JAKARTA - Of the many billionaires that the planet has today, there are even more than 2,700 conglomerates that exist, three of which stand out because of their approach from other conglomerates. They are known to be geeks, and have very strange desires, such as leaving planet Earth more than others like Richard Branson, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos.
The trio have also long been committed to bringing civilians to the edge of space aboard a spacecraft designed by their company. Surprisingly, they all managed to do it in the same year, 2021. Although some of them have struggled to do so for more than a decade, like Branson. While others have to use spacecraft designed to carry the right astronauts into space to reach their goals, as Elon Musk did. But what really stole the show in 2021 was Jeff Bezos.
First, because his New Shepard spaceship had crossed the Karman line carrying civilians some of them famous people. It even flies more often than Branson's VSS Unity and Musk's Crew Dragon. But to sound fair, Musk's rocket has carried more professional and certified astronauts into space than any rival company combined, doing the same for civilians.
Then, Bezos did one more thing last year to put him in front. He is the only one of the three space tycoons to announce plans to create a private space station in orbit around our planet.
Blue Origin announces plans to build a private space station in low Earth orbit
Orbital Reef as it is called, and is being planned by Blue Origin together with Sierra Space. When ready, the station must become a new ecosystem that must open up space for business and travel. “Commercially developed, owned and operated,” of course.
The place will be, if you will allow, a kind of business park in space, with a shared infrastructure and open systems architecture that makes it suitable for any purpose one can imagine to pursue one's dreams in space.
The purpose of the station is to provide companies, space agencies, countries, media and private individuals with the opportunity and means to pursue things that are impossible to pursue on Earth or, for various reasons, on the ISS International Space Station that exists today.
Orbital Reef will be placed in low Earth orbit (LEO), at a distance of 500 km (311 miles) from our planet's surface. It will consist of modules that will be equipped with windows facing the Earth, a place to live and work, and of course lots of holes to connect them together. It will be able to support 10 people in an overall volume of 830 cubic meters (29,300 cubic feet), but that may only be the beginning.
Blue Origin announces plans to build a private space station in low Earth orbit
Orbital Reef will be built with the help of a large number of companies. Blue Origin will be responsible for designing the utility systems and large-diameter core modules, and will handle launching them into orbit using the heavy-lift rocket, New Glenn.
A key partner in this effort, Sierra Space, will provide a module called LIFE (Large Integrated Flexible Environment). It is a structure 27 feet (8.2 meters) in diameter, with three floors that accommodates space for a lab, kitchen, garden, and bedroom.
Sierra will also be tasked with getting people to the station, and will do so using the spacecraft Dream Chaser, a flying machine that looks like a space shuttle that launches vertically on a rocket, and lands on a conventional runway.
According to autoevolution.com, trips to the station will also be available on a Boeing Starliner, provided the aerospace company is functioning properly. Boeing will also donate science modules, station operations and maintenance engineering.
Other entities are also involved in this, including Redwire Space (payload operations) and Genesis Engineering Solutions, which are supposed to produce the one-man spacecraft “for routine operations and excursions.”
Arizona State University will be in charge of “public outreach and research consulting services”, which means advertising Orbital Reef to as many potential users as possible.
Blue Origin and others plan to get the station up and running by the end of the decade, and once that's all up and running, it should "give anyone a chance to make their own address in orbit." The parties believe Jeff Bezos will not miss the opportunity to be the first to do so.
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