The Next-Gen Space Stations That Could Replace The ISS | Answers With Joe

this video is supported by brilliant when i  was growing up i wanted to be an astronaut more   than pretty much anything else in the world and  like a lot of people i was inspired by nasa and   especially the footage that they collected from  their space flights but it wasn't necessarily   you know people walking around on the moon  or space shuttle launches although those   are awesome obviously uh for me anyway it  was mostly this this is footage from skylab   america's first attempt at a space station skylab  was operational from may 1973 to february of 1974   and it was served by three different crews the  longest mission being 84 days pretty short by iss   standards but skylab had something the iss doesn't  have space all that space skylab was basically a   modified third stage of a saturn v rocket meaning  it was a girthy boy the orbital workshop section   was 6.6 meters in diameter dwarfing the largest  model of the iss this gave the three-man crew a   total of 351.6 cubic meters of space that's 12  417 cubic feet no spacecraft in history has had   more open volume than skylab and with that volume  the astronauts created a little circus in space   these weren't all for fun although they were  clearly having fun they were testing the physics   of moving and living in zero-g environments they  even had room to experiment with a prototype   man-maneuvering unit that astronauts would  later use on the space shuttle i mean don't   get me wrong astronauts on the moon and rocket  launches those were inspiring but this looked fun   these guys were living the dream that every kid  dreams of they were literally flying around in   space they were tumbling and circling and spinning  in the air this is exactly what my 10 year old   self would do if he got to go to space how will  i do that now i would then throw up everywhere   but i do it watching three grown men playing  around like kids in the ultimate ball pit just   kind of humanizes space flight for me in a  way that no other footage ever has you know   i mean space flight and science in general it's  always so clinical and it's so serious but this   really brings home the the joy and the wonder  of space travel for me which is why at the risk   of sounding like a fanboy i am pretty excited  about the potential of starship starship is   nine meters wide okay for perspective iss skylab  starship it's enough to make a space station feel   inadequate but starship or no space stations are  going to play a major role in our future in space   iss was not the first space station and it won't  be the last so let's look at what comes next   america has always been greatest  when we dared to be great   we can reach for greatness again we  can follow our dreams to distant stars   living and working in space for peaceful  economic and scientific gain tonight i am   directing nasa to develop a permanently manned  space station and to do it within a decade   this is from the state of the union address  given by president ronald reagan on january   25th 1984 that basically set the stage for  a project known as space station freedom   the us have wanted a permanent presence in space  pretty much since the 1950s but it wasn't until   the space shuttle came along that launch cost  seemed feasible enough that we could actually   ferry astronauts to and from a space station  so before this we had the sky lab which was   considered a success but space station freedom  was going to be a whole other thing at about   the same time on the other side of the cold war  was space station mir it was authorized in 1976   about the same time that skylab was still in  space and plans were pretty far along by the   time reagan had announced the idea for the space  station freedom the first of six modules for mir   were launched in 1986 and the last was launched  in 1996 and by that point space station freedom   was kind of no more it had run into far too  many budget problems and too many redesigns and   the whole thing kind of fell apart so in  1993 the clinton administration decided to   fold space station freedom into a new project the  international space station freedom was already   pretty international to begin with nasa was  collaborating with esa and europe jackson japan   and csa and canada but as it transitioned to  the iss it allowed a fifth agency to come in   russia's russ cosmos at the time russia had been  working on a successor to mir so they basically   took those plans and just folded it into the iss  the most important of these modules was the zvezda   service module which provides life support for  iss astronauts as well as a place to shelter from   solar storms fesda was the last major component  to be installed on the iss in july of 2000 and   then after a series of outfitting missions the  first iss crew arrived on november 2nd 2000.   as of today the iss has been continuously occupied  for 20 years 6 months and 22 days no other space   station comes anywhere close mirror lasted  just about a decade but mir does have some   bragging rights it does have uh the distinction  of hosting the cosmonaut with the most time and   space continuously of anybody else in the world  that's valerie polyakov in about 438 days the   american record of 340 consecutive days was set by  scott kelly on the iss although it should be noted   that the most total time in space is held by peggy  whitson and most of that time was spent on the iss   and naturally these records corresponded with the  iss carrying out many scientific goals including   obviously researching the effect of microgravity  on the human body but iss instruments have also   observed billions of cosmic particles and produced  the first bose-einstein condensate in space   the bose-einstein condensate is kind of a fifth  state of matter plus they've done research on   alzheimer's disease parkinson's disease cancer the  water filtration equipment that they have on the   iss is actually helping out people in isolated  communities down here on earth so while experts   debate on whether or not the iss has actually  earned back its 150 billion dollar price tag   it has certainly come with some benefits  and it's earned its place so at the time   of this video the space station is up there  obviously still operational and doing its thing   um it's it's expected to last until 2030  although some of its components are wearing   out pretty quickly that timeline might be  a little optimistic luckily there are some   exciting projects on the way to take its place  the first mission to break new ground is going   to be the axiom mission one axiom space is  a private company that's run by a former   iss program manager and their goal is to build  and operate the first commercial space station   the plan is to add a module to the iss for private  clients to stay in and then ferry them back and   forth and accrue dragon over time they plan  to add to the structure until it's complete   at which point they'll separate from the iss and  operate independently axiom station is expected   to function as a space hotel while also hosting  scientific experiments mission details will depend   on consumer demand there will be a dedicated  space lab with other modules to come according   to axiom's contract with nasa the initial  segment will accommodate seven people there'll   be potential for advanced life support exercise  equipment and earth imaging and sensing built in   it comes with some cool amenities the first of  which just being an awesome design but also they   have this couple of module that basically will  give you the feeling of just floating out in space   i'm only assuming there's some good medications on  board for the inevitable panic attacks that would   arise from that if all goes well they  plan to fly the first crew up in 2022.   all of which sounds awesome it is not however  cheap every seat on the crew dragon would cost   55 million dollars just to get to the iss and  the cost per day on the iss is going to be 35 000   for a minimum of eight days so i mean it's kind  of like if you're going on vacation and you're   spending 55 million dollars for a rental car and  35 000 for the hotel room something like that   axiom of course plans on reducing the price  over time so it's not just billionaires that   could go up there i mean you might look at the  cost of phones as an example you know a decent   flip phone was a thousand dollars 25 years ago  because phones and space travel same thing but   if you are a millionaire or a billionaire like  say tom cruise your ride to space might be a   little bit sooner back in june of last year  nasa administrator jim bridenstine kind of   let slip that tom cruise might be actually  going up on the iss to shoot a movie up there   and i didn't realize this at the time but yeah  apparently that movie is planning on being shot   on an axiom module yeah not much is known about  the movie right now it's supposed to be directed   by doug lyman who tom cruise worked with on edge  of tomorrow which is actually a pretty great movie   and the budget's going to be around  200 million dollars but beyond that   nobody really knows much about it but before we go  too far down the private space station route let's   look at some countries that have some potential  space stations going up in the near future the   first one of course is china who as we all know  just launched the space station module a few weeks   ago we were all looking overhead for the second  stage that was out of control and burning into the   atmosphere that whole thing that was actually the  first module of a new space station that they're   building it's not the first space station they've  ever done the china national space administration   launched a prototype tiangong won in 2011 the  nearly identical chiang gong 2 followed in 2016.   both prototype stations hosted small crews for  short stays both were de-orbited and allowed to   burn up on a re-entry now both of those are just  kind of test articles they hosted small crews for   a few days but this new space station it's going  to be a whole new thing the module that just   went up is called tiane one it's a segment that's  longer than the tiangong stations at 16.6 meters   compared to their 10.4 meters and it'll also  be modular so china plans to add segments over   the next few years two tiangong size labs will be  added in 2022 and a space telescope with a field   of view 300 times that of hubble will complete its  initial figuration in 2024 so yeah that's that's a   that's a pretty big deal a new telescope with the  power of hubble but 300 times the field of view   it's going to be on the space station the  schedule is ambitious but if things go to   plan a crew of taikonauts which is the term for  chinese astronauts uh we'll be boarding this thing   in 2024. less ambitious schedule wise is the  plan for india's space station the india space   research organization or isro has plans to put a  space station up by the year 2030 which is pretty   ambitious considering they've only started working  on human space flight in 2007. their space program   so far has focused on space probes and satellite  launches and it's actually been really successful   and very impressive but yeah since 2007 they've  been working on a human rated space flight system   called gangian and that's supposed to launch in  2023 with a crew of three people so as of right   now china and india are the only national space  agencies that are working on space stations but   let's get back to the private sector for a second  all right so i mentioned axiom space earlier but   they are actually not the first private company  to have a module attached to the iss that company   would be bigelow aerospace who has essentially  had a prototype space station docked with iss   since 2016. it's called the bigelow expandable  activity module or beam it's an inflatable module   that's currently being used as storage for iss  components the initial plans call for a two-year   test of beam's ability to hold air and shield  its components from micrometeorites and to date   it's been inflated for nearly five years this  was actually a huge win for bigelow aerospace and   a big validation for their idea of expandable  modules bigelow's been working on the idea of   inflatable modules since 2010 and their plan  was to have a space station assembled of these   inflatable modules by 2021. the benefit of these  expandable modules is that they can be really   compacted and fit inside of a fairing they're  lightweight and so they can get up into space   and blow up into much bigger sizes than than they  actually were inside of the fairing which is why   pre-pandemic i would have said the bigelow was  first on the top of the list of private space   contractors that were able to put a space station  up there but some things have changed the benefit   of these habitats is that they can be compacted  small and are really lightweight and then expand   to much larger than conventional modules for  example the b330 is designed to expand about   330 cubic meters hence the name 330 cubic meters  by the way just a little bit smaller than skylab   with accommodations for six astronauts  each b330 would have come equipped with   afton forward thrusters a life support system  and solar power arrays a b330 could have been   used as a station by itself or several could have  been docked together there were proposals to link   up to nine b330s to serve as everything from a  spacecraft supply depot to a microgravity hospital   the problem was at the time no launch system  was big enough had a fairing big enough to   carry the b330 even compacted down but bigelow  made a deal to launch in a vulcan centaur rocket   and then the pandemic hit and bigelow had to let  go all 88 of their employees the first vulcan   centaur rocket is supposed to go up later this  year in 2021 and i don't know maybe hopefully   bigelow can come back to life and book a trip by  2022 yeah i don't know what other things might be   going on behind the scenes at bigelow but i want  to go on record or saying i'm pulling for them   i think the idea of these inflatable habitats  is really interesting and i would like to see   it pulled off but if i can go back to that  picture of the beam module again just take   a look at something real quick there to the left  of beam you can see another iss feature built by   a company with private space station ambitions  the company is nano racks and the feature is   the bishop airlock bishop is a literal doorway  to space with five times more volume than any   other airlock on the iss it was built to kind of  prevent bottlenecks whenever there are multiple   spaceships docked with payloads onto the space  station but nasa is using it mostly for waste   disposal which is not an insult waste disposal  is actually a huge issue when you're in space   but nanorex has ambitions far beyond just being  the trash compactor for the iss they actually   have plans to serve as another type of waste  management system which is actually pretty cool   they're developing a technology to take spent  rocket stages currently in orbit around earth   and turning those into space stations they're  working with a company called maxar who actually   built the robot arm for perseverance on mars  and they're putting together a robotic arm for   construction in space they plan to launch the  arm up to space in june on a falcon 9 rocket   with a demo mission of basically trying to take a  few pieces of metal that are basically serving as   spent stages and cut it apart in 30 to 60 minutes  without creating any debris right now literally   thousands of upper stages from spent rockets are  floating around in low earth orbit and as i've   talked about in a previous video this poses a  huge challenge to our space infrastructure so   the idea is nanowraps could do the space agencies  a valuable service by taking their spent stages   and making something useful out of them they  plan on docking a nanorex outpost station to   the iss within a year of their demo mission and  then accrued outpost a year after that they've   already got an agreement with canada's maritime  launch services to refit their spent rocket stages   but when this actually goes into effect on a  mass scale depends on a lot of factors whenever   it happens it'll be a huge deal not only will  they be cleaning up all the space junk that's   posing all these problems out there but it could  herald a whole new era of construction in space   and that's when things get really interesting  because if we ever want to move beyond modular   designs of just launching up little pieces at  a time and actually build big projects in space   we're going to have to learn how to do  construction up there all right so the   last private company that i feel like i should  mention in here is blue origin blue origin is   known for the new shepard for the new glenn for  their uh for their lunar lander project which   is in review right now but they had been  working on a space station concept in 2019   and while following blue origin can be an exercise  in frustration because they do have a very slow   uh gradual process that they have you know  adopted as their motto and their company   they do have things happening right now they're  officially taking taking bids to ride on the   first new shepard crude launch and they also have  massive resources and massive plans they said many   times over their long-term goal is to get millions  of people living and working in space and in   september of 2020 they put out a job posting for  an orbital habitat formulation lead obviously the   idea being to create amazon warehouses in low  earth orbit before creating amazon warehouses   on the moon they only mentioned the 2020s as a  goal for getting a space station up in orbit and   they have talked about the possibility of buying  smaller companies to help facilitate that goal   what blue origin space station might look like  is anyone's guess but there was a picture in a   nasa report that came out recently that seems to  have an iss module on the top of the new glenn   if that means anything ultimately jeff bezos  wants to lift a page from the dream journal   of gerard o'neill and create giant o'neill  cylinders in space where millions of people can   pick boxes for amazon but for that to happen  construction in space is going to have to be a   must so if blue origin buys nanoracks just  remember you heard it here first now you   might have noticed that all of these space  station concepts have one thing in common   they all go around the earth but why stop there  when we have this whole solar system to play in   well there's already plans for something of an  interplanetary space station and that would be   nasa's plans for a lunar gateway the artemis  program will fingers crossed return us to the   moon sometime soon and part of that plan is the  lunar orbital gateway which i've talked about   in a previous video gateway will orbit the moon  on a wild near rectilinear halo orbit making it   possible to always be in contact with earth and  it'll serve as a stopping off point for crew and   supplies before swooping down and dropping them  off at the moon and it's thought that eventually   it could be a rest station on the way to mars  where it could use the lunar gravity assist   to fling it out and use that momentum and save  on fuel there are plans for several of the iss   partners to be involved in the lunar gateway  including esa japan and canada and private   companies are also involved with max-r selected  to build a demo of the power and propulsion   element or the ppe the finnish ppe will join the  habitation in logistics outpost or halo in 2023   unless there's a delay there'll be a delay but  the thing is these private space station concepts   could actually pave the way for bigger and bolder  projects from these international space agencies   nasa spends three to four billion dollars a year  just maintaining the iss with private companies   taking that over they could redirect that money  to moon colonies or trips to mars and beyond   we've been launching things into space since  1957. that's 64 years and really only in the   last 10 years have private companies become major  players in the space race and only in the last   year have private companies been able to launch  humans into space with every new private space   flight milestone nasa and other international  agencies have been able to hand over more and   more of the heavy lifting pun intended to these  private companies and then focus their attention   on bigger projects and that to me is what makes  this new private space race so exciting which   brings me back to skylab although its operational  mission was pretty short and it ended in 1974   its official ending didn't really happen until  1979 when it fell back to earth in a blaze of   well not exactly glory nasa lost control of  skylab not long after it ceased to be operational   and it fell back to earth over australia so  farmers in australia had charred bits of skylab   literally falling onto their farmhouses kangaroos  running for their lives it was a whole thing   but most large space payloads come down over a  designated location that's known as a spacecraft   cemetery it's a roughly latitude 48 degrees south  longitude 123 degrees west and here strewn about   the ocean floor far beneath the south pacific lie  a large number of de-orbited satellites and space   stations including mir and this is the expected  final resting place when iss finishes its mission   and it's probably going to be quite a show the  iss is the biggest thing we have ever put into   orbit and it will be by far the biggest thing to  come back through our atmosphere that didn't kill   the dinosaurs it'll break apart and straight  through the sky in a 400 mile arc that will   be able to be seen for thousands of miles and  what actually crashes into the ocean will be   completely unrecognizable from all the pictures  that we've seen of the international space station   over the years and with that a 30-year experiment  will come to an end does that make you sad   it makes me kind of sad but if it helps the  end of the iss is only going to usher in a   new era in long-term space flight one  of inflatable habitats luxury hotels   and manufacturing hubs floating in the sky  not to mention colonies on other worlds like   the moon and mars so with any luck you and  i will get to live out our dreams of being   circus performers in space after all of course  with multiple space stations floating around   earth it's going to be important that we get the  orbits just right on those so they don't collide   into each other or into any of the thousands of  pieces of space junk that are floating up there   right now luckily there are people who totally  understand the whole orbital mechanics thing and   work on keeping that from happening but if  you want to be one of those people or at least   have a better understanding of it a great place  to start might be the classical mechanics course   i'm brilliant in this course you start with the  very basics of mass and gravity and the newtonian   physics that explains it from there you learn  about tides the motion of heavenly bodies the   engineering of space travel and orbital mechanics  and even calculate the atmospheric thickness of a   neutron star all this eventually leads to the  extremes of physics where newton's laws break   down and general relativity takes over all of that  is in just one course and that's just the start   from there you can keep going and advance through  more than 60 courses covering everything from   quantum mechanics applied science even 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to  brilliant for supporting this episode and a huge   shout out to the answer files on patreon and the  youtube members that are supporting this channel   and helping me build a team forming an awesome  community and just being overall really cool   people we got some youtube members i need to shout  out real quick i've got a lot of catching up to do   on these i've got adam rain han cosmo the magician  paul winter greg morris kim mark hoffman kevin   carr leo barino burrito burrito crystal matlock  sarah b robert slaughter celine o'rourke elizabeth   wagner dr mr denver sevi jr karen corsadan uh kjf  silvergoth alexithymia water world was it the same   thing uh lilith s me and rallo cameron thank you  guys so much if you would like to join them just   hit the join button down below you will get early  access to videos as well as exclusive live streams   and little little badge next to your name so you  kind of stand out in the comments and i do try   to make sure and respond to the 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Channel: Joe Scott

Views: 629,697

Keywords: answers with joe, joe scott

Id: dqLLEwbRzn8

Length: 22min 14sec (1334 seconds)

Published: Mon May 24 2021