Image credit: Philip Stark/Axiom Space
A new era for the space station is about to begin. Relaying an early proposal from Axiom Space, NASA announced three proposals for the development of a commercial space station.
Previously, where humans live and work in space came from government space agencies, these proposals open the way for business in this space for the first time, and they are part of the "Space 4.0" era.
In this era, space is evolving from the exclusive domain of a few national space governments to an open place where more and more different explorers from all over the world are involved, including the emergence of private companies, the participation of academia, industry and citizens, digitalization, and global interaction. Many believe that commercial spaceflight is exactly what is needed to send humans to Mars and elsewhere.
At present, in low Earth orbit, that is, at an altitude of less than 2000 kilometers from the earth's surface, there are two space stations inhabited by astronauts, both of which belong to government space agencies. The International Space Station (ISS) has had astronauts on the station since November 2000, usually seven; the first module of the China Tiangong space station, the Tianhe Core Module, was launched in April 2021, with 3 astronauts on the station.
However, the International Space Station will be retired by the end of the century, ending nearly 30 years of orbital operation. It is an important symbol of international cooperation after the Cold War "Space Race" and the first true long-term space habitat for humanity.
Today, multiple private space station programs mark a major shift in the way space is used, but will these space stations revolutionize the way people live in space, or will they serve as replicas of the traditions of early space habitats?
The International Space Station, the "most densely populated" place in space for humans.
Image credit: NASA
The emergence of this change is inseparable from NASA's support for space commercialization.
NASA's emphasis on commercial spaceflight began about 10 years ago, when commercial space companies were involved in developing private cargo services that supplied cargo to the International Space Station, such as SpaceX's Cargo Dragon, and private spacecraft that put astronauts in orbit and to the moon, such as SpaceX's Crew Dragon, Boeing's Starliner, and Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin's Orion spacecraft.
In February 2020, startup Axiom Space received a $140 million (about 900 million yuan) contract from NASA to connect a private space module to the International Space Station. Axiom Space announced that philippe Starck would design a luxurious interior for it. Philippe Stark is a famous French designer, a representative figure of reductionism, known as the "design genius", which has won almost all international design awards, including the Red Dot Design Award, the IF Design Award, and the Harvard Design Excellence Award. 】
Stark likens it to "a nest, a cozy and friendly nest", and the cabin also features a huge viewing area, through two meters of transparent windows, visitors can freely look at the earth and space.
The first private space module will be launched to the International Space Station in 2024 or 2025, and the other modules will be delivered annually after that, until the International Space Station is decommissioned around 2030, and the private space module of Axiom Space will form a free-flying space station.
Axiomatic Space has signed a contract with French-Italian contractor Thales Alenia Space to work on the construction of human habitation space. Thales Alenia Space has built nearly 50 percent of the habitable space on the International Space Station for NASA and the European Space Agency.
The Axiom Space Program will add several new private space modules to the International Space Station in the coming years, and the picture above is an artistic depiction of these modules.
Image source: Axiom Space
And that's not all, NASA's Commercial LEO Destinations program selected the first phase of competing winners, namely three additional teams that will build a free-flying space station to replace the International Space Station.
The first project, a space station called Star Lab, was awarded a $160 million contract from NASA to provide space research, manufacturing and tourism opportunities by a team of Nanors ( a company that provides hardware solutions to the International Space Station ) , Voyager Space and Lockheed Martin .
A second project followed, orbital Reef, proposed by a team of Blue Origin, Sierra Space (a subsidiary of Sierra Nevada) and Boeing, with NASA contracts worth $130 million.
The third project, proposed by Northrop Grumman, will be based on the company's existing Cygnus cargo spacecraft module, and the NASA contract valued at $125.6 million is worth $800.7 million.
Lockheed Martin displays billboards for the Star Lab space station at the 2021 International Astronautical Congress.
Are these space stations really "good to live"?
It's still unclear whether private space stations will be better habitable than previous generations of space stations, such as the Soviet Salyut space station, mir space station, and the International Space Station.
Often, older-generation space stations are built to meet engineering constraints and are not designed with crew comfort in mind. So, what lessons have we learned to improve life in space on these "predecessor" space stations?
Only recently has more research begun to focus on the lives of astronauts on the space station, where social science methods, such as the International Space Station Archaeological Project (ISSAP), have played a role.
How do astronauts on the International Space Station adapt to life in a closed, isolated, microgravity environment? Since 2015, researchers in the United States and Australia have gained a new, data-based understanding of the life of these "astronauts" on the space station. They observed and measured the interactions of astronauts with space inside the space station and surrounding objects, and studied the astronauts' patterns of use of different spaces and objects.
Studying these questions reveals information that has never been considered in previous space station cabin designs. It turns out that astronauts don't necessarily use space inside the ISS in the same way the capsule is designed, for example, they visually personalize different areas with objects that reflect personal beliefs, interests, and identities.
In this photo taken in March 2009, two astronauts, Koichi Wakada, Charles Simonyi, and a space tourist, Michael Barratt, appear in the Russian Zvezda service module on the International Space Station. Behind them are a variety of different items placed by the astronauts, front and back.
Image source: Islamic Project of the International Space Station
Picture Chinese: Wow
Crew members on the space station use space on the ISS differently, and crew members of different genders, nationalities and space agencies appear in some modules significantly more often than others in the 16 constituent modules of the ISS. This has to do with how work is distributed between the crew and the mechanism and the layout of the modules themselves.
One of the major challenges of living in orbit is the weakening of the Earth's gravity. Objects such as handrails, velcros, stretch ropes and resealable plastic bags act as "gravity substitutes" in the space station, holding objects in place while everything else floats in the surrounding space. Researchers from the ISS Archaeology Project are analyzing how crew members adapt to these gravitational substitutes in order to improve the efficiency of their activities, and the impact of their placement on different ways of using space. The reality of life in space is still unknown Even with the addition of a lot of luxurious functional experiences (such as the space station version of the oversized "floor-to-ceiling windows"), designers and engineers still have a long way to go if they want to make the space station more efficient, more comfortable, and more popular, especially for the future space tourism market. Admittedly, privately owned and privately operated space station programs are ambitious and could change the way humans live in space. But on the other hand, companies that are building these private space stations are likely not yet aware of how people will actually use the space habitats they design.
Original Author:
Justin St. John's Justin St. P. Walsh
Chapman University
Alice Gorman, Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology
Associate Professor of Archaeology and Spatial Studies, Flinders University, Australia
References:
[1]https://theconversation.com/private-space-stations-are-coming-will-they-be-better-than-their-predecessors-170871
[2]https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/02/nasa-awards-blue-origin-nanoracks-northrop-grumman-over-400m-in-contracts-to-avoid-space-station-gap/
[3]https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-selects-first-commercial-destination-module-for-international-space-station
[4] https://nanoracks.com/starlab/
[5]https://www.orbitalreef.com/
[6]http://spaceref.com/commercial-space/northrop-grumman-signs-agreement-with-nasa-to-design-space-station-for-low-earth-orbit.html
[7] https://issarchaeology.org/