Blue Origin, American spaceflight company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, announced on Monday that it is aiming to develop a commercial space station called Orbital Reef along with Sierra Space Corporation, a division of Sierra Nevada Corp, airplane manufacturer Boeing, as part of Bezos’ next plans for outer space. The company said that it is aiming to launch this space station, a sort of ‘business park’ in the cosmos, in the second half of this decade, i.e. after 2025.
What is Orbital Reef?
According to plans unveiled by Blue Origin, this Orbital Reef space station will operate as a “mixed-use business park” in the frontiers of the cosmos. It will ideally provide the infrastructure needed to scale up economic activity and open new markets in space.
Blue Origin aims to build the Orbital Reef space station in partnership with Boeing and Sierra Space, the spaceflight wing of defense contractor Sierra Nevada Corp. The venture will also be backed by Redwire Space, Genesis Engineering Solutions, and Arizona State University.
“Seasoned space agencies, high-tech consortia, sovereign nations without space programs, media and travel companies, funded entrepreneurs and sponsored inventors, and future-minded investors all have a place on Orbital Reef,” the companies said in a statement.
Next chapter in mankind’s outer space ambitions
The announcement of the private space station is being looked at by experts as a natural extension of the trajectory that ‘space tourism’ is now taking. With multiple private space agencies, including Bezos’ Blue Origin, launching brief tourist ventures to outer space over the course of this year, it is only expected that with more tourists, the business will follow.
“The station will open the next chapter of human space exploration and development by facilitating the growth of a vibrant ecosystem and business model for the future,” Blue Origin said on Monday as it unveiled the plan for Orbital Reef.
In April, Sierra Space announced plans to offer the first free-flying commercial space station, and then later in July, Blue Origin conducted a successful tourist spaceflight, with Jeff Bezos and three others aboard. The company also took 90-year-old US actor William Shatner, Captain James Kirk of ‘Star Trek’ fame, to space earlier this month, thus making him the oldest person in space aboard a rocket ship.