NASA provided Jeff Bezos with funding to build its Blue Origin Orbital Reef space shuttle

After more than two decades, NASA plans to retire from the International Space Station. The standard satellite only has a operating license until 2024, and it is possible that the cost of the site could be fixed. growth until 2028, NASA plans to remove the ISS and find a replacement at the end of the decade. By Jeff Bezos.

The billionaire space broadcaster, Blue Origin, has offered an idea new space shuttle Orbital Reef, which can provide “various activities in the business park”In the air. This concept is now supported by NASA. Organization he announced Thursday to award the Blue Origin Award to its $ 130 million affiliate companies to build a spacecraft, which NASA hopes to launch before 2030.

With the help of several other companies, including Sierra Space and Boeing, Blue Origin is planning to build a satellite itself a little less than the ISS and houses up to 10 people. The designs include desk space, computers, laboratories, garden, and 3D printers. The aim, the company says, is to lease offices to interested people, including government agencies, researchers, tourism companies, and film production teams.

The Blue Origin program was pre-programmed on the assumption that the end is coming for the ISS, which NASA still exists. awareness how to deduct from orbit. Although space technology has been instrumental in astronomy, vice-president of Blue Origin Brent Sherwood protested. op-ed that ordinary companies now have the potential to seize the growing wealth in Low-Earth orbit, or LEO. Blue Origin is also developing a space tug, a freight car that moves between transports, which is said to be usable save sessions to ISS and incorporates them into Orbital Reef systems.

NASA is not responsible for the corporate acquisition of Low-Earth orbit. The agency’s airspace, SkyLab, it just went on for months Before NASA allowed the car to disembark and rot in space. The air agency has been reducing ISS costs, which has been in its infancy for years, and NASA’s funding for the Orbital Reef is part of the more than $ 400 million that the agency has set aside to create new, secretly built and operational space. LEO Business premises software.

In the end, NASA hopes to send astronauts to the site instead of paying to keep the ISS. Overall, the system could save the state even more $ 1 billion annually.

“This is a technology that has spanned 20 years so far. Things will get worse,” Wendy Whitman Cobb, a professor at the US Air Force’s School of Air and Space Studies, told Recode. “Having a place to do this will be a way for Americans to keep their footing in the earth’s path while focusing on their resources in lunar exploration with Mars.”

In the meantime, NASA is looking into the matter The Artemis program, a system aimed at establishing a long-term human existence per month. The agency wants to send people to the moon for the first time in recent decades 2025, and he hopes the project will serve as a gateway to Mars. The private sector, including Blue Origin, has been actively engaged in participating in the above-mentioned project, especially a lucrative strategic partnership for the most important technologies up to a month. Pictures of SpaceX he won that contract earlier this year, I made the Bezos company that against NASA and promoting the Senate to reverse the decision. That effort did not bear fruit, so Bezos now appears to be turning to Earth-Earth’s low-income economy, with more customers and less competition from Elon Musk.

“Most, if not all, of the problems or challenges that need to be addressed in order to have a LEO space have already been resolved by the International Space Station program,” Sherwood, of Blue Origin, told a news conference Thursday. “That’s why we can make commercial space cheaper than it did NASA for the first time.”

But there is reason to believe that the Orbital Reef project will not be successful soon – or not. Blue Origin did not set people back on track, which SpaceX did last month Inspiration4 function. Also Blue Origin list his New Glenn reusable launch system is Boeing’s Starliner crew car as the most important parts of the Orbital Reef system, but all these vehicles have not yet flown in an airless environment.

Blue Origin is not the only company that wants to change the ISS. NASA has also funded two other space missions, selected from 11 ideas submitted to the Commercial LEO Destinations program. NASA has donated $ 160 million to a company called Nanoracks, which manufactures the so-called space shuttle Starlab With the help of many owners Voyager Space and Lockheed Martin. Starlab will have up to four people at a time, and will have a specialized research laboratory. Northrop Grumman, a space company that often works with NASA, also received $ 125.6 million to build his concept of space, designed to accommodate four astronomers and span 15 years.

At the same time, NASA has already agreed to pay Axiom Space $ 140 million to help build one piece, or detachable space station district, that will connect to the ISS. Those modules will eventually be unveiled and integrated into a number of other modules to create a separate, fully functional space once the ISS is in operation. This approach should enable the transfer of weapons contained in the ISS to be fixed on a new vehicle.

A NASA spokesman described what is happening here as a “restoration of the human atmosphere.” In his October speech, the spokesman said, “When more people fly in the sky and do more things during flight, it attracts more people to do more things on Earth orbit and showcase the growing market we envisioned when we started NASA Commercial. Crew Program 10 years of the past. ”

For NASA, it is also important for one of these companies to perform well, and it is possible for more than one company to be set up around. Other than that, time is running out on the ISS, where failures and archeology and weapons it is common. Without specialized companies stepping in to create an alternative, the US government is jeopardizing the future of the human and the planet, and there is no middle ground.

Update, December 3, 10 am: The story was replaced by the news that NASA had announced funding for a number of space projects, including Blue Origin’s.

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