Earth Space Station

Marvin Ostrega

An Earth-orbiting space station would be very useful for assembly of the translunar stack before launch to the Moon. If it needed to have a pressurised habitat immediately at all, a SPACEHAB module or two and some pressurised tubing to connect Soyuz modules, the possible Space Station habitat, and the moonship would be all the pressurised elements needed. Since the SPACEHAB modules, in their present configuration, can only stay in orbit at most fourteen to sixteen days, some modifications would be required. Outside, some girder beams, a remote manipulator, and a service module (containing solar cells, raditaors, etc) would suffice. Since there would be probably be a Soyuz module attached whenever there was a crew at the station (and thus needed power), the Soyuz module's service module might suffice for powering and cooling the station, at least in part.

An Earth-orbiting space station would have many opportunities to pay for itself. Aside from acting as a transportation node, it could be a great place for commercial enterprise and interested research organizations to carry out commercially-funded experiments.

• Paying science, with as much lab time as wanted for long-duration experimentation
• Laboratory space and time for sale to corporations for industrial research
• Commercial microgravity manufacturing
• Orbital assembly of vehicles, including but not limited to, the moonbase hardware
• Exploiting the entertainment value of the space station
• On-orbit storage facility, providing access to transportation and orbit maintainence for material like refuse, Space Shuttle External Tanks, and other on-orbit materials which are valuable but whose orbits would degrade.
• Transportation node, which could exchange and hold passengers related to the lunar base missions
• Earth and space observation