Hello its scott manley here
It's been over 20 years since the international space station began construction and almost ten years since it was completed
It has been a massive international project to build the components and assemble them in space and now they are looking to add
Commercial sections to the space station and less than a month ago nasa signed a deal with a company called
axiom space to start building out a new commercial extension to the space station now the stems from a
2016 request by NASA to look at commercial options
Followed by a government mandate to do this last year
They published prices for using ISS facilities and know there is this deal to add new sections?
it was thought that there were two companies in the running for this one of whom was Bigelow airspace who of course built the
Bigelow expandable Activity module, that's a spherical module on the left side of the station there
But I suspect that axiom won because the contractors they're working with are the people who built the space station already
many of the executives at the company have strong links to the
ISS program already including Charles Bolden who is a consultant that works for the organization
so according to the plan axiom we'll be sending some missions to the space station soon and
2024 is when they plan to start launching the three new modules that they will be attaching
The first node is ax n1 as axiom node
One mass attached to the common berthing adapter on the front of node two on the existing space station to do this
They have to remove the pressurized mating adapter on the front
that's the docking adaptor that's going to be used by crewed vehicles such as
Starliner or dragon for those of you unfamiliar with how the space station is bolted together
There are pressurized mating adapters for docking which themselves have the International docking adapters on the outside
But most of the US side of the station are docked together using the common berthing mechanism
And this has been used for things like the dragon cargo spacecraft as well
Anyway point is we don't know where that pressurized mating adapter is going to end up
So the Nord one launch also in the observation cupola
Which is removed and moved to the nadir port of their Node one
The next launch brings up a habitation module AAX
H1 no, it is not some sort of flu virus. It does offer some fantastic accommodations for visiting astronauts
These are proper little cabins like you might find any capsule hotel designed by Philippe Starck no relation to Tony
They give you everything you could want as a resident of a space station in Nice big view and a little television which looks like
An iPad which I suspect is what they might be and look it's very clear that when they say astronauts
They're also saying space tourists, especially the observation deck
It is way beyond what we've seen in the european design cupola. This offers amazing views. And yes - Wow
I hope it is worth the price of admission because that is frankly spectacular
The final module is the research and manufacturing facility AXRMF
and that's supposed to provide of course microgravity capabilities so you can do your research
Possibly manufacture things certainly people have talked about space manufacturing for a long time
But there are barriers to you because it's so darn expensive to put stuff in space
But that being said there is good research coming out of the space station and having more space to do research is always good
The final component is the power and thermal control module up to this point
All the modules have been getting their power and thermal management
from the rest of the International Space Station but adding this allows them to extend out the tower and
Get their own power capabilities and this is going to be important for the next part of this plan
So yeah
This thing folds up creates a nice big Tower that stick earth is kept far away from the panel's on the space station
It's also worth noting that this will also contain the airlock for people that need to do EVA
now at this point the animation continues because one of the things they demonstrate is removing a
modules from the existing space station
this is the Leonardo module which was originally a fancy cargo container which flew inside the space shuttles payload Bay this
other modules become part of the axiom segment and then a decade from now when the International Space Station has
lived beyond its usefulness and no one wants to maintain it the axiom station can
disconnect and become its own entity
And that's one of the ultimate goals to have a purely commercial station operating in law or earth orbit
Transition slowly away from the International Space Station. It's argued that we've done / we've spent so much time in low Earth orbit
We've learned so much that it is now well within the grasp of a commercial organization to entirely run their own space program
For profit meanwhile, of course
the government's role is to continue to push higher and further to do those things that are
unprofitable and of course to subcontract and use the facilities on these commercial systems just like the urban government is currently using
Commercial launch providers to supply the space station now as for launch providers looking at the modules
These two modules on the Left are supposed to be about 11 meters long
so when you include the
observation module on node 1 that actually makes it too long for the standard Falcon 9 fearing although SpaceX has talked about
pre a long fairing they've never seen one actually built or manifested but in theory in terms of mass this will fit on
Atlas 5 Vulcan, it'll fit on Orion as well. And of course the Falcon 9 in terms of payload mass
That's not the problem. The only question is the fairing size for the first couple of launches
the pressure vessels are all can be built by tailor Selenia who of course built the pressure vessels for the Leonardo modules for
Cygnus for the European ATV, so they've got a lot of experience that is still current in terms of building out
aluminium pressure housings. All of the modules when launched are spacecraft in their own right they all have
Propulsion they have attitude control
They have the ability to fly and rendezvous with the space station where they can be assembled. So they just need a launch vehicle
They don't need something like the space shuttle
which was of course required for it to assemble large parts of the space station and
in terms of crew and cargo transportation
I believe that node on the front there is
To be an international docking adapter so that a dragon2 or a starliner can fly carrying astronauts
And/or cargo and while we like to talk about industry and research in space
I do honestly think there is gonna be a significant market for space tourism and they've definitely
Designed their station with that in mind with the habitation module having lots of big windows and there's absolutely spectacular
viewing gallery here
I do kind of like the opening neck or the protective plates mechanism for this but that, that just would be absolutely fabulous
but this isn't gonna happen right away it's gonna be
2024 before the first module goes up
2028 by the time it's ready to unhook and I suspect it will remain attached to the ISS as
Long as there is funding for the ISS because it's better to stick together in space
It will be required to stay at the same orbital inclination as the International Space Station
which does mean a small penalty of about five to ten percent on the payload that can be delivered as opposed to a
Twenty eight point five degree orbit. And of course there is the question of funding
I'm not really clear how much money is coming from NASA and how much is supposed to come from private investors?
I'm not sure how much money they've actually raised but look in terms of private space sedation projects. This is
Definitely one of the best planned and best designed
I
Don't think there's any question as to the technical feasibility
Of what they've designed and what they're working on and they do have the buy-in of NASA. So that is critical
So I'm hoping this private space station is successful and I hope it's just the first of many. I'm Scott Manley fly safe