Keep up with the innovative tech transforming business
Tech Brew keeps business leaders up-to-date on the latest innovations, automation advances, policy shifts, and more, so they can make informed decisions about tech.
The International Space Station will probably be retired before 2030, ~30 years after its launch in 1998.
Naturally, private companies are looking to fill the expanse: Last week, Blue Origin and Sierra Space announced plans to build out Orbital Reef, which would be the first crewed private space station.
Orbital Reef will be designed to fit 10 people, and those people need somewhere to sleep. Enter: Sierra Space, which will provide the living quarters for Orbital Reef, by way of its expandable Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE) habitat. It’ll also conduct cargo and crew transportation between the station and Earth.
- Blue Origin, on the other hand, is contracted to create the core modules, utility systems, and provide launch services for heavy-lift equipment for Orbital Reef.
- The company hopes the station will function as a “mixed use business park” for a variety of clients in research and industrial capacities.
Like an interstellar bouncy house, Sierra Space’s three-story LIFE module inflates in space once it reaches low Earth orbit. It can fit a kitchen, lab, garden, and sleeping quarters. The multilayered capsule is designed to weather the perils of space, and it can be attached to other modules.
- Sierra Space is an independent subsidiary of Sierra Nevada Corporation, and it was founded in April 2021 to specialize in LEO missions and equipment.
- Sierra (the parent company) has worked with NASA in the past on initiatives like growing food for astronauts off-world, but this would be LIFE’s real-world debut.
Sierra Space is also designing the Dream Chaser, an air taxi that will take astronauts to and from the space station. It’s designed to land at any runway in the world, opening a new degree of flexibility for launches, which historically have taken off from specially outfitted launchpads.
Looking ahead...It might be a few more years before we see new space stations in orbit. Sierra Space has yet to send any of its modules into orbit, but with competition from rivals like Axiom Space and Lockheed Martin’s Starlab, the race for the next space station is heating up.