Blue Origin, Boeing and other ventures lay out ideas for commercial space stations
The Intelligent Aerospace take:
May 29, 2019 -A dozen American companies provided studies to NASA for their plans to put commercial space stations into low Earth orbit. They included: Axiom Space, LLC, of Houston; Blue Origin, LLC, of Kent, Washington; The Boeing Company of Houston; Deloitte Consulting of Manhattan Beach, California; KBRWyle of Houston; Lockheed Martin Corporation of Littleton, Colorado; McKinsey & Company, Inc. of Washington, D.C.; NanoRacks, LLC, of Webster, Texas; Northrop Grumman of Dulles, Virginia; Sierra Nevada Corporation of Louisville, Colorado; Space Adventures, Inc., of Vienna, Virginia; and Maxar Technologies, formerly SSL, Inc., of Palo Alto, California
According to NASA, "These companies investigated what a commercially viable industry in low-Earth orbit could look like, including: commercialization concepts and technical configurations for habitable platforms in low-Earth orbit, either through the International Space Station or a free-flying platform; business plans that explore the viability of commercial destinations; and the role of government and evolution of the space station in the roadmap to commercialization of low-Earth orbit. Observations from these studies revealed many potential markets that could be part of the future ecosystem in low-Earth orbit." NASA's study, including a brief overview of each plan, is available here.Related: SpaceX launch puts first private Moon lander into space on Israel's behalf
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Jamie Whitney, Associate Editor
Intelligent Aerospace
