The Plan to Turn Scrapped Rockets Into Space Stations
By: Arslan Mirza
Tags: Space Station, European Space Agency, Space Exploration, Internationalspacestation, Satellite Technology

Introduction

A few days ago, the European Space Agency released its annual space environment report. The report emphasized that the main part of the currently abandoned rocket is one of the biggest threats to spacecraft. The best way to reduce this risk is for the launch provider to de-orbit the rocket after delivering the payload. However, in the eyes of Jeffrey Manber, CEO of the space logistics company Nanoracks, doing so is a waste of a perfect giant metal tube.

Founded in 2009, Nanoracks is well-known for hosting private payloads on the International Space Station. Its business covers remote sensing technology, deployment of microsatellites and cubic stars, space station airlock cabins, and space experiment equipment transformation.

In the past few years, Nanoracks has been working on a plan to transform the upper stage of an abandoned rocket into a miniature space station. This is not a new idea. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has repeatedly considered the idea of ​​refurbishing fuel tanks, but there is always no following, usually because the technology is immature.

All NASA’s previous plans must rely on astronauts to complete a large amount of manufacturing and assembly work, which makes the project costly, slow progress, and a high-risk factor

The new idea is to build a “cutting workshop” outside the earth. Without the astronauts’ hands, the robot can complete the tasks of cutting, bending, and welding the main body of the discarded rocket, and transform it into a laboratory, fuel depot, or warehouse.

Outpost Project

The Nanoracks company’s project is called “Outpost” after the rocket completes its mission, it will be modified to make it reborn. The first batch of “Outposts” will be unmanned space stations built using the upper stage of the new rocket, but in the future, it may be possible to build space stations that can accommodate astronauts, or use rockets that are already in orbit.

In the beginning, Nanoracks did not intend to directly use the inside of the rocket but installed the experimental load, power module, and small propulsion device outside the rocket. Once the company’s engineers have gotten all this done, they can focus on transforming the interior of the rocket to make it a pressurized laboratory.

Abandoned rockets are dangerous space junk, but they may also become places where astronauts live and work in orbit in the future

The rocket entering orbit has at least two stages at launch, and each stage is equipped with propellant tanks and engines. The larger first stage propels the rocket to the edge of space, then separates and falls to Earth or like SpaceX’s Falcon rocket, it can land autonomously on an unmanned platform in the ocean.

The smaller second stage accelerates to orbital speed before releasing the load. At this time, the upper stage usually only has enough fuel to ignite the engine so that it can derail and fall back to earth vertically.

If the upper stage is not fired off orbit, it will continue to orbit the earth as an uncontrolled satellite.

The research team of Nanoracks company is developing for these upper levels because they already have many conditions needed for the space station. The rocket’s fuel tank is made of extremely durable materials that can withstand the tremendous pressure and harsh conditions during launch.

The upper stage of the rocket is also very spacious. The upper stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has a diameter of about 3.7 meters and a height of about 9 meters.

This space is enough to make many apartment residents jealous

However, these fuel tanks need to be modified before conducting experiments or entering astronauts. The first step is to drain all remaining fuel to prevent the explosion.

Then, the robot takes over the installation of various necessary components, such as solar panels, surface-mounted devices, or small propulsion devices. The “Outpost” program will conduct several small space demonstrations, and then try to transform a complete upper stage into an operational space station.

So far, the plan hasn’t really transformed anything, but in the future, you can imagine a group of small robots moving back and forth on the upper level, adding more connected devices, and other similar things.

Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

There is another problem. No one has demonstrated the core metal processing and manufacturing technology needed to transform the orbital space station before.

In May next year, the “Outpost” will conduct its first demonstration mission and plans to change this situation. The company has developed a small cabin that will be launched with several other payloads using SpaceX rockets.

Inside the cabin, a small robotic arm equipped with a rapidly rotating drill bit will cut three small pieces of metal-made of the same material as the rocket fuel tank. If the experiment goes well, this tool should be able to make precise cuts without producing any debris.

This will be the first time that metal has been cut in the vacuum of space

The biggest challenge in putting a rocket into orbit is understanding how the material reacts to the space environment. For example, if a material has one side facing the sun and the other side facing the sun, its temperature may differ by hundreds of degrees.

Without testing in space, it is difficult to predict how this material will respond to standard manufacturing techniques such as cutting or welding. Other technologies, such as the thin-film materials used to manufacture solar panels, require an ultra-clean environment to prevent defects.

Although space is a vacuum, it still contains a lot of dust and radiation, which may interfere with traditional manufacturing processes.

A rendering of the Nanoracks “outpost” base made with the upper stage of an abandoned rocket.

Seventy years have passed and we still know so little about space manufacturing. This is worth noting. If we really want to reuse space hardware, there is still a lot to learn. Even if some of these steps seem unremarkable, they still need to be done step by step.

Regulatory and legality issues

For the aerospace industry, mission expansion projects like “Outposts” are a new challenge. Since the launch of the first man-made earth satellite, the “big guys” sent into orbit either voluntarily left the orbit, or were discarded, and then fell back to the earth.

Mankind has not yet developed the technology to move satellites when they run out of fuel or when they requisition abandoned rocket shells. This also means that there are currently no rules for safe operation, and there is no consensus on whether this practice is legal.

However, the transformation has already begun. In 2019, a satellite successfully locked another satellite that had run out of fuel and transferred it to a new orbit.

This operation will extend the service life of the satellite by at least 5 years and officially open the era of space mission expansion

At this year’s International Astronautical Congress (IAC), Northrop Grumman’s vice president of space logistics, Joseph Anderson, gave a speech on how his company cooperates with several organizations to modify the licensing requirements, To facilitate the occurrence of this historic task.

If Nanoracks wants to turn the rocket into a space station, they must also promote a new licensing policy to achieve this goal. The case of satellites promoting the transfer of orbit may lay the foundation for extending the life of new rockets entering orbit.

But we are still not sure whether a company can deal with rockets abandoned in orbit without the permission of the country or company that launched the rocket undertake a renovation.

Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

This issue is officially the direction that the space law firm has been trying to resolve for many years. On earth, international maritime law allows seafarers to salvage wreckage found at sea, but according to the international agreement signed in 1967, the Outer Space Treaty, the agency that launched the rocket still owns the ownership of the abandoned rocket.

According to this law, if a company or country takes over an abandoned rocket stage without permission, it will violate the property of the launching country. But some lawyers think this legal interpretation is a fallacy, because “the launching country and the launching company actually don’t care about the rocket stages that have been used. They want these things to disappear.”

For the time being, the legal risk is huge for any company that uses the rocket class without permission

For more than a decade, space lawyers have been advocating the application of “discover and salvage” maritime laws to orbital debris such as abandoned rockets. However, regulatory agencies such as the FCC and the Federal Aviation Administration have been slow to act.

To make progress on the salvage issue, a test case is really needed, and the “Outpost” program is probably the best choice to achieve this step.

To promote orbital trade and expand the scope of human activities in the solar system, the recovery of the rocket is a very logical action. Launching spacecraft is very expensive, so the development of technologies that utilize existing resources can greatly reduce the cost of living and working outside of the earth.

In the next 15 to 20 years, there may be reconnaissance missions to search for and salvage usable items. Maybe you will see explorers that search for parts in space and use them for assembly. This will be one of the largest aerospace markets in the future.

Image by Artturi Mäntysaari from Pixabay

From concept to reality

This vision may take a long time to realize. In the past 50 years, NASA engineers have explored a variety of methods, trying to transform old rockets into human settlements.

NASA’s first space station “Skylab” was originally intended to be built on the upper stage of “Saturn 5”. Saturn 5 is a huge launch device that once sent astronauts to the moon in the Apollo program.

NASA’s concept was called a “wet workstation” and it was quite mature at the time, but later project engineers thought it would be easier to launch a customized space station directly. However, the dream of recycling rockets did not end.

Bill Stone is an extreme cave explorer who has been to some of the deepest places on earth

He is also the founder and CEO of “Stone Aerospace”. The company’s goal is to build robots to explore the ocean on the two icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Before this, he worked for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for 10 years, working on transforming the outer fuel tank of the space shuttle into an orbital residence.

At that time, NASA had just begun to explore the engineering design of the “Freedom”. However, Freedom was not really completed. After many modifications and adjustments, the remaining projects were finally transferred to the current International Space Station.

The NIST leadership asked Bill Stone and his colleagues to evaluate all the details of the NASA plan and find ways to improve it.

A constantly emerging fact is that the space shuttle is not 100% reusable

Although NASA can land the space shuttle orbiter and occasionally recover the solid booster from the ocean, it will lose the largest rocket on each launch, Components-external fuel tank.

There is no doubt that this is a huge waste of resources. When the external fuel tank was separated from the space shuttle, it had reached 98% of the speed required to reach orbit and could stay in space without much extra thrust. If it can be transformed into an industrial laboratory, it will be very efficient for reuse.

The outer fuel tanks of the space shuttle are actually two independent fuel tanks, which are connected by an intermediate ring frame between the tanks, forming a huge structure.

The smaller fuel tank contains liquid oxygen, and the other, much larger fuel tank contains liquid hydrogen. The NIST team plans to use the middle layer as a temporary pressurized residence for astronauts, and the astronauts will transform the larger liquid hydrogen tank as the final living space.

This requires multiple modifications to the fuel tank, such as expanding the hatch to allow astronauts to enter and installing a small engine at the bottom of the external fuel tank to enable it to position itself in orbit.

The advantage of this

Is that there is a lot of space that can be used as a warehouse or research laboratory. A smaller liquid oxygen tank can provide 25% more habitable space than the current International Space Station, and if the entire external fuel tank is fully utilized, its volume will be 6 times that of the International Space Station.

During each mission, 65,000 pounds (about 30 tons) of aluminum and other aerospace-grade components are discarded. These materials can withstand tremendous pressure and are suitable for human habitation, even when you see SpaceX launching to close the best quotation proposed by the Earth Orbit will also find that the value of discarded assets reaches hundreds of billions of dollars.

Image by NASA-Imagery from Pixabay

As NIST’s plan took shape in the 1980s, a consortium of 57 universities acquired a majority stake in a private company called “External Tank Corporation”, which will transform NASA's Abandoned space shuttle fuel tank.

As the company’s president, Randolph Ware, told the Los Angeles Times in 1987, the project was not meant to compete with NASA’s Liberty space station program.

“We are not a substitute for a space station, but a warehouse on the edge of an industrial park,” Weir said

As the external fuel tank company worked hard to commercialize the project, Stone and his colleagues at NIST also performed digital and physical simulations of the recycling space station.

By the end of the 1980s, they even built a space shuttle fuel tank model in the pool of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center so that astronauts could practice getting in and out of the fuel tank. In the first demonstration mission of this project, two astronauts participated, Stone was one of them.

NIST is not the only organization involved in the design of the outer fuel tank of the space shuttle. Martin Marietta Aerospace (Martin Marietta Aerospace, which later merged with Lockheed to become Lockheed Martin) engineers conducted a study and proposed available fuel tanks as the basis for a larger space station An independent proposal by the US Air Force suggests that fuel tanks can be used as scrap metal to build facilities that operate on orbit.

At about the same time, a joint research project between Boeing and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) suggested that the external fuel tank could be converted into a large-diameter telescope.

Even the Hilton Hotel plans to use space shuttle boosters to build an orbital hotel and call it a “space island.” Of course, this project never seemed to go beyond the conceptual stage.

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

In 1993, when the Clinton administration approved the establishment of the International Space Station, the dream of transforming an abandoned space shuttle booster into a space station was shattered.

Stone and his team at NIST also submitted a proposal to transform the space shuttle booster into a space station. It is said that it has passed NASA’s highest level of work and sent to the White House.

But as Stone recalled, just as the Clinton administration was preparing to advance the International Space Station project, the director of NIST called him to the office and told him the bad news.

NASA terminated the project. “The space station has become a national employment project, and our project is seen as a threat to the space station,” Stone said. “NASA did not keep these external fuel tanks. This is a sad mistake because they will eventually build an orbital repository. To meet the needs of the Earth and Moon economy.”

In the next 20 years, as NASA engineers focused their energy on the International Space Station, the idea of ​​living and working in the old rocket gradually disappeared from people’s memory. It wasn’t until 2013 that this concept returned mildly.

Brand Griffin comes from Jacob Engineering Company and is a NASA contractor. He led a study that hopes to turn the fuel tank of the next-generation “Space Launch System” rocket into a base for deep space exploration.

He named this recyclable space station “Space Lab 2”.

“Skylab 2” will be launched as a whole from the upper stage of the space launch system. According to NASA’s plan, humans will also be equipped with a space launch system when they return to the moon in the future.

The crew compartment of Skylab 2 will be made of an unused hydrogen fuel tank, which will be launched as a payload for the upper stage of the rocket. This is similar to the design of the space laboratory.

In fact, the space laboratory is based on the third stage of the “Saturn” rocket and was transformed on the ground instead of transforming the first stage of an abandoned rocket in orbit.

Before launch, all the components needed to turn a fuel tank into a space habitation-solar panels, antennas, robotic arms, etc, will be integrated. Just like the “outpost” concept, the assembly of Skylab 2 will not require astronauts.

This modified liquid hydrogen tank will have enough space to accommodate four astronauts and provide them with supplies for flying around the moon or traveling to Mars for many years. Once Spacelab 2 enters orbit, the astronauts will be transported by the Orion manned spacecraft that will be launched later, which can dock with the space station to provide propulsion for the mission.

Space Lab 2’s research is driven by the need to reduce the cost of deep space exploration. The construction of the International Space Station is very expensive, requiring dozens of launches to send all components into orbit.

It would be more expensive to build a similar modular space station around the moon or Mars

However, the Space Laboratory has shown that it is possible to launch a fully functional space station at one time. The research team has built a full-scale space laboratory Station 2, models at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

Despite the enthusiasm of NASA officials, the project was shelved, and the agency continued to advance its new lunar “gateway” program. Unlike Spacelab 2, the “Moon Gateway” is modular and closer to a smaller version of the International Space Station.

In the end

Today, robots can perform tasks that required a group of astronauts in the space shuttle era. The booming space economy also drives the demand for more orbital R&D platforms. NASA’s future moon landing plans also require it to reconsider the issue of the deep space supply chain.

The “Outpost” program also needs several demonstrations of basic technologies to truly realize the recovery and utilization of rockets. In any case, with decades of technological development, perhaps soon, astronauts will have the opportunity to live in a “second-hand” space station transformed from an abandoned rocket.