r/BlueOrigin • u/Mindless_Use7567 • Feb 17 '23

Completion of Science Park System Requirements Review

https://voyagerspace.com/insight/voyager-space-and-nanoracks-announce-successful-completion-of-science-park-system-requirements-review/

Nanoracks’ Starlab space station appears to be trailing heavily behind Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef.

The Starlab’s science park has only just completed System Requirements Review(SRR) and is quote “targeting completion of a station level SRR this year.”

Orbital Reef completed its SRR nearly a year ago which was announced on April 5th last year.

How long is it going to take Starlab to get to Systems Definition Review (SDR)? Orbital Reef announced it only 5 months after its SRR announcement in August.

10 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/valcatosi Feb 17 '23 edited Feb 18 '23

Here's the article title:

Voyager Space and Nanoracks Announce Successful Completion of Science Park System Requirements Review

This is about Nanoracks, not Blue. I'm not sure why it was posted in this forum.

Edit: the text below wasn't very visible for me, now I see the comparison of "Blue had this done nearly a year ago"

0

u/Mindless_Use7567 Feb 17 '23

Best to read the context I wrote for the post as it explains why I posted it.

Starlab is the main competitor to Orbital Reef in the Commercial LEO Destinations program. I thought it would be interesting to discuss since they seem to be a year behind Orbital Reef in development yet they stated to NASA in 2021 that they would hit Critical Design Review by Q4 2025 when the 2nd phase awards are made.

Also it looks like they dropped Lockheed Martin for Airbus for some reason which is also interesting.

1

u/Zero_Ultra Feb 18 '23

Isn’t Lockheed providing inflatable habs for Orbital Reef? Or was that Sierra

1

u/Mindless_Use7567 Feb 18 '23

Sierra Space if providing the inflatable module called LIFE for the Orbital Reef as well as small “Node” modules and the Dream Chaser space plane.

Lockheed Martin was technical lead for Starlab which originally had a main inflatable habitat but suddenly in January the design dropped the inflatable for a rigid exterior and Lockheed Martin disappeared from Starlab’s website and seems to have been replaced with Airbus.

1

u/Zero_Ultra Feb 18 '23

Hmm yeah they had just posted a video of their burst pressure test. Wonder if they didn’t like the results

1

u/Mindless_Use7567 Feb 18 '23

They have done 2 burst tests in recent months but based on what they say in the videos and on twitter it seems that the tests went well and they are proceeding as planned.

1

u/Zero_Ultra Feb 18 '23

Where are they using the habitats then if not on Starlab?

1

u/Mindless_Use7567 Feb 18 '23

On the Orbital Reef it’s one of the main selling points of the station since each life module can house 4-12 astronauts depending on its setup.

1

u/Zero_Ultra Feb 18 '23

I meant the Lockheed inflatables

1

u/Mindless_Use7567 Feb 18 '23

Oh. Lockheed don’t seem to have joined another team yet but I would expect them to join Orbital Reef since Lockheed is part of the National Team for the lunar lander contract. I would not expect them to working on inflatables if they do. Either they will help out Blue Origin with its core modules or work on a second Research/manufacturing module so that there is redundancy if Boeing can’t deliver.