Airbus Forms Joint Venture in Bid To Replace International Space Station (ft.com) 23
Airbus is forming a joint venture with US start-up Voyager to compete to build a replacement for the International Space Station, an internationally funded laboratory in space that is due to be decommissioned by the end of the decade. From a report: The deal announced on Wednesday formalises the partnership unveiled in January on Voyager's Starlab project and will see Airbus replace US defence company Lockheed Martin as its main industrial partner. Starlab is one of the frontrunners in a race launched by Nasa four years ago to develop commercial alternatives to the ISS, which was launched 23 years ago and orbits some 420 kms above the earth.
The ISS is an international collaboration, funded by national space agencies from the US, EU, Canada, Japan and Russia. Since its launch it has hosted 258 astronauts and cosmonauts from 20 countries. Among the other contenders in the race trying to build a replacement is Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, which is leading a consortium offering a 30,000 sq ft "ecosystem" of different habitats and services for industry, research and tourism. Nasa has allocated $550mn to four consortiums in the first phase of the competition, which will examine the spacecraft design and the business cases of each contender. The US agency has insisted each be commercially viable.
The ISS is an international collaboration, funded by national space agencies from the US, EU, Canada, Japan and Russia. Since its launch it has hosted 258 astronauts and cosmonauts from 20 countries. Among the other contenders in the race trying to build a replacement is Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, which is leading a consortium offering a 30,000 sq ft "ecosystem" of different habitats and services for industry, research and tourism. Nasa has allocated $550mn to four consortiums in the first phase of the competition, which will examine the spacecraft design and the business cases of each contender. The US agency has insisted each be commercially viable.
Commercially Viable or Commercially Able (Score:2)
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BO is Below Orbit until they're not.
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Musk could probably ship components on a fleet of Falcon 9 Heavy but since the Heavy is not designed for the return trip as Starship is, it's probably better to wait.
Of course, there is no value for Musk on the moon. He has competition.
He is heading to Mars. Using SpaceX, Tesla, Tesla energy, Tesla robots, Boring Company, StarLink and more, he can excavate caverns, mine materials, power and defend Mars. He can selectively choos
Plans won't matter in the next 5 years? (Score:3)
With the Starship program chugging along down in Texas I think it's pretty clear it's only a matter of time before they figure it out and once that becomes a viable launch platform any plans for space from probes to people to space stations kinda get the biggest wrench thrown in them since spaceflight really became a thing (in a good way)
Even now I can't see in the article but what are they gonna launch on? SLS? Ariane? Both are kinda dead ends due to price.
The ISS was built in a time when the only options for putting gear in space were the billion-per-launch Space Shuttle and whatever platofrm the Russians were using at the time. When the ability to put hundreds of tons in orbit for a fraction of the cost the idea of building something multitudes bigger than ISS becomes more realistic.
I know from the perspective of NASA and the ESA and such you can't make plans based on a platform that doesn't really exist yet but I have little doubt in my mind that Starship working is a matter of when rather than if and then the doors are just blown off.
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100% agree and that's really the whole driving force behind the program, especially the refueling part. The impetus for a space station in LEO after that is to be a layover spot and fuel station before taking off for later areas. Scifi shit, gonna be nice.
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The ISS isn't even very old. It's 25 years old.
I think (tongue-in-cheek) we should probably make the next space station out of concrete. (Or maybe just 3D print it out of plastic.)
Or at the very least build the next thing with the intent of it being refurbished every 10 years without having to de-orbit the entire thing. Perhaps this can be done by building a proper "orbital shipyard", eventually 1000m long, not just a "space station", thus materials can be launched routinely up to build the ship yard and gr
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Isn't that the point? Companies are anticipating that launching a lot of mass to orbit will get dramatically cheaper, as several groups are working on very heavy lift vehicles. When that happens they will be able to launch space stations and fund them with things like tourism and in-orbit manufacturing. The Moon too.
NASA just wants to make sure someone offers a platform that suits its needs.
Airbus? (Score:1)
confusing, and payewalled (Score:2)
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Whatever goes up ought to go high enough that drag isn't a real issue. Much higher than the ISS.
Theres a tradeoff required however, at higher orbits the inhabitants would receive higher exposure to solar and galactic radiation [nasa.gov] because the Earth's magnetic field density follows the general rule of 1/r^3. To add some kind of radiation barrier (I wont say "shield", oh, damn) with today's technology would add more weight and likely drive costs higher.
We'll have to solve that problem for extended flight durations beyond LEO, even lunar inhabitation and exploration is expected to require creative ways to bl
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I love the idea of space exploration, but I don't see much value in continuing to whiz around in low orbit freefall. Going higher is where we have to go to learn how to go even further.
Maybe we should spend a decade working on magnetically confined plasma shielding and all the other various 'future tech' we're going to need to go further.
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Theres a tradeoff required however, at higher orbits the inhabitants would receive higher exposure to solar and galactic radiation [nasa.gov] because the Earth's magnetic field density follows the general rule of 1/r^3.
Scale and the square-cube ratio can be our friend there. A bigger station with more inhabitants has more stores of supplies as well as waste. Store all that stuff along the walls of the station and you can provide a pretty decent amount of shielding. You do have to get pretty big for that, but it helps if it's not in a stretched out shape with high surface area to volume like the current ISS.
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And for the idiots who modded my post 'overrated' and 'flamebait'...
https://arstechnica.com/space/... [arstechnica.com]
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SpaceX is exploring the concept. It seems they think just parking a Starliner rocket in orbit would make a pretty decent station all by itself.
Don't deorbit the ISS! (Score:4, Interesting)
When the station is decommissioned, seal it up and boost it to an orbit, say 1000 miles, that won't decay. A generation from now, it will become part of a space history museum. If we do deorbit it, by the time SpaceX makes a large-scale presence in space routine, we will wish we had preserved the ISS.
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That plan has a problem. The station is being decommissioned because it is deteriorating. This includes parts like the seals on the airlocks between modules, and metal fatigue due to the repeated stress heating cycles as the station goes in and out of Earth's shadow.
Left unattended, the station will keep deteriorating. Best case, it starts shedding crap as it's hit by space debris. Worst case, a structural failure breaks the station in two and turns the entire station into debris.
Not Airbus! (Score:2)
Xenu says "Use DC-3s! More futuristic!"
Wrong Measure (Score:2)
You don't measure space on a space station is square feet. It's a 3d environment. You're supposed to measure it in cubic feet, preferably in cubic meters.