Private Space Stations

Some people might watch this podcast and not know why it has no contact. Maybe the absorb it as as a vibrations. It's like some sort of osmotic process. Uh. So, in recent episodes, we've talked about all kinds of space exploration projects. We've talked about Mars, We've talked about terraforming, we've talked about the Moon. We've talked in the past

about space tourism, asteroid mine, asteroid mining, certainly. But today we wanted to talk about space stations, and specifically because we have talked about the I S S before, uh and about public space stations, but we wanted to ask the question today what about private space station? Yeah, well, will we get to a future where you can find, uh, you know, a space station brought to you by Home Depot,

the Home Depot station. Yeah, right up until it gets bought by Smoothie King, and it will be the Smoothie King station made out a particle board. I'm wondering how hard it would be to find specific types of nails floating in microgravity. Seems like that might be a poor choice. But no, seriously, though, we really wanted to talk about we're entering this era. We're in the era of private space industry. We've got companies that are private companies that

are launching stuff into space. It is not going to be that long from now when we start seeing private space stations hypothetically maybe hypothetically because of course there aren't any right now, but there are a lot of plans for such a thing. So we want to kind of explore that and talk about why that might very well

be a necessity in the not too distant future. Yeah, because because the public space industry has been working pretty great, little ish sometimes a little bit so far, but but yeah, but there's so much promise in private companies getting to this kind of thing, and uh, and we're not sure what's going to happen to the I S S. Yeah, I mean, eventually it's going to plummet in through orbit into the ocean. It will be de orbited, yes, hopefully

on purpose. Fingers always crossed. But but you know first of all that the I S was not designed to last forever, right, Yeah, So until a couple of years ago, the I S S uh, it had a funding lifetime, right, So there's a certain amount of times people have committed to funding missions and maintenance of the I S S. And for a while that was set to expire in the year twenty Then in January, NASA announced the Obama administration had approved extension of the I S S that

would keep it running until at least so that's the date as of now. Now. Ongoing research projects were cited as a major reason for the extension, including research into the effects of long term space flight on the human body and also the role I the I S S is going to play in helping advance the next phases of NASA space exploration, like missions to Mars or asteroids, and and the Twin study was kind of part of that, right.

It was that idea of studying the effects of space on a human and then comparing that person to uh, you know, their twin who had stayed here on Earth for that duration, and to say like, well, this, this is a way for us to better understand those effects so that we can take that into account for missions that would take people into space further and longer than ever before. Right, But the station is kind of getting

up there in an age. It's going to be thirty and are well, so it's starting to get up there. It will have gotten up there in the future grammatically speaking, And uh, and that's thirty years. It's about as long as most of its structures were intended to last. And and and sure the station is modular, but some of the really important bits that are a little bit personickety, like say the solar panels, might start blowing out a little

bit earlier than that. So so as it gets older, it's going to be more expensive and more difficult to keep it in orbit. Uh. And and yeah, ultimately its fate is known, right right, And I mean there's no surprise here, right. We cannot perpetually maintain and replace parts on the space station eventually gets to a point where it no longer makes financial sense, let alone a sense

on a technological or scientific level. Yeah, at some point it's like you know, when you were in college and you realize, like it would just be simpler to throw my clothes away and go buy new clothes than to try and do laundry at this point, yeah, like new socks are cheaper than washing my socks. So so I was thinking more along the lines of I'm spending more per year trying to maintain this this limit of a vehicle then it would cost me to go out and

buy even just a used car. Yeah. So ultimately, if if all goes as planned, the I S S when it reaches his expiration t it is going to come down into Earth's atmosphere in a flaming ball of death, but hopefully no real death because in the case of the I S S, this will be a controlled re entry exactly that takes place in the Southern Pacific Ocean to a place known it is delightful. It's known as the Spacecraft Cemetery. It's where we send all of our

dead space craft. Right well, and I mean it makes sense, right, you want to be able to have a controlled de orbiting, You want it to go to a place that is uninhabited, to have the least impact for the you know, at least impact on on the environment as you possibly can. And the reason why you want to de orbit in the first place is that you don't want to leave

stuff just in space. First of all, it's going to de orbit eventually anyway, it'll it'll lose speed and it will end up crashing to Earth, possibly over a populated area if you haven't done it, you know, in a controlled manner. Plus, you don't want to leave space junk out there. It just means that it's going to be another thing to avoid with future space missions. So this is not something that is necessarily like a sad thing.

I mean, it's sad in the sense of seeing like an era past, but it's it's something that we we knew what we were getting into when we built the thing. Yeah, and we've kind of been talking about it in terms of of the United States funding. But of course a large part of the three words in the title of the space station is international. This this is a collaboration between I believe sixteen countries right now, um, a bunch of them at any rate. And uh and and it's

and it is a huge undertaking. I mean, it is like nine hundred thousand pounds moving five miles a second, enduring temperature swings of like five hundred degrees fahrenheit between sunlight and shade. Uh. It's it takes a lot to keep this thing in the air, including this wonderful international collaboration. Takes a village to maintain a international space station, pretty sure obtaining it well. It's often cited as the is the most challenging engineering project in the history of humankind.

And and I think it would be challenging, not just because of the technological aspect, but because you're talking about international collaboration, which at times can be a little tricky. Yeah, and even the different modules might end up going their

own way. There are reports that once the project comes to an end, the Russian modules are going to be removed and used to form an independent space station known as the Russian Orbital Station or ross UH and the it's so that this comes from the Russian Space contractor r KK energy A. So they plan to detach the forthcoming now CO module from the I S S and use it as a basis to attach other modules and build a fully functional Russian space station. Once the I

S S is decommissioned. Yeah, I like how how space stations to me are are kind of like a real world vultron where you know, other parts just kind of dock on and you you do get these modules that when you put them together, create something greater than than the some of its parts. Right, So we we've got this complicated um relationship between various nations that are collaborating on the International Space Station. But that's not the only

player in the game. Like we were saying at the beginning of the episode, private space industry is now a real player too, who is delivering things to the space station right now? Right? Yeah, that's a big one. Yeah. Uh And and NASA is definitely increasingly interested in partnering with private industry in order to get stuff done that it can't afford to get done itself. Um and and ostensibly to also grow the private space industry. But I think it's kind of more the former. I could be wrong.

Um Boeing, for example, has been a really huge partner in the I S S over over many many years, providing hardware and software and docking systems and communications and and all kinds of stuff. And uh, I haven't personally heard about Boeing looking to get into the space and space station industry itself. But uh, but this next company

that we're going to talk about definitely has Yeah. One thing we should mention is that in most cases, I would argue, in pretty much every case, the companies we're talking about, just like the nations we've talked about, weren't necessarily in charge of a big manufacturing system that just created space stations all you know, in parts that then could be assembled in space. Usually you're talking about entities that are contracting with other companies to create various elements, right.

So I'm that's the way NASA has been forever. Every NASA spacecraft has been the product of NASA partnering with private industry to create those things. But in this case, we're talking about actual private companies overseeing that process from beginning to end, not trying to submit a proposal to a government agency, get rewarded a contract, and then do it.

So now we're looking at a whole new world of space stations, and we've even got a an example we can look at is sort of a test run of a private a privately built module or habitat if you prefer, that is being tested right now as part of the International Space Station. Yeah. In fact, we talked about inflatable modules a little bit when we talked to a long

time ago about space tourism. Yeah, because we were trying to say, Okay, so imagine you're you're trying to create environments that can be inhabited it on the surface of the Moon or in space at the lowest cost possible. Getting all these materials into orbit that you would need to assemble in order to make your rigid aluminum model modules like in the I S is expensive. Yeah, so what instead if you could just go blow up a big balloon in space, right and then live in it. Yeah,

but now there actually is such a balloon. Yeah, that was a hypothetical the last time we talked about it. But Beam, the Bigelow expandable Activity module, has has been sent up and inflated and people have hung out in it. Um. I mean they haven't like thrown a party like that I'm aware of now they have. The most they've done has had people in space suits test the air inside and then very coil like quietly go back into the regular module the space station right less they upset the

balloon ghosts, No so so beam um. Okay, So it's it's as we have been saying, this prototype inflatable space habitat because traditional space habitats are a dragged cre eight honestly, they require these heavy, rigid materials that are expensive to send into space and difficult to maneuver once you get

them up there. So Bigelow Air Space designed Beam and this this unit went up on a SpaceX Dragon resupply mission in April and and packed in there it was a cylinder that was like five point seven ft long like that, very much like that, and and in about seven point seven feet in diameter, which is a like a like a smart car. Okay if you need a visual and uh. It was installed on the aft part of the Tranquility node by a robotic arm which was controlled by an is S crew member, and it contains

a pressurization system with stored air. So in May, after a failed attempt, um teams worked to expand the beam to its full size over the course of seven hours. So it is now a bubble that is thirteen feet long and like ten and a half feet in diameter, which is like a small room, which is what it is, just a small room. You know may with teflon coated glass fabric. When it comes to space stations, you don't

turn your nose up at any extra room. That's true, Yeah, I mean rooms space and space oddly enough hard to come by. You think it being like hypothetically infinite, but it is. It is interesting now like as you were as you were just about to say, Lauren, that the size of the room itself is larger than the spacecraft that was sent to carry it up there are larger than the cargo larger than the cargo capacity because it

has expanded to its full size. Now it's beyond what if it had been made out of rigid material it would have had to take a couple of trips up in a spacecraft of that size. Uh And and that's one of the biggest advantages of this approach is the idea that you can compress the full size of the habitat down to its packed size, which is significantly smaller than what it's unfurled sizes. And if you're talking about rigid materials, it may not even be the a weight issue.

It may just that you can't pack them in snugly enough for it to really make sense, which means you have to send more missions up, which means it makes it more expensive. If you've ever been embarrassed while trying to move furniture and had to explain to somebody, no, it's not that it's too heavy for me, it's just awkward sized. I can't write a good grip on it, or your or your you've ever had to move and you are having your surprise at how many trips it

takes from your old place to your new place. Because while your vehicle might be able to fit a lot of stuff in it, your stuff does not magically conformed to the inside of the vehicle. Yeah. Yeah, your Tetris game is not strong enough. Uh so so yeah, so they did open it up, check out the inside, collected an air sample, uh and data from some of their inflation sensors. They said it was cold, but you know,

otherwise pretty pretty cool. Yeah that was accidental. Uh and and okay, it's it's not meant to stay up there forever, and it's not meant to have people live in there or do science in there. It's really a two year um proof of concept of the technology. So so astronauts that are aboard the station and engineer's Earth side, and instruments in the module itself are going to be studying just how it's doing, like from the structural integrity of the thing to the leak rate of air to radiation

and temperature levels. Also that we can kind of compare it back to the traditional rigid pain in the butt modules and uh and and and see see see if it stacks up right. Make sure that the claims that Bigelow makes about their design hold up to reality, because when you put real life people into that thing, you want to make sure that it is in fact as

safe as the manufacturer believes it to be. You know, when you introduce a sort of a skepticism there that I think is going to be an important factor when we start considering private companies getting into the space race. We need to make sure that the advertising isn't leading us astray. Like you can't always necessarily trust that some one who's selling a product is telling you everything that is true about it, particularly when you talk about companies

that are looking for funding. Right like then then it's like, well, do we tell them we think it's going to work and if it, if it does, it's going to be or do you say no, this is gonna be the most amazing thing ever you want to get in on the ground floor. I mean yeah, And I don't think it's going to be any kind of cases of of you know, like like low radiation levels asterix like the bottom of the page, like low compared to holding a uranium core like that thing, not a fall out kind

of share. Like. I don't think anyone's gonna be trying to to purposefully trick anyone, but there might be optimism and uh and certainly regulation is going to be an important part of all of this because traditionally speaking, we've never had private industry doing this kind of stuff and uh and governments have been picky about what they subject

to their most prized military flight personnel to right. So, so at the end of this grand experiment, after they have run these two tests and determined whether or not in fact it is as safe as traditional uh spacecraft material or space station material, what happens then it will be destroyed and re entry. Man, we just can't make stuff without breaking stuff. That no, but that's still I mean, how would you get at home? I mean the engineers

that they just want to watch it all burn. That's the whole reason they make these things just a bunch of jokers coming back from space. Alright, But yeah, so the whole pro the whole program is co sponsored by NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Program, which is which is the part of NASA that it's particularly excited about fast tracking

affordable technology for human exploration of space. And uh so the BEAM project is hoping, ultimately, I think, to develop beyond Earth space habitats, not necessarily just an orbit um. But Bigelow is certainly using this as an initial step towards creating its own space station. Right, And you might wonder, all right, well, we've talked a little bit about the International Space Station and about a prototype approach to testing a technology that could potentially be incorporated into a private

space station in the future. Why would any company be interested in such a thing in the first place. Oh yeah, it's such a huge undertaking. Subject yourself to that, and it would cost millions of dollars in research and development and construction and launching. I mean, what's the payoff? Well, it's because there's money in space what not literally but you know, figuratively speaking. So space stations one can serve as a platform for satellite and spacecraft deployment and maintenance.

So with the privatization of space launches, more companies are getting involved in creating and deploying satellites and other types of spacecraft. They need a place sometimes to act as kind of a launching ground, not like you would on Earth, but place to deploy that technology that is already in lower th orbit. Space stations often provide such a platform,

So that's one thing. So you you could become like the truck stop to your spacecraft going out into either another lower th orbit or beyond the most expensive cramps truck stop you've ever experienced. Don't eat the egg scel and sandwiches, uh, shrimp cocktails where it's at. We've talked about that numerous times. Not for me, I couldn't have. It would be very blended space. Probably that sounds to

me like a great tagline for a terrible science fiction movie. Also, manufacturing, this is one of those things that seemed counterintuitive to me at first, the idea of sending stuff out into space for manufacturing purposes, because you would think the cost of getting it into space would negate any advantage you would have, especially if you want it back on Earth

for something right. I actually remember I watched a science fiction film in which I criticized a bit of the film specifically for this in which uh androids were being um built in a space station in orbit around Earth and then sent back down to Earth to act as you know, workers and labors, and I thought, well, that seems unnecessary and ridiculously expensive. It's actually one of the production predictions that Elon Musk has for the future that will will will off base all of our heavy industry

into into orbits. Well for one thing, you know, heavy industry becomes practically weightless that way. Uh. It was a terrible joke, but it's actually true. I mean, there's because because of the nature of space, because you can work in a vacuum, you can work in microgravity. It opens up opportunities and manufacturing that are impossible to replicate here

on Earth. And in some cases it can be for like really precise chemical types of manufacturing, not just not just the sort of manufacturing we tend to think about, like building cars and stuff, but actually designer chemicals, things like medications or other chemical applications. So it's a very real possibility that as we see the price tag come down for launching stuff into space. We could see more

and more applications of manufacturing. I've seen a lot of stuff about three D printing in space where it takes on a much different dimension than it does here on Earth. Another area where it could come in handy to have a space station. We actually alluded to this a little bit earlier. Asteroid mining. Um, the whole idea of of of exploiting the asteroids that are in the Cellar system to get at resources that may be very plentiful on

certain types of asteroids. It would be really helpful to have a place in space where you would have your your various uh whatever whatever units you have going out to asteroids to mind them to come back as a place to exchange stuff and go back out again. Um. We've talked about using asteroids to mine water, which you

could then use to turn into rocket fuel. Uh. There's a lot of stuff that could potentially come in really handy, especially as you start talking about going further into our Solar system, whether it's for exploration or a colonization or whatever it may be. And then space tourism of course, Yeah, to be able to create a cabinet space. Yeah, it's the it's the ultimate adventure destination, right, Like it's the idea of going into space and staying aboard a space

station looking back at the Earth. So far, only seven private citizens have ever done this, and it wasn't for funzies. I mean they were they were up there conducting research. Well they were. It was for funzies for them, but they also had the conductor research because they paid for the privilege between twenty and forty million dollars for and

one of them went twice. And so there's only been seven people who have gone up who have not been part of an official cosmonaut or astronaut crew, but paid for the privilege to go up aboard the International Space Station. They did have to perform experiments and stuff while we were they were there space. It's part of their buying. Yeah, space and space like we said limited, so you gotta

you gotta work your shift. Yeah. Um, one of those people actually know one of the seven people who have been a private says an up in space, it would be Richard Garriott, a lord British. Yeah. So um, it's interesting that that has happened. But the cool thing about the private the possibility of private space stations is that opportunity might open up to a broader audience than just super mega rich people, right, Like, Yeah, I don't think most of us could afford a twenty million dollar ticket

for vacation. I know I couldn't, especially not another twenty million for a return trip. Yeah, well you're here, but guess what, You're gonna stay here until you cough up

another twenty million. Now, I think sponsored visits are going to be a thing where where people like a company says, you know, I will pay for your trip to the space station if what you do is talk about how great Eeto's taste in space, or or something like like a vice being like hey like go up and get like the scoop on all of the I don't know

if that's how people advice talk. That was probably a really unflattering I kind of want to start a Kickstarter noll that's just titled send Kanye to Space and just raise that twenty million, not the I didn't say, so he can tell us how Cheetos tastes. No, I mean, I haven't worked out the entire detail of the Kickstarter campaign, so just give me time. But no space tourism like

with the private Space industry. We're seeing the cost of launch come down slowly over time, we might be able to see it come to a point where more people could afford that experience. I don't think it's ever going to reach a point where the average person will be

able to afford it. I think it's still gonna be certainly in that luxury category, but it will be less than the twenty million that we've seen in the past, forty million that we've seen in the past, And that to me is really exciting to this idea that that potentially, if you had enough money, you could go and visit

a space station and look back on the Earth. That's something that you you know, they they haven't done that for years now aboard the International Space Station, and that those seven people pretty much got in before that was shut down. So this would give that opportunity once again.

So anyway, the point being that there there are a lot of different opportunities to make serious cash running a private space station, assuming you can work out the incredibly complicated details of building one, testing it, making sure it works, and then launching it and deploying it. They've already done it once. How how hard can it be? It only only took more than a dozen countries collaborating with one another billion dollars to say that space. But but the

nice thing is that we can build upon knowledge. Right, we know already things that work, and we even are seeing some really cool experiments. In fact, did you know that before NASA designed and built the International Space Station, they actually considered inflatable habitats as a possible UH method of creating a space station. But at the time, their

materials were pretty flimsy. Good Year was providing the rubber for them to test it, but it was because that's they hadn't hadn't developed keval are yet, they hadn't developed stronger materials yet, and they did determine they said, well, it's not going to be sufficient for blocking radiation and it's not very resistant to ballistic impact. So they said,

we can't do this. But now material science is caught up to the point where we do have have flexible materials that are incredibly resistant to ballistic impact and at least from what we've heard, are as effective at protecting against radiation as the traditional materials used. Speaking of hearing, though, this is my pun transfer of the conversation topic. UH. The the the Bigelow inflatable beam thing is it's hypothetically a lot quieter on the inside than a traditional aluminum capsule.

Oh so acoustically, acoustically, it's nicer to hang out, I guess. I guess that makes sense because it's not a hard surface, so sound doesn't bounce off of it the same way it would inside a traditional space capsule. I never thought about that, but that is interesting. I guess it's like being in a big pillow or a bouncy house, just without the kids, which is my favorite way of being in a bouncing house. Um. So, let t's talk about some of the private space stations that are in various

forms of development. There is the Bigelow next generation commercial space station, so Beam is kind of like that that proof of concept to test the basic technology that would be incorporated on a much larger scale for this particular approach. The base unit of the the Bigelows space station, should it actually become a thing, is the B three thirty, which is an expandable habitat that Bigelow has developed that

will have three hundred thirty cubic meters of internal space. Now, if you compare that to the International Space station's Destiny module, which is the primary operating facility for the United States research payloads, that has a one sixty cubic meters of internal space, so it's much larger than the Destiny Module module. But cuban mind, the Destiny Module is just one part of the I S, it's not the whole thing. But that means that Bigelow's habitat would have two more habitable

space inside of it than the Destiny module does. However, it would only have an increase of thirty three in mass because that inflatable design means that doesn't have to have as much of that bulky material, So you get two more space but only thirty three more mass. That's a pretty pretty good you know trade. Yeah, not bad at all. Uh Now, according to Bigelow, the B three thirty will provide radiation protection that's at least as good, if not better than the current I S S modules.

That's one of the things they are testing with Beam to make sure that that actually is accurate. Uh And they also say that the whole would be more resilienta ballistic damage than the International Space Station currently is, So, in other words, it would be an improvement in in those specific ways, uh, which you definitely want to hear that too, And it's modular design would allow for multiple units to fit together. In fact, the space station would

consist of two B three thirty modules joined. They essentially kind of lock docking stations have become a larger unit that way. Bigelow has already partnered with United Launch Alliance

to provide launch services for the two modules. U l A uses Atlas five rockets to launch payloads into space, and right now they're looking at the possibility for launching these things as early as One module, they said, is already on schedule to be ready for launch by twenty nineteen, and the other one is scheduled sometime in So that means we could have our public space station still operating at the time the private ones come start to come on.

That's right, that's right. Uh. To be fair, we don't have any information about where the private space station would orbit in relation to the International Space Station. That would be a very important piece of information, but that has not been If it is known by anyone, it has

not yet been publicly revealed. Um. But they said that one of the things they might do before they actually create the full private space station is DOC one of the B three thirty units with the I S S, which would actually increase the I S S is uh capacity by or or volume I should say overall volume

by so at least for a while. They would They would launch the first module up, it would dock with the I S S presumably assuming that NASA would agree to such a thing, They would launch the second one, and then the two would meet and become the Bigelows space Station. Uh, it's not the only one that is being talked about. Bigelow is probably the one that the more space enthusiasts have heard about. It's it's been around longer.

The idea has been around longer, sharing especially since they are currently conducting an experiment to see how well their technology works. It's it's got perhaps better street cred. Yeah, at least they've got an active test going on right now, so they have something to show for their plans. It's not like it's not like when we were talking about what is it is it Mars one? The the the entity that's attempting to launch people into space to go

and colonize Mars before anyone thinks it would be quite ready. Uh, it's not quite like that, right, that they actually have stuff that they're showing that is beyond just just really idealistic. It's not a fly by night. Yeah, it's not a launch by night either. You launched in the daytime. Everyone

knows that anyway. So there's a there's a former NASA manager of the International Space Station who has recently UH started up a company called Axiom Space l l c. That is Mike Suffredini, who announced on June twenty two, two thousand and sixteen, just a few days before we record this podcast, that he was going to start this new company in order to develop a private space station. Now it looks like this one is not going to be going the same path as Bigelow in terms of

structural design. Yeah, according to UH. To Suffradini, he said that in order to make money, we have to get to orbit fast. I think it's going to take a while to build a spacecraft out of inflatal a technology. So what he's saying is it's not the Biggelows approach is not going to work. He just thinks that it's it's going to be slower in the long run. Slower. He yeah, I think he believes that is way too aggressive to get an an inflatable habitat space station into orbit.

I think that's essentially what he's saying here. But he hopes also to be able to attach a private module developed by Axiom Space to the International Space Station as

a prototype testing grounds. Would be kind of similar to BEAM in that way, and once that that technology is proven to be safe and effective and be able to do all the things that the International Space Station is currently used to do, then it would transition that into creating it's you know, its own space station, that that unit would become the core of the new space station. And he hopes to have a final design for their module by the end of this year, which you know,

he just announced the company on June twenty two. He hopes by December to have a final design for the module he helps by January of next year two get a contractor to start building the thing. So incredibly aggressive and a very tight deadline, and the company also plans to launch by one So assuming the Bigelow's plans go on the way that they have intended, we could see two different private space station modules being launched into space

around the same time, with different design elements. Totally different approaches to creating space stations. Does this one sound unrealistically aggressive? Do you guys? It sounds crazy aggressive to me, Like the design and building it. He's not talking about being built by seen, but being ready to launch by when he doesn't even have a final design yet. Seems really optimistic. If it weren't the one of the former head Haunt shows involved in the I S S, I would say

that it was ridiculously aggressive. Very fair point that that thing puts it down onto a merely aggressive. That's that's fair. I've done this before, like look before, I already know what not to do, all right. Uh yeah, that's that's that's totally that's totally valid. And uh it's interesting to think about, you know, these two very different approaches and whether or not, like it could very it could possibly get to a point where we see both actually active

in lower th orbit simultaneously. Yeah, and that would be amazing because now you're talking about a plethora of options considering that right now, there is one which doesn't make it an option. It's just your only choice. It's either that or nothing. Yeah. But but this is the sort of thing that would avoid having a space monopoly, which is something I think we don't want to see, uh and it could mean that we continue to see a lot of innovation so that one company is always trying

to have an advantage over the other. We all stand to benefit from. Yeah, the the private space race, I kind of like this idea. Yeah, yeah, but there are some challenges that we have to address. One of the biggest ones is one we kind of talked about right now, that timeline to be able to develop this private space station technology and test it in a way where we can use the International Space Station as as sort of

our our home base. That timeline is getting shorter and shorter, assuming we don't see another extension uh for the funding for the International Space Station. Right like, right this very moment, we have approximately eight years left if anyone wants to test their stuff on on the I S S. With NASA's uh bene benefaction UM. Hypothetically, the longest we're going

to get is twelve years. And once the I S S is decommissioned, it's gonna be a lot harder to test your your technology because you won't have that base to to lock onto and be able to you know, remotely assess the feasibility and the and the efficiency of your technology. You have to figure out some other way of testing it that minimizes risk both to property and life, so that that's going to be a real big challenge

once the I S s D commissions. And not only is there a short amount of time to get in that testing, but you also have to remember the International Space Station doesn't have an infinite number of docking ports. So if you want to if you want to dock your your module to the International Space Station so that you can do testing, yeah, you better you better start building soon because well, I mean, it all depends on how NASA decides who to partner with, right, We don't

We are not privy to that particular process. Um. I would imagine that Bigelow has since it has the the already existing relationship with NASA, is in pretty good shape. And then the fact that you have a former manager of the International Space Station heading the other company, it's in pretty good shape too. So assuming Bride right, he just flipped his desk and said, Sea it loses, I'm out of here, and left the door open as he

left NASA. I'm assuming that didn't happen. I'm not don't know, but I'm assuming, but that means that they you know, NASA has to juggle while do we have the capability of allowing more than one to dock at a time. How how much do we want to keep these docking ports open in case we need it for some other unforeseen circumstances for our own stuff or Yeah, I mean, can we just build a module that's nothing but docking points?

It's just it's just theahedron docking points. It's that connect there, like any sort of building toy you have where you're like, I just I just need something like a Lego that has every every surface is Lego because I just needed to hold everything together. Um. Yeah, I mean that it's just a logistic issue at that point, but it's a one that has a real impact. And when you're talking about a short timeline, every little thing like that matters. Yeah.

And another potential hiccup or um or hold up in all of this is something that we mentioned a little bit earlier. Um there there aren't really regulations in place for for private industry being out in space right right now, and that is going to be a thing that will happen. Yeah. I mean, this is a field known as space jurisdiction, and you might say it's an underdeveloped field. Yeah, well because until recently, the only entities that were at all

getting into space we're completely sponsored by nations. I mean, they were government agencies. So the government international treaty right there, right, the rules that we created, the space law that we created it it specifically pertains to nations, not private organizations, because at the time that we were drafting that legislation, you didn't think about a private company blasting off into space.

That was beyond the capabilities that we had at the time. Yeah, but as we all know, businesses, private corporations and companies sometimes behave very well and sometimes behaved not so well or sometimes can even uh be be criminally or civilly liable even if nobody did anything really bad on purpose. That's why we have corporations, because there are people and

we can hold them accountable. That never happens. Go ahead. So, yeah, this whole thing of space jurisdiction, it's how laws are applied and enforced in space, and it uh, it hasn't been to big of an issue with the remarkably well behaved public servants to have been part of the public and private expeditions up until now. But let's entertain a few weird scenarios. How about a few private companies put

privately owned space stations into orbit. One of these private companies goes bankrupt, can't maintain its space station, nobody else wants to buy it, its orbit decays, and because this was unplanned, it turns out the station maybe entering the atmosphere somewhere where there's a small risk of intact debris from the station falling over a populated area. Who is supposed to step in to prevent something like this from happening? And can people be held legally accountable? And if so,

by whom? All I can imagine is is being like a shareholder in that company and the guy just shows up and says, hey, so you own stock in Space co it went belly up, It's your responsibility to to de orbit Space Coast space station over the Pacific. And this is typically like the answer to this is usually Superman right right? Or how about space collisions? Uh so one space station crashes into another because of negligence or you know, error, or or much simpler to imagine scenario.

I think businesses on Earth are often charged with illegal dumping of waste. This is a common problem that that you know, manufacturers get in trouble for Let's say a private space station has a penchant for emptying some sort of solid waste into high velocity orbit. Some of this orbital waste damages another private company space station. How do you sort that out? How do they how does one

get restitution from the other, and in what jurisdiction? And we do have I mean, we have a lot of space junk out there right now that like leftovers from essentially dead satellites right so there there really is the possibility that one company's dead satellite it eventually collide with a private company's space station, and then you have these very real questions about accountability and how do you handle this, And that could even involve satellites from companies that are

no longer in business. It's it's this is a brand new frontier. Yeah. So I'm not saying it's impossible to figure this stuff out. I do think it's perfectly reasonable to assume we will work out a framework for addressing the laws it applies in space, just like we have a framework for addressing the law as it applies in international waters. But it's something to be thinking about. Yeah, it's one of those things where it's it's good to go ahead and ask the questions and try and come

up with some basic answers. Now when it's not entirely imperative, like like it's it's not that something has already happened and now we're trying to figure out how do we deal with that, It's better to go be preemptive about that sort of thing and say, let's ask some questions of things, and you know, maybe maybe we assign each question a probability score, like how likely is this to happen?

And the ones that are more likely they get priority for us to figure out the answers too, and things like, well, what happens if a an alien comes aboard my space station and totally messes with it and ends up putting pepsi logos all over my Coca Cola space station? Listen, that goes at the bottom of the pile. All right, we have some serious questions we want to answer first before we get into brand confusion, like like why do aliens prefer pepsi to Coca cola? Yeah, well, clearly they

didn't grow up in the South. Does Workman's comp cover space madness, You're you're covering my ice cream bar. All right, Well, this was kind of a fun preliminary discussion. The really cool thing about this is that we don't have to

wait that long to see some real progress on this front. Now, it may be that that twent any date that both Axiom Space and and Bigelow have set could be too optimistic, but even if that's the case, I suspect it won't be that much later before we start seeing some real progress. So hopefully they stay on track, because I would love to see this, like like actual talk of launching private space station components up into lower th orbit in just

four years. That's insane. I would love to see it happen. So here's hoping it all works out. Um. We're really excited to learn more about this and to kind of explore both the possible positive elements of private space stations as well as some of the concerns we might have and again kind of address those in advance before it becomes a problem. But we've got a lot of other stuff we've got to talk about too, because it turns out the future it's about everything. Did you guys know

that when you signed up for this. It's crazy. So we have a lot more topics we're gonna be talking about in future episodes of this podcast, but hey, we get tired of choosing those all by ourselves. We love it when you guys pipe up and give us ideas and ask us questions like what will X be like in the future? Uh, please continue to do that. You can send us an email the addresses f W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or you can drop

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