Blue Origin, a space tourism company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has announced plans to launch a commercial space station by the end of the decade, which even has a name: ‘Orbital Reef’. According to the BBC, the station will be a “mixed-use business park” in space and will have a capacity for just ten people.
To advance the ambitious project, Blue Origin will partner with Sierra Space and Boeing to build the space station.
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Blue Origin said the 32,000 m² station will provide customers with an ideal location to “produce microgravity movies” or “conduct cutting-edge research” and said it would also include a “space hotel.”
At a press conference to announce the initiative, executives from Blue Origin and Sierra Space declined to advance an estimate of construction costs, even though the project appears to be largely financed by Bezos, who has pledged to spend billions of dollars a year on Blue Origin.
The announcement comes at a time when NASA is looking for proposals to replace the International Space Station (ISS). Although funding for the station has been secured until at least 2030, the outpost is in desperate need of repair.
Russian authorities have already warned that their astronauts could leave the station in 2025 for fear that outdated equipment could trigger a serious accident. In response, NASA announced plans earlier this year to award $400 million in private contracts to space companies to help the agency replace the old space station.
However, there is likely to be strong competition for funding. Earlier this week, a partnership between Nanoracks, Voyager Space and Lockheed Martin announced their own plans to launch a space station into low orbit by 2027.
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