SpaceX revealed New Internet & Inflatable Space Station Shocked Nasa...

SpaceX's Starlink was born to make human life better. It brings those who are in remote and underserved areas high speed, low latency, continuous internet connectivity, and it's so great to realize that now its impact is not just for ground-based internet, but for internet in orbit as well. Indeed, SpaceX and Vast just announced a new internet space station which promises to provide incredibly high bandwidth capabilities that NASA astronauts never have on ISS. Find out everything in today's episode of TechMap. On April 9, 2024, artificial gravity space station startup, Vast announced that they and SpaceX reached the agreement for SpaceX to provide Starlink connectivity to future Vast platforms. The most notable is Haven-1 which is scheduled to be the world's first commercial space station. It will be equipped with SpaceX's Starlink laser terminal providing gigabit per second speed, low latency connectivity to its crew users, internal payload racks, external cameras, and instruments. Starlink primarily utilizes radio frequency, RF technology for communication between satellites in the constellation, and ground stations. At present, SpaceX has come up with the idea of using lasers for on-orbit connectivity within the Starlink constellation as a potential technology enhancement. Instead of relying solely on RF links, Starlink satellites could incorporate laser communication terminals for establishing direct communication links between satellites. This would enable faster and potentially more reliable communication between satellites within the constellation, reducing the reliance on ground stations for relaying signals. Compared to RF laser communication offers the potential for higher data rates, thus improving the overall performance and bandwidth available to users. Not only that, but it also decreases latency for users, particularly for applications requiring real-time data transmission, such as online gaming and video conferencing. What's more, laser communication can be more secure compared to RF communication. Thanks to those benefits, the Haven-1 crew can be able to connect their personal devices via Wi-Fi to the Starlink network, and have unprecedentedly better Internet connectivity on orbit to host outreach video calls and perform experiments and science with full, high-speed Internet access. Even during crew rest time, they will be able to use high-speed Internet. Beyond Haven-1, Starlink can also provide high-quality connectivity for Vast's next space station, which the company plans to bid for in NASA's upcoming commercial low-Earth orbit destinations competition. We expect their network and technology leading position to continue and accelerate over time, which is why we are excited to have the chance to partner with SpaceX on deploying their first laser connectivity for a space station, said Max Hayat, Vast's CEO. We are excited for Vast's Haven-1 to be the first commercial space station to stay connected with Starlink, said Stephanie Bednarek, SpaceX's Senior Director of Commercial Sales. Frankly, high speeds, low latency, and long-term connectivity in orbit are what NASA astronauts dream of having on the ISS. The loss and delay of signal on ISS is very common due to the limited ground stations. As far as I know, the signal delay to ISS is usually 2-3 seconds, making the round-trip delay 3-6 seconds. The telemetry latency is variable because the ISS isn't at a fixed point. It orbits the Earth, changing the path length. The delay is also not a simple calculation of path length. There are multiple interfaces that add potential delays. To avoid that, the space stations connected with Starlink would be outfitted with the same laser transceivers Starlink sats use and act like any other node in the Starlink network. Anyway, thanks to this agreement, the partnership between Vast and SpaceX is getting more healthy and sustainable to create and accelerate greater accessibility to space and more opportunities for exploration on the road to making humanity multi-planetary. In May 2023, Vast announced that SpaceX would launch Haven-1, followed by two human spaceflight missions to the Haven-1 space station. Haven-1 is Vast's first station, which is intended to operate on its own initially, but will eventually become one module in a larger Vast station when it connects with others launched later. Haven-1 is intended to be put in orbit in August 2025 via launch partner SpaceX, which will also provide the first human occupants of said space station, a short while later using SpaceX Dragon Crew capsule. A SpaceX Crew Dragon will carry four astronauts for a 30-day mission on LAO orbit. The company will also provide crew training, mission simulations, and spacesuits. Haven-1 is small enough that it can be launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The 14-ton, 3.8-meter-wide module will provide 70 cubic meters of pressurized volume and will carry 150 kilograms of preloaded cargo mass. It features a docking hatch designed for Crew Dragon and looks to be a little over double the height of SpaceX's human-rated spacecraft. On the module, a docking port is situated at one end and a large window is on the opposite one. Vast will also conduct the world's first spinning artificial gravity experiment with Haven-1. Vast is selling four crewed seats for the Haven-1 mission, which can include both international space agencies and private customers. Vast is a young space company founded in 2021 by the American entrepreneur Jed McCaleb and based in Long Beach, California. Since its debut, Vast set itself as a possible future leader in the sector of commercial space stations. At the beginning of 2023, Vast announced the relocation to a newly built 11,100-square-meter facility where Haven-1 will be designed and manufactured. Shortly after, Vast announced the acquisition of the space startup launcher which is developing the orbiter payload host and the E2 engine. After Haven-1 and other possible Falcon 9-class modules, Vast is planning to launch in 2028 a bigger space station module relaying on SpaceX's fully reusable Starship super-heavy lift rocket. This is an important step towards the development of a 100-meter-long spinning stick space station that provides various gravitational environments including Earth, Mars, Moon, and asteroid gravities. The artificial gravity station will be assembled in space with seven Starship-launched modules. The spinning stick station will accommodate up to 40 astronauts and is scheduled to be launched in the late 2030. In a longer-term project, Vast aims to operate dozens of artificial gravity and zero-gravity space stations across our solar system. Vast's schedule would put it ahead of Axiom Space, which plans to launch its first commercial module to the ISS in 2026. Vast's president, Max Haught, acknowledged that his company's schedule was ambitious but that the simplicity of its approach, including leveraging Crew Dragon systems to support crews when docked to Haven-1, made that schedule feasible. He was also skeptical of Axiom's schedule, noting the company hasn't yet announced launch plans for its initial module. However, when I looked for updates on the progress of both companies on X, I realized that while Vast has not shown any information, Axiom publicized the image of their first module, AX-H1. Obviously, Vast and Axiom are not the only space companies chasing the race to develop commercial space stations. The market for the commercial space station has bloomed dramatically in recent years, which provides NASA with multiple options. They seem to be big on dissimilar redundancy these days, and other agencies may pursue their own stations anyway if they can get the funding, whether public or private, Orbital Reef, for example. NASA is even eyeing SpaceX's Starship as a possible space station. Starship is a potentially great Swiss Army knife that can be reapplied to a lot of different applications, and as far as I can tell, SpaceX's proposal is a simple, just a standalone modified ship with an internal volume roughly similar to the ISS. Nevertheless, I think it is unlikely that SpaceX will pursue this project, at least in the near future. They're not going to sink too many resources into it when they have to build a launch cadence refilling an HLS to worry about. It will take some time for Starship to offer a really low-cost launch. Estimates put a full stack at roughly $100 million per launch, and amortizing costs with reusability will take a few years. On April 9, at the 39th Space Symposium, a new space startup company, Maxspace, proposed its own interesting idea about inflatable space habitat. Among their series of expandable modules, the first of which is scheduled to launch on a SpaceX rideshare mission in 2025. That Maxspace-20 module, compacted into a volume of 2 cubic meters for launch, will expand to 20 cubic meters after deployment, making it the largest expandable module flown to date. While a version of the Maxspace-20 module is being built for testing, the company intends to quickly move to larger modules with volumes of 100 to 1,000 cubic meters, the latter the approximate volume of the entire ISS later this decade. Their big, exciting goal is to launch the space station's equivalent of volume in one Falcon launch, with such a module costing as little as $200 million. Such modules offer a less expensive solution for future commercial space stations and also provide a lot of interesting space applications, like in space manufacturing, biosciences, and pharma. However, their first module will aim at government agencies interested in using the modules as in space propellant depots or other storage. Unlike many competitors, building its own station is not Maxspace's goal. Instead, they want to become a supplier to other companies developing commercial space stations, such as through NASA's Commercial Low-Earth Orbit Development Program, or CLD. Apparently, Maxspace is not pioneering in designing and commercializing the inflatable space module in this century. Prior to Maxspace, we heard at least one time about Sierra Space with their design, namely the Large Integrated Flexible Environment, or LIFE for short. The combination of multiple LIFE habitats will form part of the Orbital Reef Commercial Space Station, which is being developed in a partnership between Sierra Space and Blue Origin. Orbital Reef is partly funded by a SpaceX agreement administered by NASA. LIFE's biggest variant has a volume of 5,378 cubic meters in the operational stage, meaning five times SpaceX's Starship and can fit inside an 8-meter fairing and is scheduled to be launched in the late 2000s. Definitely, it's going to go with Starship on that one. Sierra will start off with the LIFE 1.0 module, which will be deployed to LEO by late 2025 or early 2026 using a ULA Vulcan 5-meter fairing for launch. The first orbital version, LIFE 1.0, will be configured as a 285-cubic-meter unit measuring 6 meters long by 9 meters in diameter. From the outside, LIFE looks like it would make for a cramped living space for four people. But, as they say, it's bigger on the inside. The interior houses three floors of living and workspace, complete with a medical bay, science labs, robotic stations, a galley, two hygiene centers and a toilet. There's also exercise equipment, docks for iPads for movies during downtime and a multi-tiered space garden to provide fresh produce for the astronauts. The habitat's outer mesh is made from super-strong Vectrin, a material used in making bulletproof vests designed to keep the pressurized interior of the habitat comfortable for the crew. There's an inner urethane bladder to keep the air inside, a middle nylon layer, along with several layers of 4-inch thick foam and six sheets of Kevlar. Along with the bigger and bigger size of the LIFE module, the demand for a rocket with a larger payload area has increased as a result. I'm pretty sure that in BFRR's wild days, SpaceX could predict a future where reusable transportation with a larger payload capacity and low cost would be the trend. And they are correct. To be honest, in the 20th century, inflatable module projects were developed, but could not last long because of many reasons. The first formal design and manufacture was in 1961 with a space station design produced by Goodyear, although this design was never flown. NASA first started experimenting with the concept of expandable habitat modules back in the 1990s, and practical examples were being launched into orbit by the early 2000s. After NASA had done plans for what we now know as the International Space Station, it was understood that most of the components for the orbiting complex would need to fit inside the payload bay of the space shuttle. This requires station modules' size to be largely cylindrical in shape and no longer than approximately 18 meters. The tricky bit was that the shuttle's payload bay was only 4.6 meters wide. Although this allowed for modules slightly wider than what had been used thus far for Mir with 4.15 meters in diameter, it was a considerably humble number compared to the 6.6 meters diameter orbital workshop module of Skylab. Thanks to that, the idea of an inflatable habitat module was born that could be packed into the shuttle's payload bay and then expanded to its final size of 8 meters once in orbit and filled with air. The proposed module, known as Transhab, was to be divided into multiple decks, providing living and working areas for the astronauts, as well as ample storage. There would have been six individual crew cabins, a dedicated workout area, medical facilities, a fully equipped kitchen, and a large wardroom table that could be used for all-hands meetings or group meals. Unfortunately, in 2000, R&D phase on inflatable modules like Transhab was canceled by NASA due to delays and cost overruns on the overall ISS program. Later, the private company Bigelow Aerospace revived the design for use in a number of potential civil and commercial applications. One of the improvements they made was the addition of Vectron to the inflatable structure. Twice as strong as Kevlar, this manufactured fiber is spun from a liquid crystal polymer and had previously been used in the airbag which allowed Pathfinder to safely land on Mars in 1997. The shape of the module is maintained by the pressure difference between the internal atmosphere and the outside vacuum. The inflatable Bigelow Aerospace modules have an internal core that provides structural support during its launch into orbit. Their original module, Genesis 1 and 2, were launched into orbit between 2006 and 2007. In 2016, a $17.8 million module called Beam was provided to NASA and then delivered to the station inside the unpressurized trunk of a SpaceX Dragon. Unlike Genesis, Beam could expand both its length and diameter. When packed into the Dragon's trunk, it was 2.16 meters long and 2.36 meters in diameter. After an expansion process which took seven hours, it measured 4.1 meters long with a diameter of 3.23 meters. It was decided to use it for storage and it would remain attached to the ISS until at least 2028. After Bigelow Aerospace suspended operations entirely in 2021, Sierra Space has emerged as the new industry leader for space-bound expandable structures. Following Sierra Space, we also witnessed the participation of Max Space, as I said. One of the main driving forces for the emergence of Unicorns in this field comes from the development of modern rockets, capable of carrying large loads, but at extremely low prices, most typically Starship. This helps the firms to cut down the redundant costs and thus invest more in R&D activities. However, obstacles are inevitable because such projects often aim to diversify customer segments, not only astronauts. Imagine with Starship's high flight cadence how many people suddenly be working in low Earth orbit. Keep in mind that major of those don't have the perfect health profile like astronauts. This leads to an overload in the medical system in space. According to Sierra Space's new chief medical officer, Dr. Tom Marsh, emergencies or medical problems that occur in space may include the following, cardiovascular events, slight headaches, a virus problem, too much carbon dioxide, dental issues, infection, and so forth. In that case, he said, it would be better to screen people before they go up and prepare the basic medical kits. Additionally, it's required to have a close connection to the expert on the ground. In an emergency when they must take the patient home, a Dream Chaser space plane capable of low G return to compatible commercial runways worldwide at fast speed will be utilized. And that just about wraps it up for today's episode. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing you next time.