Private space stations are coming. What can tourists expect?
Will they be better than their predecessors?
Commercializing life in space
The change is driven by NASA’s support for commercializing space. This emphasis really started about a decade ago with the development of private cargo services to supply the ISS, like SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon, and private vehicles to deliver astronauts to orbit and the Moon, such as SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, Boeing’s Starliner, and Lockheed Martin’s Orion capsules.
Start-up Axiom Spacewas awarded a $140 million contract by NASA in February 2020for a private module to be attached to the ISS. Axiom announcedPhilippe Starckwill design a luxurious interior.
Starck compares it to “a nest, a comfortable and friendly egg”. There’s also a huge viewing area with two-meter-high windows for tourists to look out at Earth and space.
The first module is due to be delivered to the ISS in 2024 or 2025, with others following each year. By the time the ISS is decommissioned around 2030, Axiom’s modules will become a free-flying station.
Axiom has signeda contract with French-Italian contractor Thales Alenia Space, which built close to 50% of the ISS’s habitable volume for NASA and the European Space Agency, to produce its habitat.
But there’s more.Three other groups have just been selectedfor the first phase of NASA’s Commercial LEO Destinations competition to build free-flying space stations to replace ISS.
First, a group composed of Nanoracks, Voyager Space, and Lockheed Martin proposeda station called Starlabto provide research, manufacturing, and tourism opportunities. This was almost immediately followed bya competing project called Orbital Reef, by Blue Origin, Sierra Space, and Boeing.A third project, by Northrop Grumman, will be made of modules based on its existing Cygnus cargo vehicle.
But how are space stations actually used?
Less clear is whether the private space stations will be more liveable than earlier generations of space stations, like Salyut, Mir, and ISS.
Typically, older space stations were designed to meet engineering constraints rather than starting with crew comfort. What lessons have been learned to make life better in space?
Until recently, there was little research that focused on the lived experience of astronauts on space stations. That’s where social science approaches, such as the ones we are using inthe International Space Station Archaeological Project, come in.
Since 2015, we have developed new, data-driven understandings of how ISS crew adapt to life in a context of confinement, isolation, and microgravity. We observe and measure their interactions with built spaces and the objects surrounding them. What are the patterns of usage of different spaces and items?
Asking these kinds of questions reveals information never considered in habitat design before. It turns out the crew don’t necessarily use the spaces inside the ISS the way they were designed – for example, they personalize different areas with visual displays of items that reflect their beliefs, interests, and identity.
The crew also doesn’t use all spaces inside ISS equally. People from different genders, nationalities, and space agencies appear in some modules more than others among the 16 that make up the station. These patterns are related to the way work is divided up between crews and agencies, as well as the layout of the modules themselves.
One big challenge of life in orbit is the lack of gravity. Objects like handrails, Velcro, bungee cords, and resealable plastic bags act as “gravity surrogates” by fixing objects in place while everything else floats around. Our research is mapping how crew adapt these gravity surrogates to make their activities more efficient, and how the placement of the surrogates changes the way different spaces are used.
Society and culture in space
Even with added luxury features like large windows, designers and engineers have a long way to go to make space stations efficient, comfortable, and welcoming, especially for the predicted space tourism market.
The plans for privately-owned and -operated space stations are undeniably ambitious and could transform how humans live in this environment. But it’s likely that the companies working on them don’t yet know what they don’t know about how people actually use space habitats.
Only by turning towards new kinds of questions and research from a social and cultural perspective will they be able to make real changes that can improve mission success and crew well-being.
This article byJustin St. P. Walsh, Associate professor of art history and archaeology,Chapman UniversityandAlice Gorman, Associate Professor in Archaeology and Space Studies,Flinders University, is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.
Story byThe Conversation
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