/sci/ - Science & Math

It's nice that we're getting back to seeing Skylab sized space station modules, but I worry that even with significantly lower launch costs they won't herald a paradigm shift in space station design. There's not much reason to believe that demand for manned spaceflight will increase significantly. And with low demand these modules will always be expensive custom one off things.
Sure, the two or three commercial stations that get built will be twice as big as they otherwise would have been, but that's about it. I yearn for a future where these things are spat out on assembly lines so fast and so cheap that every moderately well funded university can have a space station if they want. Airbus is in a somewhat better position to deliver on that than gravitics, but I doubt either will.

>>15371834
airbus wants to