This Startup Plans To Repurpose Space Junk For Hotels And Research Centers

As reported by CBC, Maritime Launch Services, a Canada-based space launch startup had collaborated with Nanoracks, a space service company, to turn rocket parts that are floating in space into something usable.

Their idea is to reuse rockets’ upper stages, which were filled with fuel to send them to space, and make these parts orbital facilities such as storage depots, hotels, and research centers.

According to Nanoracks’s CEO, Jeffrey Manber, there is a wide range of applications for these upper stages. And at his company, they do not waste anything in space because they are too valuable.

Nanoracks’s plan is to send welding robots onboard of MSL’s rockets to renovate the upper stages and turn them into outposts, rather than bringing them back to Earth and do the refurbishing there.

The company said that repurposing them in space is less risky and more affordable than doing so on the ground. Manber pointed out that a launch was always dangerous, technically speaking. For now, the company has plans to launch satellites to take pictures of the Earth, conducting experiments, and communications.

However, there are many things to be done in the next few years before that vision can be realized. The Cyclone 4M, MLS’s current rockets are not big enough to accommodate human, and safety is not guaranteed for now.

This plan has an obvious benefit. The more rockets’ parts reused, the less space debris we have to deal with. According to NASA, junks in space are becoming more serious and the upper stages that are not burnt in the Earth’s atmosphere are contributing to the issue.

Stephen Matier, CEO and president of MLS, said that we were the ones who sent these rockets to space, so why didn’t we repurpose them to serve scientific purposes.