\n<\/p>\n
Human spaceflight is on the cusp of an intriguing new dawn. For 25 years, astronauts have lived and worked onboard the International Space Station (ISS), starting with the arrival of its first occupants on November 2, 2000. Built through a partnership between the U.S. and Russia in the aftermath of the cold war, the ISS has now witnessed five presidential administrations, the advent and demise of the iPod and even the lofting of another orbital habitat, China\u2019s Tiangong space station. But the ISS\u2019s days are numbered. By 2031, NASA plans to deorbit the space station. Citing aging hardware and rising costs, the agency will bring it back through Earth\u2019s atmosphere for a fiery plunge into the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n
If all goes as planned, commercial space stations\u2014outposts operated not by government agencies but instead by private companies\u2014will take the ISS\u2019s place to build on its success. The first of these is set to launch next year, with a slew of others scheduled to follow soon after. All of them have the same goal of fostering a vibrant, human-centered economy in Earth orbit\u2014and ultimately beyond.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hope to build habitats for the moon [and] Mars and eventually even an artificial-gravity space station,\u201d says Max Haot, CEO of Vast, a Long Beach, Calif.\u2013based company at the forefront of the private-sector spacefaring push. Vast plans to launch its Haven-1 space station as soon as May 2026. On Haven-1\u2019s heels will be several other habitats from Axiom Space, Blue Origin and Starlab Space. All of them are intended to reach orbit by the end of the decade (and are still somewhat reliant on NASA as a paying customer).<\/p>\n
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The ISS will leave behind an important legacy, says Bill Nelson, who was formerly a U.S. senator and a space shuttle crew member, as well as NASA\u2019s administrator from 2021 to 2025, and formalized the time line for the nation\u2019s pivot to commercial space stations. \u201cThe station has done incredible things,\u201d he says, from establishing how to live safely in space to exploring the promise and peril of microgravity environments. All the while, the ISS has been a shining beacon of global cooperation.<\/p>\n
NASA\u2019s shift from \u201coperator\u201d of the ISS to a \u201ctenant\u201d on space stations, Nelson says, should help the agency focus on more innovative and daring explorations deeper in the solar system. \u201cIt\u2019s part of the evolution of space,\u201d he adds. \u201cIt used to be all government. Now we have commercial partners and international partners.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some have argued that the ISS could still have a long life ahead if it were to be boosted to a higher orbit, where it could endure intact for decades or centuries. \u201cI think it\u2019s the most amazing thing that humanity has ever constructed,\u201d says Greg Autry, a space policy expert at the University of Central Florida. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of like deorbiting Buckingham Palace. It\u2019s an amazing historical structure, and it should be recognized for that.\u201d NASA, however, determined that rescuing the ISS would be too costly and complex. Instead the space agency opted to pay SpaceX nearly $1 billion to develop a vehicle that will push the station back into Earth\u2019s atmosphere in 2031, leaving China\u2019s Tiangong space station as the only government-run outpost in orbit.<\/p>\n
By the time that happens, multiple commercial space stations could be active. Haven-1, the first of them, is a singular, camper-van-sized structure that will be launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Initially lofted uncrewed, the station will offer stays of up to 10 days for both governmental and private-sector visitors, all of whom are planned to reach Haven-1 via a SpaceX Dragon capsule. The cost of a private booking is undisclosed at present.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur core business model is 85 percent sovereign space agencies, including NASA, and then maybe 15 percent private individuals,\u201d Haot says. Onboard, four occupants will have private sleeping berths with inflatable beds, a domed window to observe Earth and high-speed Internet provided by SpaceX\u2019s Starlink service. A built-in science lab will allow them to conduct research at the station.<\/p>\n
Haven-1 is a precursor to a much bigger construct planned by Vast called Haven-2, which is expected to launch by the time the ISS is abandoned. Haven-2 will comprise multiple Haven-1-style modules arranged in a cross shape to enable a continuous human presence in orbit rather than short stays like Haven-1 will host. It will be joined by the other commercial ventures\u2014Axiom Station, Blue Origin\u2019s Orbital Reef, and Starlab.<\/p>\n
New priorities may come with any new private era in Earth orbit. Whereas the ISS was notionally a station focused on science, private habitats will inevitably have a broader purview, from acting as proverbial space hotels to being manufacturing hubs for products imported back to Earth. \u201cYou can make much better silicon crystals [for semiconductors] in space,\u201d says Autry, listing one of several perennial arguments for more industrial activity in orbit. \u201c[There are] a lot of different economic drivers that I think will eventually pay off,\u201d and the space tourism business \u201cwill be much larger than most people believe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Autry points to Blue Origin\u2019s New Shepard rocket, which launches paying customers straight up and down on suborbital rides lasting just 10 minutes but has already flown about 80 people (including some repeat customers). \u201cThere\u2019s a really strong demand,\u201d he says, arguing that an increase in rides to space\u2014and destinations to reach\u2014shows space tourism can \u201cabsolutely\u201d be as accessible as other extreme environments, such as the deep sea. \u201cThere\u2019s no reason you can\u2019t get suborbital ticket prices into the thousands of dollars and orbital ticket prices under $1 million,\u201d he says. \u201cI think it will happen in the next 10 to 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
What role science will play on commercial space stations will, to some degree, depend on the tools customers can use onboard. Already the major players have suggested an assortment of relevant, high-grade laboratory equipment will be the norm. Fabrizio Fiore, an astrophysicist at the Astronomical Observatory of Trieste in Italy, says this means more opportunities for scientists to conduct research that was logistically impossible on the ISS. \u201cEven putting a small thing on [the ISS] is very, very time-consuming and difficult,\u201d he says. \u201cIf we are going to have space stations that are not dedicated to governmental astronauts, it will be much easier to build experiments on them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Research institutions and universities could increase their access to space, too, perhaps by sending their own astronauts. Earlier this year, for example, Purdue University booked tickets for a 2027 flight on Virgin Galactic\u2019s suborbital space plane for a pair of its researchers. It\u2019s not unfathomable to think the same might occur on commercial space stations, especially if the cost of visiting them can be brought down to a reasonable level.<\/p>\n
In the bigger picture, some see the rise of private space stations as part of a turning point for life itself. Caleb Scharf, an astrobiologist in the U.S., argues in his new book The Giant Leap that space exploration is a next step in the evolution of humankind. \u201cThe capacity to put objects into orbit around Earth, and study Earth from space, is this unique perspective that no other organism has ever had in the history of life on Earth in the last four billion years,\u201d he says. \u201cGetting into space is another major evolutionary transition point. You can imagine, if we do spread out across the solar system in the centuries to come, that will induce fundamental changes on us as a species. It will dilute us. It will disperse us. We will undergo speciation. While we now call ourselves \u2018humans\u2019 as a single species, the future may be many species that were derived from what we are today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Commercial space stations, Scharf says, might be the next step in this journey\u2014but he\u2019s not quite ready to buy a ticket\u2014or the hype. \u201cMaybe we\u2019ll learn that commercial space stations are the best thing ever,\u201d he says. \u201cOr perhaps we will discover that this isn\u2019t actually the be all and end all. It\u2019s absolutely possible that commercial space stations, for economic or financial reasons, do not yield what is expected or hoped.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the end of the decade, humans are also planned to return to the moon in competing efforts, one led by the U.S. and the other led by China. Ian Crawford, a planetary scientist at Birkbeck, University of London, has previously argued that space stations can be a distraction from this endeavor. \u201cTo talk about space exploration properly, we have to move away from low-Earth orbit,\u201d he says. \u201cHow \u2018space hotels\u2019 in Earth orbit really feed into that, I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whatever direction these new stations take, they will mark the end of a historic experiment\u2014a full quarter-century (and counting) of humans living and working off-world. The feat is all the more remarkable for how unremarkable it now appears: More than 40 percent of all the people on Earth are younger than the ISS, having never known a world without it. For many of them, the station\u2019s quiet technical triumph of unbroken orbital occupation is understandably banal, boring and routine. That is to say, like so many wondrous things we take for granted, it seems the ISS won\u2019t really be understood for its good until it\u2019s gone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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