NASA veteran and space mogul to build first private Space Station

tech.hindustantimes.com:

If Michael Suffredini is to get the price tag of the first private space station down to $3 billion — compared with the $100 billion it cost to build the International Space Station — the CEO of Houston-based Axiom Space has some decisions to make about what to outsource and what to build in-house. “Building a potty is a simple concept,” said Suffredini as he stood in cowboy boots and a blazer in front of a styrofoam mock-up of a space toilet that can extract water from urine for reuse. “But it’s a hard thing to do.” Nearby, a team labored around a wooden replica of the station’s hexagonal shell turned on its side, with diagrams and sketches posted on the plywood interior.

Axiom figures it can bring down the cost of a space station significantly, largely due to advances in technology that allow for smaller components that reduce costs of blasting them to space and storing them. On the cluttered ISS, many components were added to the exterior, requiring costly spacewalks for maintenance.

“The international space station was built when we were still trying to figure out how to keep humans alive in space, so they were very, very conservative,” said Suffredini, who speaks with the slightest hint of a Texas twang. He expects $3 billion will cover Axiom’s first four modules and a power tower.

Axiom, founded in 2016 by Suffredini and space entrepreneur Kam Ghaffarian, stands out among the handful of space startups trying to build the first commercial space station, and not just because of Suffredini’s 30-year NASA career that included a decade of managing the space-station program. In 2020, Axiom won the first and only NASA contract to build a detachable module for the International Space Station (ISS). It plans to eventually