between the second stage of a rocket, called Centaur, and the satellite payload at the top.
Generally, when the Centaur has pushed the satellite into the desired orbit, it is consumed in the atmosphere. With the NanoRacks plan, once the Centaur completes its main mission, the robotic part drills holes, seals the compartments and converts the fuel tanks into housings.
A "bajillion of reasons" to pass in private
Axiom Space, also headquartered in Houston, is the third largest competitor of the private space station. It is led by Michael T. Suffredini, who led the NASA International Space Station portion until his retirement in 2015.
Suffredini said an Axiom station with modern technology would cost about $ 50 million a year, a fraction of what the International Space Station costs.
Suffredini said: "The reasons for this situation are two hundred and fifty million. "We worked hard to validate this number. This is a shocking figure for us too. "
Suffredini would not describe in detail all the possible markets that he envisioned, but the company would include sending sightseeing tours to the rich – Philippe Starck, the great French designer, designs the interior of the Axiom module – and offers a factory space for manufacturers to produce materials that can only be manufactured in the space.
Close future
China plans to complete its own space station in the early 2020s and officials have promised to make it available to researchers around the world. Russia also talked about keeping half of the International Space Station in case of withdrawal of Americans.
Charles Miller, a former NASA executive who is now president of Nexgen Space, expects that there will be three space stations in orbit by 2025: the International Space Station, the station Chinese and the beginnings of a commercial station.
"We will still have heated debates about the future of the International Space Station," he said.
Interested in more stories like this? Listen to The Other Side podcast:
Source link
