The World’s First Commercial Space Station Will Be Made in Texas
It's taken much longer than Sci-Fi movies promised, but man's march into the stars has finally reached a milestone worthy of Arthur C. Clarke. We have had numerous space stations in orbit over the years - 11 since 1976 to be precise. All of them have been built and funded by various governments at tremendous expense. Our current orbiting research platform, the International Space Station (ISS) has cost the consortium of nations that owns it an estimated $150 Billion.
Now the private sector wants to get in on the action, and the Lone Star State is the epicenter of their ambitions. Houston mayor Sylvester Turner dropped the shocker on the spacefaring community just before Christmas with the news that Axiom Space's new facilities (shout out to my WALL-E fans) would be built in Space City, U.S.A. (that's Houston to you gravity-lovers).
Axiom Space plans to build a 14-acre headquarters at the Houston Spaceport in order to construct a glorious, orbital space station for the sole purpose of providing private companies around the world with a hub for "research, manufacturing, and commerce."
According to Austin.Culturemap.com, the venture not only gets us closer to the Jetson's reality we were promised, but will also provide around 1000 jobs for machinists, mathematicians, and scientists. Axiom's Headquarters is slated for completion in 2021.