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Chapter 24 of 28Space & aerospace5 min read · 1 exhibits

Precedents: What Earlier Stations Teach

What do Skylab, Mir, Bigelow and commercial crew teach commercial stations?

Chapter summary

Seven precedents from fifty years of stations and commercial spaceflight.

Key takeaways

  1. 1

    Technology has rarely been the binding constraint; transport, customers and government commitment have.

  2. 2

    Private demand has followed transport capacity, not led it.

  3. 3

    NASA’s fund-development-then-buy-services model works, with attrition.

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This chapter (1 exhibits, 1,168 words) is part of Space & aerospace. Space access opens every chapter of all 11 Space reports, with the interactive models, Excel downloads, Ask and named Atlas records.

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