The early explorers knew it. Anything and everything can be repurposed for all sorts of useful things when you're in a strange place far from home. For a while, we forgot it. Or, for the sake of speed, simply ignored that part of the pioneer's handbook in the race for firsts in the final frontier. Now, we're remembering sustained settlement of any frontier requires creative reuse. And like the timbers from broken ships used to build forts in the New World, one Texas company believes the empty shells of spent rockets can be valuable new Outposts in outer space.
"We're using this recycling principle here on Earth. We should be using it in space," said Abby Dickes, Director of Marketing for space station company Nanoracks on a recent Zoom call with Outerspaceland. "We shouldn't be wasting these millions and millions of dollars worth of upper stages that are great structures."
NASA felt the same way 50 years ago. Not as concerned about the money, NASA did recognize the value of reusing perfectly good rocket parts for a space station. In the 1960s, agency engineers had actually proposed using the upper stage of its Saturn 1B rocket as a structure for Skylab, a precursor to the International Space Station (ISS).
Skylab would be sent up "wet" as the upper stage of the 1B, boosting itself into orbit. Once in orbit and out of fuel, the empty upper stage would dock with an Apollo spacecraft and astronauts would outfit the inside to make Skylab habitable, Mike Johnson explained in a 2016 interview with IEEE Spectrum. Johnson was Chief Designer for Nanoracks at the time.
However, by the time Skylab was ready to launch, NASA happened to have a stash of super heavy-lift Saturn V rockets left over from its canceled Apollo Moon missions. In fact, NASA had more Saturn V rockets than the smaller Saturn 1B rockets, Johnson said. Saturn V rockets could boost massive payloads into orbit, so engineers decided to send an already fully-stocked "dry" Skylab up on the bigger rocket instead of trying to dress a Saturn 1B upper stage in orbit.
Now Nanoracks is reviving the wet workshop idea to salvage what would otherwise be millions and millions of dollars of incinerated trash. But Nanoracks' approach is different than the original NASA plan.
For the first batch of Outposts, at least, everything needed to take control of a spent upper stage and make it useful as an Outpost space station will be installed as a complete package prior to launch, no docking or astronaut spacewalk required. Outpost Project Manager Nathan Bishop called this package a Mission Extension Kit (MEK). Any Outpost payloads would also be packed on the upper stage prior to launch.
"The [MEK] is enabling the Outpost. The Outpost is the stage, the payloads, the whole thing," Bishop said on a Zoom call with Outerspaceland. "It's the engine of your car... You don't call you car an engine, right? So, the [MEK] is like the engine of the Outpost."
But it's also much more. It's the solar power, communications, navigation and all of the subsystems needed for the Outpost and its payloads, he said.
For its first Outposts, Nanoracks is partnering with United Launch Alliance (ULA) to make use of the launch provider's Centaur upper stage. Eventually, Nanoracks wants to be able to put MEKs on almost any size and shape upper stage from almost any rocket provider so the company can quickly respond to a wide range of customer needs with Outposts, Bishop said.
"As long as we have the funding and the market, we're gonna just keep building them and keep sending things up," Bishop said. "Once we get the ball rolling, the pace-setter is the launches."
Rather than putting up vacancy signs for a luxury space hotel or drawing up blueprints for a multi-module mini-version of the ISS, the plan for Outposts is more flexible and customer demand driven. In fact, the first Outposts will be comparatively simple unmanned test-beds for science or in-space manufacturing.
Outposts might link up to create larger stations down the line, but for now, they're designed to float solo. And until Nanoracks and its partners master the in-space cutting needed to access the inside of a spent upper stage, the first Outposts will utilize just the outside surface.
The first iteration will have an official life-span of about a year, Bishop said. "But we know it'll last longer than that."
Bishop and Dickes said Nanoracks is targeting 2025 or sooner to put its first customer payload into orbit on an Outpost. The first Outpost might even be placed somewhere beyond low Earth orbit (LEO), Bishop said, but he declined to give further details. Each MEK that runs each Outpost will be configured to meet the demands of each customer, he said.
"Fuel depot, is that what they want? So, sure, we'll make the fuel depot and our [MEK] can support the fuel depot. Do you want a warehouse with some parts that you might want to drop down to the Moon every once in a while? Sure, we can make that too."
It's all built on the foundation of the MEK. Nanoracks needs to first prove to its customers that its MEK can take control of a vehicle like Centaur after it has completed its primary mission, power it, talk to it and place it where the payload customer wants it, Bishop said. "Control, power and communications, those are key. I would say that's kind of the base of our triangle right now."
The next level up, engineers will work on increasing the general utility of the Outpost. "Can we utilize the surface area more? Can we move things around?... What's the value in moving things around and how would we do that?" Robotics will be huge, Bishop said.
Bishop believes Nanoracks Outposts can become a key platform for developing technology we can't even imagine yet. It's a clear benefit of being able to quickly place highly-tailored space stations in outer space exactly where customers need them.
And it's not just about space exploration. It's about technology that improves life on Earth too. One of Nanoracks' goals is to provide a platform for the development of space agriculture. After all, crops grown in the harsh environment of outer space can probably be grown anywhere on planet Earth.
Nanoracks recently opened an office in the United Arab Emirates. One benefit to being there is to study extreme climate change and the role the company can play in mitigating its effects, Abby Dickes said.
"We recognize the privilege that we have in our access to space," Dickes said "And so we sort of said, 'We should be using this for a really strategic good purpose that really does improve life on Earth.'"
Some Outposts could be dedicated to space farming. Others could be dedicated to medical device development. 3D printing artificial hearts, for example, becomes much easier in the microgravity of outer space. Author Peter Ward explains why in his 2019 book, The Consequential Frontier, about the commercial space industry.
"The science behind human organs being printed in space is that, in microgravity, intricate structures that are made of extremely thin materials, like the human heart for example, can be fabricated without gravity forcing the structure to collapse in on itself before it's had a chance to set and solidify," Ward said.
Ward gave other examples in The Consequential Frontier. Wind turbine blades could be manufactured much stronger and lighter in the microgravity of space. Fiber optic cables for high-speed communication could be made more easily there. Companies like Made In Space are already advancing these techniques.
Nathan Bishop sees Outpost as an important platform for in-space manufacturing companies. "So, Made In Space needs some real estate up there? We got it. We monitor our space station, our Outpost, and they monitor the operations for... whatever they're manufacturing in space," he said.
Whatever the technology, Nanoracks wants to be there to support its development.
"And that technology will be there in support of some other new technology that will be in support of some other new technology. And we just don't know the end of technology that we can find by just creating this platform," Bishop said. "It's compounding interest for technology."
Nanoracks is not new to managing payloads in and around a space station. For more than a decade, it has been helping customers bring bite-size experiments to the ISS. Many are payloads that might not have otherwise had a chance to go to outer space. It even counts kid chemists and boy scouts among its customers.
10 years ago, before Nanoracks arrived, research experiments for the ISS were all designed and built from scratch and cost millions of dollars each. Standard sizes for equipment, standard software and even USB ports weren't used up there for experiments, Abby Dickes said.
"The fact that we standardized a computer interface is not novel, but all of a sudden we used it on the ISS, which was a novel approach to how some really basic computer functions were starting to work," she said.
Nanoracks takes pride in how it uses "not novel" technology in novel ways to make experimenting in space efficient and economical. The company saw a huge opportunity to standardize all kinds of common experiments different groups wanted to do. Due to the limited space on the ISS, Nanoracks started small with platforms called Nanolabs and Microplates.
One of the most popular platforms for student scientists is Mixstix, where science classes can test how all sorts of mixed substances react in the microgravity of space. Dickes said students have even held bake sales to raise the $15,000 needed to send their class project to space through the Mixstix program.
"We've facilitated hundreds of student experiments, and the programs that enable these projects have engaged over 100,000 students in the spaceflight process," Dickes said.
Mixstix are like a music festival glowstick. An astronaut snaps the glass barriers through its bendy outer shell to start the mix of up to three substances. Like a glowstick, it helps to shake it up. It's another great example of a novel use of "not novel" technology.
And Mixstix are not just for kids. Whisky connoisseurs rejoiced when space tests unleashed new exotic flavors in a batch of scotch samples. In 2011, Scotland's Ardbeg Distillery and Nanoracks launched a sample of flavor-building terpenes and oak shavings to see what they could accomplish without the pesky constraints of 1G.
"In summary, we have demonstrated that in micro-gravity terpenes behave differently in this environment compared to those on earth [sic]. This observation alone has implications for not just the malt whisky industry, but those of the food and drinks industry in general," said a white paper released by Ardbeg to discuss its findings.
Of course, an international space station cannot run on bar tabs and bake sales alone, but the revenue kicked back to help fund the ISS by Nanoracks-facilitated experiments is not insignificant. And even though the taste of space scotch is easier and more fun to write about, there's plenty of sober science making use of Nanoracks platforms.
Nanoracks is the largest investor in the ISS, Nanoracks CEO Jeffrey Manber said in The Consequential Frontier. "I have over $40 million committed to ISS and so step by step have shown ourselves, NASA, the industry, how you can have a relationship between the government space agency and an entrepreneurial company."
"[Nanoracks] is kind of the best of both worlds. It has the drive of the private sector and the innovation which comes from the private sector, which you'd never get within government. It's agile. It will try things," Peter Ward said during a recent Zoom call with Outerspaceland. "But also it has deep, deep expertise and experience."
Much of that experience comes from Nanoracks CEO Jeffrey Manber himself. He pops up all over Ward's book, The Consequential Frontier, especially in the section dedicated to the history of the industry.
In the 1980s, Manber worked for PanAmSat, the first company to own and operate an international communications satellite outside of the government-run organization Intelsat. PanAmSat's satellites helped news stations like CNN broadcast worldwide and cleared a lane for countless private satellites in LEO today, Ward explained in The Consequential Frontier.
In the 1990s, Manber helped Russia monetize its Mir Space Station. At the time, Russia's Roscosmos was the only space agency willing to partner with the commercial sector. He even earned a seat on the Russian side of the table during negotiations between Russia and NASA that ultimately led to construction of the ISS, according to Ward's book.
By 2000, Manber was setting up deals to deliver the world's first space tourists to Mir. In fact, trailblazing tourist Dennis Tito was originally supposed to spend time on Mir and had signed a deal with Manber and MirCorp to do so. But politics of the ISS derailed that deal and downed Mir, according to Ward's book. Tito ultimately went to space in 2001 and spent 7 days on the ISS after signing with Space Adventures.
Finally, in 2009, Manber co-founded Nanoracks and went to work monetizing unused space on the ISS. His passion for space and his experience as a broker between governments and the private sector help spur early commercial success for a young space company.
"[Manber is] exactly what you'd like a kind of space explorer guy to be. He's eccentric and he's very enthusiastic," Ward said on the Zoom call. "He's a really, really nice guy and he's just one of those characters that you need in these kind of niche, weird industries. I think you need people like him to push things forward and he obviously thinks way out of the box."
To date, the experience of Nanoracks, as a company, is mostly with micro experiments and small satellites. It's at least a little ironic that these are things designed to fit neatly inside a standard-size box. But with the upcoming launch of the Bishop Airlock expected in November, Nanoracks will start the transition to bigger things leading ultimately to Outpost.
The Bishop Airlock will be the first permanent commercial addition to the ISS, providing five times the volume of other airlocks on the station, according to Nanoracks' website. Nathan Bishop said it's just a coincidence that he has the same name as Nanoracks' first space station module.
"[The Bishop Airlock is] our biggest piece of infrastructure that we've ever built, so it is a really good test case for us expanding beyond satellite deployers and Nanolabs and research platforms into something much, much bigger, which is definitely the direction that we're heading in," Abby Dickes said. A future version of that airlock could very well find its way onto a version of the Outpost, she said.
Though the first versions of Outpost will not be habitable, important in-space tests for a habitable version are starting soon. Mars Demo-1 will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in 2021. It will carry a small, coupon-sized metal sample to demonstrate the in-space hull cutting technique required to make use of the inside of a rocket's upper stage.
Outpost is funded, in part, by NASA's NextSTEP-2 program, which commissioned private companies to design habitable space stations that NASA could use in LEO or deep space. Mars Demo-1 is just the first of many in-space demonstrations required for Nanoracks to make that happen with Outpost.
Considering their close working relationship right now, there's a good chance Nanoracks' partnership with NASA and other space agencies will continue long after the ISS is retired. But Nanoracks hopes to soak up as much knowledge as possible on the ISS to master everything needed to run its Outposts well before the ISS is decommissioned.
Nanoracks has already compiled thousands of pages of paperwork on what it takes to safely work on a space station. The experience working with NASA has been invaluable, Dickes said.
"We've learned that NASA's actually a pretty open organization. I mean, we're talking about a government agency trusting the private sector to start to take care of their real estate in space, and to take care of their people," Dickes said. "And they're really open to partnering with the private sector to change the future of space."
Editor's note: This article was updated on 12/6/2020 with more information on Nanoracks' Bishop Airlock, following the successful launch of the airlock on SpaceX's CRS-21 ISS resupply mission that same day.
Adam created Outerspaceland to tell the stories of dreamers and to live through all of the brilliant people who push the boundaries of everything that's possible. Contact him at outerspacelander@gmail.com or @Ospaceland on Twitter.