With his new startup Axiom Space, Mike Suffredini has big plans for the future of space travel.
When the International Space Station (ISS) is taken out of commission in 2024, it will end a a 26-year run as a hub of experimentation and exploration in low Earth orbit. One former NASA employee sees that as a big opportunity.
Mike Suffredini, the former manager of the ISS at NASA, has co-founded a startup with the intention of building a brand new, private space station. The company, Axiom Space LLC, will build a module to attach to the current ISS, and will eventually expand that module into a full station that can be used for space tourism and research.
Suffredini first made the announcement at the NewSpace 2016 conference in Seattle on June 22. He'd been working at a space company that provides engineering and IT service to the federal government, Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies, or SGT, since leaving NASA in September. SGT's founder, Kam Ghaffarian, will be Suffredini's co-founder at Axiom, and the new company will be a subsidiary of SGT.
"I told him that, really, the only thing I knew how to do was build and operate a space station, and I'd like to see who does the next commercial one," Suffredini tells Inc. "Shortly after that conversation, he called and said, 'Ok, let's do that.' "
The two decided to build a new company with the goal of building its own multi-use station. Suffredini says that a study by Axiom Space pegged the market for a commercial space station to be $37 billion between 2020 and 2030. That number takes into account commercial and government uses--with the ISS retired, NASA could find use for Axiom's station for research purposes. It will be designed so it can grow as the market grows.
One of Axiom's biggest long-term revenue opportunities is manufacturing. Suffredini says that other exploration companies could use the station as a hub to build space craft at a significantly reduced cost, since they wouldn't have to be sturdy enough to withstand a launch from earth. Manufacturing processes that use both heating and then cooling, which is how most electronics' silicon wafers are made, would be purer if constructed in zero gravity since materials wouldn't settle. And additive manufacturing, or 3-D printing, is easier in zero gravity, since human organs and veins won't collapse on themselves during construction.
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