Private corporations are increasingly involved in the space race and are developing far-reaching plans to colonize both near and deep space. Nanoracks, Voyager Space and Lockheed Martin recently announced plans to launch the first privately-owned Starlab space station into Earth orbit as early as 2027. Now Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin company is joining the race, planning to expand its services in space and from tourism to the launch of its own Orbital Reef station, which is a research and industrial complex located in orbit.
Blue Origin plans to develop, build and launch Orbital Reef in partnership with Sierra Space, a subsidiary of Sierra Nevada Corporation. Sierra Space is currently working on a project to launch its own spacecraft Dream Chaser in 2022, designed to deliver cargo to the ISS.
Boeing, Redwire Space, Genesis Engineering Solutions and Arizona State University also joined the Orbital Reef project. The Dream Chaser (Sierra Space) and Starliner (Boeing) spacecraft will be used to deliver cargo and crew to the future commercial station. The development of the spacecraft for solving operational issues and sending space tourists will be undertaken by Genesis Engineering Solutions.
Thus, Orbital Reef will become a kind of man-made space park located in orbit. The future station will continue the traditions of the ISS in research work in the field of microgravity, the development of communications and biotechnology. Orbital Reef station will be located in low-earth orbit and is designed to serve various companies and scientific organizations. The open architecture of the station will allow any customer or country to connect to the Orbital Reef project to create modular berths, transport ports and utilities.