Nanoracks Low Earth Orbit Commercialization Study: Experiences and Outcomes

Abstract

This article discusses the conclusions and implications of Nanoracks' NASA-Commissioned Low Earth Orbit Commercialization Study, or LEOCOM. The objective of LEOCOM was to leverage Nanoracks' decade of expertise as a user of the International Space Station as a commercial platform to describe the commercial future of the low Earth orbit (LEO) economic ecosystem. To complete this study, Nanoracks collected a team of 13 commercial suppliers, service providers, users, and consultants. The data these partners provided were utilized by Nanoracks and combined with existing information on current markets to generate a set of key policy and market recommendations. The LEOCOM study specifically focused on the role that platforms play as lynchpins in the LEO economy. In particular, Nanoracks used the Outpost platform as a baseline. Outposts are a Nanoracks concept for creating habitable volume from spent upper stages of multiple launch vehicles, in the case of the LEOCOM study, from United Launch Alliance (ULA) Centaur III and Centaur V stages. Once on orbit, robotic arms autonomously convert the stages after fuel venting, utilizing materials brought up to orbit in mission modules to complete full repurposing of the tanks before astronaut ingress. Although this is one among several platforms being considered by Nanoracks for future crewed platforms, costs associated with repurposing provide the core inputs to the financial model. As a result of this study, Nanoracks generated a higher resolution view of complexities involved in ensuring the sustainability of a LEO commercial marketplace. Coloring these conclusions was an underlining assumption that most actors would require some amount of government investment before attaining true sustainability, since a self-sustaining LEO economy does not yet exist in any appreciable form analogous to vibrant terrestrial markets. In this context, various critical insights were gleaned about the manner in which public and commercial actors could work together to efficiently set appropriate and long-term expectations of stability for government and private investor participation. Along with this analysis, Nanoracks took the unprecedented step of engaging key NASA staff in a Policy Simulation. This simulation focused on 3 hypothetical scenarios that Nanoracks wrote in consultation with NASA, and those were composed with Nanoracks' best assumptions about what forms future real-world policy challenges might take. The purpose of this exercise was not necessarily to receive a response from NASA regarding any particular challenge, but rather to analyze the processes that NASA undertook to answer policy questions likely to arise in the operation of a commercial LEO space station.