Phase 3 – Space Stations and Satellites

International Space Station

Thus having a safe and economical way to get to space, we can start building space stations in low Earth orbit. The ISS is such a space station, but unfortunately it relies on an expensive and unsafe mean of transport. This is why its growth is that slow.

With the technology described in phase 2 we could build dozens of much bigger space stations for the same cost.

Bigelow Space Hotel By Graham Grable

Bigelow Space Hotel by Bigelow Aerospace. Photo by Graham Grable.

In this way, space tourism would become a dynamically developing sector of the economy with the emergence of space hotels and thus become a profitable business.

Transhab Cutaway NASA

But all the debris accumulated in the low Earth orbit since the dawn of the space age could become a serious threat to these space hotels. These debris could become raw materials for future space factories.

Space Junk

It would also be a good idea to have a network of orbiting space telescopes to have an eye on the Near Earth Objects (NEOs) in order to warn in time in case of an object in a collision course.