The great commercial takeover of low Earth orbit
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Welcome to M I, T technology review narrated. My name is matt honan. I'm our editor in chief.

Every week, we will bring you a fascinating new in depth story from the leading edge of science and technology, covering topics like A I, biotech, climate, energy, robotics and more. Here's this week story I hope you enjoy IT. My name is rattle courtland and the commission ing editor at MIT technology review.

And i'm delighted to bring you this story on the future of space stations by writer David w. Brown. The international space station has long been an icon of international CoOperation and a platform for all sorts of research in orbit around the earth.

But around the year twenty thirty, the I. S. S. Will be retired, which will involve pushing IT out of orbits so that IT crashes down into the pacific ocean. What will take its place?

NASA is hoping private companies will take over, and there are a few already hard at work on building new space station. The story will bring you today talks about that effort. I hope you enjoy .

IT narrated by noah. Listen to more of the best articles from the world's biggest publishers on the lower APP, or a news over radio dot com. Washington, D. C.

Was hot and humid on june twenty three thousand hundred and ninety three, but no one was sweaty more than Daniel golden, the administrator of NASA, standing outside the house chAmber, you watched nervously as votes registered on the electronic tally board. The space station wasn't going to make IT. The united states had spent more than eleven billion dollars on IT by them, with thousands of pounds of paperwork to show foreign, but zero pounds of flight hardware.

Whether there would ever be a station came down now to a cancellation vote on the house floor. Politically, the space station was something of a way word often. IT was a nine year old regan administration initiative, expanded by George H.

W. Bush as the centerpiece of a would be returned to the moon and an attempt to reach mars. When voters replaced bush with bill clinton, golden persuaded the new president and to keep the station by pitching IT as a post soviet reconstruction effort.

The russians were greater building stations, which would save NASA a fortune. R, N, D. In turn, NASA funding would keep russian rocket scientist employed and less likely to freeLance for hostel foreign powers.

Still, this satisfaction with NASA was a bipartisan affair. Everyone seemed to agree that the agency was bloated and assists. Ed representative tim romer, a democrats from inDiana, wanted to make some big changes, and he introduced an amendment to the NASA authorization bill to kill the station once and for all.

Golden had made more than one hundred phone calls in the day and a half before the vote, hoping to swade lawmakers to endorse the station, which he saw as critical for studying bio medicine, electronics, materials engineering and the human body in a completely alien environment. Microgravity, things down to the molecular level, behave profoundly differently in space and flying experience. A week at a time on the shuttle wasn't enough to learn much.

Real research required a permanent presence in space, and that meant a space station. Supporters of the space station had gone into the vote expecting to win, not by much. Twenty votes maybe, but the longer the vote went on, the closer IT got each side began sharing as IT pull ahead, the one hundred ten new members of congress, none of whom had ever before cast a vote involving the station, reveal themselves to be less reliable than expected.

Finally, the tally reached two hundred fifteen to two hundred fifteen, with one vote remaining, representative john Lewis of georgia, a civil rights legend, as Lewis walked down the hall toward the legislative chAmber, golden's legislative age, jeff Lawrence told the administrator to say something, anything to win him over. As Lewis walked by, goldin had only one second, maybe two. And the best he could get out was a raw, honest congresswomen.

Lewis, the future of the space program depends on you. He added, the nation is counting on you. How will you vote? Lewis smiled as he walked by. He said, I am telling you. The station, later named the international space station, survived by his single vote, two hundred sixteen to two hundred fifteen.

Five years later, russia launched the first module from casey stan and sense, november two thousand, not a single day, is collapsed without a human being in space as a design. The international space station of life for twenty years, IT, is lasted six years longer than that, though IT is showing its age and NASA is currently studying how to safely destroy the space laboratory by around twenty thirty. This will involve A D orbit vehicle docking with the I, S, S, which is the size of a football field, including end zones in firing trusters.

So at the station, which circles the earth at five miles per second, slams down squarely in the middle of the pacific tion, avoiding land injury in the loss of human life as the scorch remains of the station sing to the bottom of the sea. However, the story of amErica on low earth orbit, or leo, will continue. The I.

S. S. Never really became what some had hoped, a launching point for an expanding human presence in the solar system. But IT did enable fundamental research on materials in medicine, and IT helped us start to understand how space affects the human body.

To build on that work, NASA has parted with private companies to develop new commercial space stations for research, manufacturing and tourism. If they are successful, these companies will bring about a new era of space exploration, private rockets flying the private destinations. They will also demonstrates a new model in which NASA builds infrastructure and the private sector takes IT from there, freeing the agency to explore deeper and deeper in the space where the process can be repeated.

There are already planning to do IT around the moon. One day. Mars could follow from the dawn of the space age. Space stations were visioned as essential to leaving earth in one thousand nine hundred and fifty two.

Venner von Brown, the primary architect for the american space program, called them as inevitable as the rising of the sun and said they'd be integral to any sustainable exploration program, mitigating cost and complexity. Indeed, he proposed building a space station before a moon or mars program so that expeditions would have a logistical way station for resupply and reviewing. Going into the nineteen sixties, there's a lot of consensus and momentum around the idea that space is going to be a three step process, says a story in David hip, coauthor of homesteading space, the skylab story.

Step one, he told me, as transportation, you've got to leave earth somehow, which means developing the infrastructure to build human safe rockets and launching them. Step two is habitation. You need a place to live once you are in space for its own sake, as a science laboratory, and also as a logistical way point between earth and other celestial objects.

Once you have transportation and habitation, he says, you can take your next step, which is exploration. The mindset changed after the soviet union beat the united states to orbit first with a spot neck one satellite in thousand nine hundred and fifty, and again when cosmetic uri ggaran became the first man in space in one thousand nine hundred and sixty one. President john f.

Kennedy committed the nation to landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to worth before this decade is out. IT was an outrageously ambitious goal, given that NASA had only managed to launch a human to space three weeks earlier. IT required moving quickly.

And the way you do that is to take the three step plan and get rid of step two. IT told me, as I turned out, if you skip the habitation stage, IT works, the U. S.

Got to the moon, but did so want a way that did not lay the groundwork for the long term sustainability of the program. We are still working on that. Two years after the final Apollo mission, NASA launched the first american space station, skylab, adapted from the second stage of a saturn five moon rocket.

IT was enormous, ninety nine feet or thirty meters long, and by far the heaviest spacecraft ever launched. NASA would eventually launch three missions of three astronauts, each to the station, where they would perform more than one hundred experiments in a very real way. Sky lab was the first american space mission, IT says.

Before the sky lab, we were flying moon missions, even going back to the mercury program, the goal was always the moon. Sky lab is the first time that space itself, he became the destination, its goals, or foundation, also what would later come. The big thing that sky lab taught us is that human beings can, in fact, live and work longer ation in a space environment.

If we're serious about going to mars, you may spend way longer in space, then you're going to spend on the martian service. Sky lab remains the only space station built and launched solely by the united states. In one thousand nine hundred eighty six, the soviet union launched the first module of mire, a modeler space station built like legal blocks, one segment at a time.

Because NASA had discontinued the satan five rocket, the agency necessarily adopted the same modeler station model, eventually partnering with russia and other countries to build the I S. S. Today, IT shares disguise ed with Young gang, china's permanent space station, the first module of which launched in twenty twenty one.

None of these stations have acted as moon or mars wae stations in the von Brown mode. To satisfy that requirement, NASA is developing a future station called gateway that is intend to do with the moon. Its first module could launch in twenty twenty five.

Although they never became transportation hubs, each space station has advanced the critical cause of learning what long stretches of space do to the human body. Russian Cosmonaut valery polio gov, who flew on mere, holds the all time record for continuous spaces wide with four hundred thirty seven days. Researchers still have a relative positive of knowledge about how the body responds to space on earth.

We have the collective experience of more than one hundred billion human beings across three hundred thousand years. And still, much about the human body remains a mystery. What are we on? What should we eat? Fewer than a thousand people in sixty three years i've ever been to space.

Such studies can only occur on permanent space station. During the shutter program, we were studying the effects of just a shorter duration space fine a couple weeks on the human body, Stephen plants, chief scientist of nash human research program, told me. Among the problems was ortho static intolerance, which is the body's inability to regulate blood pressure.

IT affected about a quarter of crew members who return from space. Once NASA and russia launched the I. S, S. And space flight creations increased from weeks to months. That number lead to eighty percent.

We spent a lot of time trying to tease out that mechanism, and we eventually came up with countermeasures so that that risk is now considered closed. He says other chAllenges include the baseball associated neuro oculus syndrome, which is a change in the structure and function of the eye, something researchers identified about ten years ago. We didn't really see IT with a shuttle, but as we started doing more and more station missions, we saw IT plates says they have also identified small structural changes to the brain.

But if you had to figure out what that means in the long term, that's a relatively new risk that we didn't know about before. The space station overall, he says, ability of the human body to regulate its function in space is amazing. This group is working on about thirty risks to humans posed by space exploration, which IT classifies in a color coding scheme.

Green issues are well controlled, yellow risks are of moderate concern, and red ones must be solved before motions are possible. Right now, for a low earth orbit, there are no red. Everything is yellow and Green.

We understand IT pretty well. We can deal with them, but as we get to lunar, we see more yellow and some red, and as we get to mars, we see more red. Yet plats says there are things that we know right now are a problem, and we're working hard to try and figure them out, either from a research standpoint or an engineering standpoint.

Some problems can only be studied as we venture further in the space. The long term effects of mars dust on the human body, for example. Others, such as the unanticipated development of psychiatric disorders, can be studied closer to home.

NASA and other institutions are currently studying all this on the I. S. S, and we'll need to continue such research long beyond the space station's retirement. One reason why IT is imperative that someone else launched a successful space station.

And soon to that end, just as I did with space ex from two thousand six through twenty eleven, the agency has seated several companies with small investments promising to lease space on emerging space stations. And right now, the soon is likely to launch is being let out of a sprawling former fries electronics retail store in a shopping center complex in texas. I met Michael bain, the chief technology officer of aim space, on a great risley january morning at the entrance to its space station development facility in housing.

Bain began his career NASA Johnson space center just on the road where he worked done everything from the shuttle in station to experimental l lunar landers. Later, he'll left the agency to join intuitive machines as its chief of engineering. In february, that company's novica spacecraft, ed or diseases, became the first U.

S. Spacecraft to land successfully on the moon since the end of the Apollo programme in eighteen seventy two, making intuitive machines, the first private company to land successfully on a celestial object beyond earth. Bain has worked at axim space since twenty sixteen. The startups long term goal is to build the first private commercial space station. IT has successfully organized and managed three private missions to the international space station, in large part to study for his hand how humans work and live in space so that they might design a more user friendly product.

Axim is that the only company interested in launching private space stations, most notably blue origin, announced in twenty one that in partnership with the ero space outfit, nava IT would build orbital reef, a mixed use business park capable of supporting up to ten people simultaneously in lower earth orbit. In january here in a auto successfully stressed tested a one third scale test article of its habit module with the intention of launching a station into orbit on a blue origin new GLE and rocket in twenty twenty seven. Other companies such as lucky Martin, have made moves into the market, though their progress is less clear.

Aim plans to build its own orbiting facility much differently being told me, as we enter the facility suspended from the wall above, large, low fidelity models of spacecraft hung from the ceiling, including the x thirty eight, an experimental emergency return vehicle for a space station crew, and zaza, the russian module of the I, S, S, which today is plagued by age induced stress, actors and consequent leaks. Crew vehicles no longer dog with IT. It's very difficult to build a full, self sustaining space station.

And launched in one shot, bain said as we walked past and open concept cube farm beef, the models, what about five hundred men and women are designing a space station to replace the ezza and the rest of the I. S. S.

What you want to do is assemble, lied in space in a peace meal fashion. The easiest way to do that is to start with something that is already there, that something is the international space station itself. In twenty twenty six, they expect to launch x im.

Have one, a cylindrical module with crew quarters in manufacturing capabilities that will plug into an open port on the I. S. S. Later, axim plans to launch hab. Two, expanding habitation scientific and manufacturing services.

Then, IT hopes to launch a research in manufacturing facility complete with the spaces full glass coupla to give axim astronauts and visitors on the station access to a complete view of planet earth as well as the link of the station. Finally, the company intends to launch a power thermal module with massive solar panels, expanded life support capabilities and payload capacity. Each new segment is designed to plug into the proceeding axim segment.

This is an aspirational. There is a hard deadline. In effect, unless the I.

S. S. Gets a new lease on life. Everything must be launched and assembled by twenty thirty. Once nas officially declared the I S S mission completed, the lego like axim station will attached from the I S S as its own integrated and fully itself sustaining space station.

After word, the d orbit vehicle will do its job and push the I S, S into the ocean is a big risk reduction for us to be able to use I S, S as a staging point to build up our capability. One element at a time, they explains that plan also offers a huge commercial advantage. There is already a robust global user base of companies and researchers sending projects to the I, S, S.

In order to court those users to mitigate to a commercial solution. IT just becomes easier if you're already at the location where they're at, he says everything from technical interfaces to the way axim station will handle the outcasts of materials will be compatible with existing I, S. S.

hardware. We have to meet the same standards that NASA does. A lot of people are betting that there are fortunes to be made in leo.

And because of that, the U. S. Taxpayer is not paying for x im station. Though nash intends to eventually rent space on hab won and has already awarded tens of millions of dollars to kick off early development. The commercial station is being built by hundreds of millions of private dollars.

The cultivation of commercial research manufacturing is ongoing, which was nash aim going all the way back to the golden's ten year as administrator. We wanted to turn over the keys to the shuttle, the station of that, to the private sector, says Lori garver, a former deputy administrator of NASA, an author of escaping gravity, then believe if we could hand over low earth orbit infrastructure, NASA could go farther in the space. And I really bought into that.

Garver would later pie near the commercial space flight model that LED space acts and other companies to take over launched services, saving the agency tens of billions of dollars while simultaneously speeding launch cats, the same model that LED to aim s space station work. After launching the first module in one thousand and eighty eight, we announced that space was open for business. govt.

Told me the first person to reach out was fisk Johnson, A. S. C. Johnson and sun. He wanted to work with NASA to develop a bioreactor to help create new pharmaceuticals for liver disease in a microgravity environment. I worked with him for probably three years at NASA.

Garvin says, unfortunately, their flight mission was columbia, and we lost the experiment in the tragedy in the decades to follow. Commercial research and development would increase with limitations. NASA.

Russia and the other partner nations did not design the I. S. S, specifically as a large scale research in manufacturing facility. In one reason, no company has elected to simply by the station outright, is that refurbishing IT would be more complex and expensive than either building a new station, as axim has elected to do, or running space on a modern successor.

As we came upon a stunning full scale make up of hab, one of the far into the building, I asked pain if, starting with the technical solutions already developed by NASA, the way environmental systems work, for example, makes axim station easier from an engineering perspective, you would think so, he replied. But these are very demanding standards, and they require a lot of attention to detail, the voluminous testing and analysis to prove that you meet the requirements necessary to interface with I, S. S, generate a lot of work, but you end up with a structure or a component that is extremely reliable.

The chances that a failure could propagate to a loss of crew is very, very remote. Only looking at the mock up that I realize the immensity of the spacecraft. IT is fifteen feet or four point six meters at its widest, and thirty six feet long.

One stock with the I. S. S. Have one which raises thirty metric tones on earth and can support for astronauts, will be the longest element on the station here at the space station development facility. The entire markers made of C, N, C machine would, but the module is much further along than the existence of a mock up stage would suggest.

Its pressure vessel, that is its primary show, which holds air and maintains an earthlight pressure environment in the vacuum of space and attaches, are essentially completed and will soon be shipped from italy by the same contract or that built many modules. les. Of the I, S, S.

Being walked me through a partition facility where axim stations, avon ics, propulsion, life support systems, communications and other subsystems are well into development. The fitting, the former prize electronics buildings in which we stood there, was a home brew element to the systems, many of which were strewn across tables and elaborate web of wires, tube circuit boards and chips. The station will run on linux.

Aim built the mock up to solve in almost comically fundamental chAllenge, but any project such as this faces turning the pressure shell and the myriad sub systems and components into a human safe spaces faring vehicle. You can just draw holes in the pressure shell any more than you can punch a hole in a balloon. And expected to keep its shape, aim must build the module inside and around IT.

IT is a spaceship in the bottle problem, bain said. You basically have to feed all your systems through a fifty inch hatch and integrate them into the element he cause at one of the hardest problems in the business because it's about more than assembling systems inside a pressure shell. Houston, it's also about making the station user friendly for servicing in orbit.

If ever a technical issue arises today, tourism researchers are probably the best known uses of private space flight, but axim has other functions in mind for the station, including serving as a destination for countries. That have yet to get involved in sending humans two space. In twenty twenty three, the company announced the aim space access program, which tech pol bota, the company's chief revenue officer, described as a space program in a box for countries around the world.

Axim says the program is evolving, but that IT is a pathway for a space participation. Aza bijan was the first country to sign on, but one of the most promising business prospects for the immediate future is manufacturing. Low earth orbit is an especially good environment for making things in three areas, pharmacy, ticals, metalogy and optics.

Micro gravity eliminates a number of physical phenomenon that can interfere with sensitive steps in manufacturing processes, yielding more consisting material properties and structures. Axim and blue origin are betting that modern space stations built around the insides glean from decades of I S. S. Experimenting, but free of its one thousand and eighty in one thousand nine ninety technology will pay dividends.

As part of its push to encourage companies to develop their own space stations, NASA has committed to leasing space on those that meet the agency's stringent human space flight requirements, just as with a major shopping center and anchor tenant can offer financial stability and attract more tenants. Doubt this along. A U.

S. National laboratory based in melbourne, florida, is specifically funding and supporting non ero space companies that might benefit from my gro gravity research. Biomedicine, in particular, has yielded perhaps the best results with the nearest term impact as best represented by lam division, a company established in two thousand nine by molecular biologist and coal wagner and robbert birge.

What makes you the most compelling glimpse of leos promise is that lab division was not founded as an arrow space company. Rather, wagner ant birge were building a traditional earth space company atop their research on a protein called bacteria, thor adoption and its potential to restore neural function. B, R is a proton pump, which is just what IT sounds like.

IT pumps a proton from one side of a cell to the other. They focused on the problems of retinas, pigmentosa and macular degeneration in a healthy eye. Photo reset cells, rods and cones taken light and convert IT into a signal that goes to bipolar and ganglions cells and ended the optic nerve in both diseases.

The rose and coins started die, and once they are gone, there is nothing to take in light and turn IT into a signal that can be sent to the brain. Red night test pigmentosa, which afflicts one point five million people around the world, begins by affecting peifer al vision and enroll es inward, leading to severe tunnel vision before causing complete blindness. Macular degeneration works in the opposite way, first affecting central vision and then spreading outward.

About thirty million people around the world suffer from IT. Treatments exist for both diseases, but even the best can only slow their progression. In the end, blind ness wins. And once IT does, there is no treatment.

Wagner birds in their team at lab division had an idea, something that might help a simple, flexible implant about as big as the circle stamped out by a whole punch, and the thickness of a piece of construction paper that could replace the damaged light sensing cells and restore full vision. In principle, positions could install the patch in the back of the eye the same way they treat attached read ness, so IT would not even require specialized training. The problem was making this artificial bm plant requires using a scaffold sentiment, a tightly woven poorest material similar to gos, and binding a polymer to IT.

I top that the researchers began applying alternating layers of B, R protein and polymers. With enough layers, the protein can absorb enough light and pump protons. Hydrogen eye specifically tour the bipolar and ganglions cells, which take IT from there, restoring vision in high definition.

To apply multiple layers, scientists float a scaffold on a solution in multiple beechers, moving from one to the next and repeating the process. The problem is that fluid solutions are never perfect. Things flow.

They think they settle, perform sediment, they evaporate. There is convention. There are surface tension variations. And every variation and imperfection can lead to a flawed layer.

If an implant requires two hundred layers, and imperfection ate layer fifty compounds massively by the end, the process is simply inefficient and life with irregular protein deposition. Early trials revealed that this issue negatively affected the artificial redness performance. IT was this sort of thing land division was hoping to work through as part of mass chAllenge.

A business incubation program in boston right now was working in the business accelerators coworking space. One day in twenty seventeen, I had a google, I feel SHE felt, with an open concept office. Since smart people all around, and he was at the desk, they designed her when somebody dropped by to say that the international space station national laboratory was holding a lunch presentation on the hall, and there was three pizza.

Why not? why? I thought I would be pretty cool to hear people from NASA talk about the moon and mars.

When he got there, though, IT turned out IT IT wasn't that sort of presentation at all. Instead, representatives from cases, the center for the advancement of science and space and non profit that Operates the I. S.

S. National lab, give a talk on how they are using microgravity to help people on earth. The U. S.

Segment of the international space station, like los alamos, o ridge and brooke van, is a national laboratory dedicated to scientific and technological research. The office simply has a Better view. About half the science conducted on the U.

S. Segment is managed by the I, S, S. National laboratories out of florida, with the remainder overseen by masa.

This division of resource is allows for a wide range of scientific investigations on the station or nasas. Research typically focuses on exploration, space technology and fundamental science to support future space missions. The I S, S.

National laboratory aims to develop a sustainable low earth orbit economy, encompassing fields like material science, biology, pharmacy, tics research and technology development research being conducted on the station touches on metal logy and fibre optics. Alloys like nitor or negotiation im can withstand huge temperature swings and are super elastic, with extraordinary potential for medical devices, ero space and robotics think artificial muscles. The problem is that nitro is extremely hard to make on earth because materials settle out and he can get disturbed unevenly during the manufacturing, which yields and unreliable product.

The same liabilities degrade the quality of fiber optics manufactured on earth. The solution to both is to go to space in micro gravity heat distributes more uniformly and set mentation does not occur Christal zing. The process of forming growing Crystals is consistent across long distances with minimal degradation, meaning pristine fibre optic signals even as you grow across vast stretches.

More broadly, however, space based Crystal graphs as applications in almost every field of electronics and biomedicine, as wagner learned, researchers have found immediate games on the space station today in everything from development of more effective vaccines, gravity on earth harms, the interaction of vantage s and achievements to higher grade drug formulations and nano particle suspension. One such drug made by a thai o pharmaceutical is used to treat muscular destripes has reached final stage trials. They were talking at that time about things like bio printing on orbit and future missions they were planning.

Winner told me IT hitt me immediately that we could do this, actually leverage microgravity to manufacturer an artificial retina and never envision doing anything in space. I didn't know how to get there or how IT work before that moment. IT all sounded like science fiction.

After the meeting, SHE immediately called her team. There's surprise that I think we can win, SHE said. IT was the cast's boeing technology in space prize, which funds research that might benefit from space station access.

We're gonna IT. Her team was immediately skeptical. In truth, he had adults as well.

He was running a small, how are they going to build a small automated science laboratory? Put IT on the international space station, have communication with IT on the ground, how would they afford that? He pulled up a web brows er and typed in rasberry pie communication with space station SHE thought, what am I getting into IT was my super nai vision of what space was at the time he told me the proper term that now described her company, SHE soon learned, was space adjacent, a business that is not specifically in the ero space industry but could benefit from even worked Better by leaving the planet.

SHE was relieved when he found out the land division didn't have to develop its own mission control in space infrastructure. IT already existing, and there were partner companies that specialized in spaces of Jason businesses. Her company linked up with space tango, which focuses on building underlying health and technology products in space to develop its hardware.

They managed to condense their open beaker system to an automated experience the size of a shoe box. And SHE was right about one thing they did win the prize. The team flow its first mission at the end of twenty eighteen, and IT showed promising results in the year.

Sense the company is secure additional funding and flown a total of nine times to the I S, most recently launching on january thirty oh. With each mission, they have gradually improved their manufacturing hardware, system automation and imaging and orbital processes. We're seeing much more evenly coated films in microgravity and overcome other chAllenges we see in a gravity environment, wagner says.

There is much less waste. The system works autonomously without need of astronaut venture. Essentially, the team assembles IT in a small box, astronaut s plugged in into power on the I. S, S.

And when IT has manufactured the sheet of artificial retinas and astronauts unplugs in and ships sit back to earth, at first, we just wanted to demonstrate that it's feasible to do this in space, says wagner. We don't worry about IT now. We are thinking hard now about scaling the system up to support our early clinical trials.

We don't need millions of artificial retina. We need hundreds, maybe thousands to start. And that gives us time to determine how we are going to scale that up as we transition from the I, S, S, A public space station to private commercial space stations in low earth orbit.

So far, land division has performed small animal studies in rats and advanced large animal studies in pigs, successfully installing the implants and demonstrating their tolerability. The company is continuing preclinical development to support clinical trials. Doing such things is testing the artificial retinas for efficacy and safety with the goal of beginning human trials as soon as the only twenty twenty seven.

When I think about doing IT in space and talking about costs and efficiency, I don't think about IT any differently than if somebody said, hey, i'm gonna go do this in china or i'm gonna do this in california. Wager says a space station is actually closer. It's only two hundred fifty miles in the sky verses three thousand miles to california.

If land division is successful, that alone would practically justify the vocals by john Lewis thirty one years ago. IT is hard to think of an achievement more profound than curing blindness for millions, but even more than delivering such sweeping and life changing results. One of the most significant accomplishments of the I.

S. S. Might be improving that such results can even be achieved in the first place. So far, no major medicines born on the space station have been brought to market. No mass produced technologies have yet emerged from low earth orbit.

Research has been iterative, and in space, manufacturing remains in the early stages, but according the area ebo w CEO of the a really institute, a nonprofit space research center dedicated to working on critical path infrastructure for space architectures. masses. Ground work for the I, S.

S, has made the next generation of more product focused ward possible, maybe, and golden was ahead of his time and thinking that such work, who is going to be achieved within the time span of humanity, first ever truly large scale international space station SHE told me. And what we see now is not just basic science, but entities like biotech companies actually taking what we learn from asia and the national lab over the last twenty plus years and envision putting mass produced products or mass produced infrastructure in space. If indeed the handoff of lovers orbit from naso LED, the commercial Operation succeeds, IT would be a promising glimpse of the future of the lunar economy there.

As in leo NASA is method ally building infrastructure and solving fundamental problems of exploration. The moon orbiting gateway station, a naso LED international effort, is deep in to development with the habitation and logistics outpost or halo module, set to launch as early as twenty twenty five. That station will serve as the second step of a sustainable moon strategy that was excised from the Apollo program sixty years ago from their asa hopes to cultivate the presence on the lunar surface.

If the leo model holds, the agency could one day transfer mood base Operations to the private sector and turned mars. There might be a lot of money to be made simply in harvesting water on the moon, to say nothing of rare earth elements that learn themselves to manufacturing as well. One of the hardest restraint on progress in spaces has been, ironically, space right now.

In a good day, only eleven people fit in orbit on IOS. And Young gong says that law, the age of private space stations is going to be fundamentally transformative, if only because there will be more room for dedicated researchers. Aim s goal is to double its infrastructure in space every five years.

This means doubling the number of people in orban, the number of posted paye loads and the amount of manufacturing they are capable of doing. Within two to three years, I can send a graduate student to space with axim. X law says IT requires a little creative fundraising, but I think that that is opening up a realm of possibility.

In the past, he explains, a doctoral researcher would be unbelievably fortunate to have research fly as part of a single flight mission. Today, however, researchers, even in a masters program, can fly experiments repeatedly because of the increased opportunities afforded by commercial spaces, fly in the future, rather than relying on korean NASA astronauts who have myriad responsibility, ie. S in orbit and spent a good amount of time, is gini pigs themselves.

Scientists could go up personally to run their own research projects in greater debt. And that, SHE says, is the future that is very, very near. You are listening to stations in the sky.

Written by David w. Brown. This article was published in the main june twenty twenty four issue of M R T technology review, and IT was read by sam shore for A.