Gravitics

[JSz]

Once upon a time there were machine guns on the Soviet Almaz to destroy enemy satellites .  But today you don't need people to do that, so a habitat wouldn't be necessary either. So perhaps a backup military headquarters is to be housed there?

I have no idea...

[jongoff]

Sorry we can't go into any details yet on our TacRS concept. It'll be fun when we can share more though.

[StraumliBlight]

NASA and Gravitics Sign Space Act Agreement with Focus on Verification and Validation for Large Spacecraft

Today, Gravitics announced a Space Act Agreement (SAA) with NASA to provide engineering consultation for developing verification and validation approaches for large orbital spacecraft.

Vehicle-level qualification testing, including thermal, vacuum, vibration, and acoustic testing, is a necessary element in preparing spacecraft for challenging launch and space environments, particularly for long duration missions. Today’s qualification methodologies are focused on 4-meter class payloads and smaller, but new vehicles are expanding the possibilities of what can be launched to space. ULA’s Vulcan, Blue Origin’s New Glenn, and SpaceX’s Starship are among the next generation launch vehicles that can support wider diameters, up from 4-meter to as large as 8-meter class payloads. The space industry faces a formidable challenge of certifying large-diameter structures that can fly on these launch vehicles.

Gravitics offers a range of space infrastructure products, including structures as small as 3 meters and commercial space station modules as large as nearly 8 meters in diameter. The larger Gravitics space station module products (6-meter class, and 8-meter class) face the qualification challenges highlighted above. Responding to this need, NASA and Gravitics have signed a Space Act Agreement (SAA) to develop verification and validation by similarity approaches for 6 to 8-meter diameter structures.

“It is time to build bigger,” said Colin Doughan, CEO of Gravitics. “I am optimistic that the qualification and validation solutions being pioneered by Gravitics will be used across the industry from 6 to 8-meter diameter payloads and beyond.”

[jongoff]

I'm glad we're finally able to let the cat out of the bag on this effort with Axiom:

https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1810675575335367167

https://twitter.com/GraviticsInc/status/1810677465687466195

~Jon

[jongoff]

Thanks for this clarification! I understand that you first have to prove that your products are good and functionally suitable for potential customers. I just wonder if you will find such a first customer, because Axiom, Blue Origin, Sierra, Starlab or Vast have either already ordered such modules somewhere or are constructing them. The closest to your concept is Starlab, which is being built by Airbus for Starlab Space.

I wish you luck, but I have a concern about whether this is the time for near mass production of unified orbital modules.

Yeah, I can't go into details, but we're definitely seeing interest from some of the CLD developers, in spite of what you're saying above. Whether that materializes into orders remains to be seen, but I'm optimistic (in spite of being a pessimist by nature).

~Jon

JSz,

I hope this new announcement answers your question. :-)

Obviously we need to land follow-on customers in addition to this one, but this is some proof that we're developing things people want to buy.

~Jon

[Robotbeat]

That's awesome. And it's good to see some of these companies work together. I'm pretty skeptical about the size (in terms of revenue, maybe half a billion from NASA per year starting around FY2028, half a billion to a billion from space tourism, maybe half a billion from other countries, unknown revenue from industrial uses of commercial stations like ZBLAN, orbital assembly of large structures, repair of satellites, etc... single digit billions at most to be honest and could be less than a billion per year in annual revenue for half a decade or more) of the commercial LEO space station market, and working together is one of the only ways I can see the numbers penciling for this many players.

Glad to see Gravitics working as a sort of habitable/pressurized module manufacturer. As skeptical as I am about commercial LEO space stations, we're gonna need a lot of pressurized modules on the Moon (if we want a real moon base) or on Mars (if we're planning to settle), and we need new players there.

[jongoff]

Chris,

At current crew and cargo prices, I agree that the commercial LEO destination market may be in that single digit $B/yr range. But frankly other than telecom that's one of the biggest market opportunities in space at the moment. To me the question becomes what happens to crew/cargo logistics prices over the next half decade. When SpaceX gets serious competition that forces them to pass along the cost savings from reuse to customers, I could see this market growing a lot bigger. But frankly, even an (initially) single digit $B/yr market isn't a horrible one to be selling into.

And as has been hinted at in previous TacRS announcements, not all of our demand may be coming from commercial station operators...

~Jon

[edzieba]

IIRC, all the US-built pressurised ISS modules, all except for BEAM were built at MSFC. Other than Columbus, the other NASA and ESA supplied modules were built by Thales, including Nanorack's Bishop and the upcoming Axiom module. A commercial contract manufacturer of pressurised modules based in the US is a unique offering.

[JSz]

Very interesting and surprising information indeed! Regarding the Axiom station: it sounds like the Gravitics module/modules are to drastically increase the size of the Axiom station in the second construction phase, as the modules we know about, i.e. H1, H2, and RMF, are already being built. It appears that Axiom's ambition is to build a station larger than the current ISS. And bigger than those planned by Vast, Blue Origin + Sierra, and Starlab.

The Gravitics project will be the closest to the Starlab station, as both are to be 8 m in diameter. That is, it will actually compete with the European Airbus, which is building Starlab. The only option to launch such stations will be Starship, if all goes well. Elon Musk is surely already enjoying this competition....

Still very enigmatic is the information given that: "The company signed an agreement with NASA on new approaches to testing large spacecraft, as well as an early Space Force development contract." I look forward to Gravitics' wider presentation of this topic!

[Asteroza]

pressurized spacecraft

Wait, this isn't a delivered module, but something that can arrive on it's own then?

[jongoff]

pressurized spacecraft

Wait, this isn't a delivered module, but something that can arrive on it's own then?

Yeah. I'm trying to be careful about not stepping beyond what we've already discussed publicly, but if you look at the tweets about our RCS thrusters from last October, we specifically mentioned that they were developed for precision maneuvering, including rendezvous and proximity operations. There are a few ways to skin the cat of how you get a module to a customer station, but at least initially the easiest is to bake in the RPOD/RPOC capability integrally into the modules themselves.

~Jon

[gongora]

What currently exists that could deliver it?  Arriving on its own is quite useful.

[jongoff]

IIRC, all the US-built pressurised ISS modules, all except for BEAM were built at MSFC. Other than Columbus, the other NASA and ESA supplied modules were built by Thales, including Nanorack's Bishop and the upcoming Axiom module. A commercial contract manufacturer of pressurised modules based in the US is a unique offering.

Yeah, having a US-based supplier is something that many of the companies we've spoken with have been pretty interested in. Though to be clear, we do more than just the pressure vessels. While we don't always get too far into the outfitting (beyond supporting integration), we are developing fully integrated modules/spacecraft, not just the shells.

~Jon

[jongoff]

The Gravitics project will be the closest to the Starlab station, as both are to be 8 m in diameter.

Neither of the two articles actually stated specifically the size of the module/spacecraft we'll be building for Axiom. The two relevant quotes are:

The company offers 4-meter diameter spacecraft sized for today’s launch vehicles and larger options that will be enabled as new launch vehicles come online, like SpaceX’s Starship.

and

The nearly 50-employee company, based in a northern suburb of Seattle, aims to provide space station modules — effectively the building blocks of the orbiting habitats — as a plug-and-play product line that can launch on a variety of rockets, whether those currently flying such as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 or future behemoths such as Blue Origin’s New Glenn.

The space station modules Gravitics is designing range from 3 meters (9 feet) to 8 meters (26 feet) in diameter. The largest module, which the company boasts will have the “largest interior volume in a standalone spacecraft,” is dubbed StarMax, a name inspired by SpaceX’s towering Starship rocket.

“We started by looking at Starship and saying, ‘Someone is going to maximize that payload volume,’” Doughan said.

~Jon

[Rik ISS-fan]

Is this pressurized module for the Axiom Power and Thermal Module?