I believe I read that soon, an inflatable add-on will be attached to the ISS, to prove the concept of that approach to space-borne structures.A private-sector corporation, Bigelow Aerospace, rescued the inflatable habitat idea from the NASA discard pile and made it work in the form of two prototype satellites that were successfully launched and have now been orbiting the Earth for years. If the ISS experiment is successful, it could mean that the ISS can be expanded much more easily and cheaply than before, and also that private space stations can be established elsewhere. Perhaps an inflatable space craft could take us to Mars, or at least allow us to establish space stations there. Let’s see what the future brings!
Sure thing! But I still doubt the ESA will ever lead the way on manned space exploration or industrial development. Not ever having done either of those things, nor plausibly ever having the budget to do so in the future.
Here’s a better idea. I propose an open global amateur space program focused on telebase development with the intent of developing prototype teleoperated outposts in such locations as the Atacama Desert and Iceland.
A telebase is a tele-operated robot outpost intended to leverage lower cost low-rel/high-frequency launch and delivery systems to pre-develop In-Situ Resource Utilization infrastructures for support of later manned facilities. This allows for later manned missions with lower carried resource overhead and more minimal transportation systems. These prototype outposts would be unmanned test-bed sites linked to their developer community by Internet, functioning rather like a community model train layout for a global developer community building on a Linux organizational model. They would allow the exploration of various outpost design concepts and testing of various prototype robots and systems delivered by air-drop simulating ‘rough lander’ deployment. Terrestrial spin-offs would be tremendous including the development of farming, mining, and construction robotics and small scale manufacturing, refining, recycling, and farming systems.
Three basic operational phases would be explored for outposts; beachhead sites, exposed cluster outposts using deployable structures, and excavated settlements. In addition, the program could explore the development of orbital telestations using indoor suspended structures and various remote operated facilities for Earth locations such as the sea. As a promotional side-project the program could develop an annual interior design exhibition for showcasing manned habitat concepts in excavated and built-up structures, using sites like the Kansas City Subtropolis as analogs.
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