Symposium Sessions
Commercial Space Stations Underscore the New Route to Orbit
Written by: Jeff Gardner
Four new space stations are in a race to orbit. Commercial space station executives told an audience at the 41st Space Symposium on Wednesday that their companies are eager to scale up on the capabilities that the International Space Station has proven for more than 25 years.
As the ISS faces a planned retirement and deorbiting in the early 2030s, four planned commercial stations, spearheaded by Vast Space, Axiom, Blue Origin, and Voyager/Airbus, are looking to serve a variety of roles in microgravity: in-space manufacturing, medical research, and even space tourism.
“The ISS has been fantastic. It’s been great for doing experiments, but how do we scale that? How do we take it to volume?” said Starlab CEO Marshall Smith. “That’s what these new stations are designed for.”
Commercial Stations ‘A Logical Continuation’
Plans to launch a commercial space station to maintain continuous human presence in low Earth orbit have been in development for years.
“Commercial is no longer a supplement to government services. In many ways, it is leading innovation,” said former executive secretary of the National Space Council Chirag Parikh at the 41st Space Symposium. “The opportunity here is enormous.”
Vast Space CEO Max Haot drew parallels between commercial space stations and commercial launch capabilities. NASA once used its own space shuttles to ferry astronauts to the ISS, but now, the agency relies on SpaceX for these operations. Haot sees commercial space stations as the logical continuation.
“The success story already exists. The business model already exists,” Haot said. “This is the next step.”
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