海角大神

For Jeff Manber, a new era in spaceflight won鈥檛 be signaled with a high-decibel rocket launch, but by the silent opening of airlock doors.

Mr. Manber serves as chief executive officer of NanoRacks, which on Monday to install a $15 million commercial airlock model on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2019.

The Texas-based aerospace company has already deployed almost 150 small satellites, known as 鈥�CubeSats,鈥� from the airlock of the station鈥檚 Kibo module. By working with Boeing Co. to build the new airlock, it aims to triple its deployment capability.

This addition will expand private firms鈥� presence in low-Earth orbit, which NASA hopes will allow it to focus on exploring the solar system. But the CubeSats have already encouraged the shift to commercial spaceflight.

鈥淯p until recently, we had what I always called a Socialist-designed space program,鈥� Mr. Manber tells 海角大神 in a phone interview. 鈥淲e had a group of people sitting in a room, telling you what the purpose of the hardware was for, and they would help design it. Now we have a much more commercial [program].鈥�

鈥淚t is fair to say,鈥� he adds, 鈥渢hat the [International Space Station鈥檚] first commercial success has been meeting the needs of governments and companies and universities to deploy satellites.鈥�

聽were first developed in 1999, a year after the first ISS modules were launched. Since then, . Today鈥檚 satellites aren鈥檛 just smaller, but cheaper. According to the Motley Fool, have dropped from $3 million to as little as $25,000.聽

Now, the race is on to reduce the cost of getting into orbit. A rocket by Vector Space Systems will carry a payload into orbit for $1.5 million to $2.5 million. But NanoRacks will see your 10- x 10- x 10-centimeter CubeSat off from the ISS for just $85,000, the company鈥檚 marketing and communications manager, Abby Dickes, tells the Monitor in an email.

Few saw the rise of this market. 鈥淔or years and years,鈥� Mr. Manber remembers, 鈥渨e all thought, in the space community, that the first big commercial use of an orbiting space station would be breakthroughs in life-saving drugs.... However, in the mysterious way that the commercial marketplace works, the first big commercial hit, the first big legitimate demand for an orbiting space station has turned out to be deploying satellites.鈥�

Manber emphasized that NanoRacks also does considerable business for biopharma companies who use the company鈥檚 products to run zero-gravity experiments within the ISS. Robyn Gatens, deputy director of NASA鈥檚 International Space Station division, tells the Monitor that 鈥渢here is great interest in both鈥� internal experiments and satellite deployments.

But the development of small, inexpensive satellites could prove more significant for commercial spaceflight, because it鈥檚 spurring private companies to develop hardware that can be used on future spacecraft.

鈥淲hen the station was built,鈥� Manber says, 鈥渢he Japanese put up a small satellite deployer that could deploy a couple of satellites every so often. We saw that, and we recognized there's a market need to have a bigger deployer to take care of organizations and companies.鈥�

The first NanoRacks customer鈥檚 . As the company builds a dedicated airlock for this purpose, Manber is already thinking about its longer-term significance.

鈥淭hat airlock can be taken off and put on a [different] platform,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 see a future very soon, within the decade, where we have a couple of space stations鈥� in orbit.

This vision lines up by NASA associate administrator William Gerstenmaier in 2015, in which the ISS, following its expected retirement in the late 2020s, will be replaced by several 鈥渟ingle-purpose, small and entrepreneurial鈥� stations.

Private rocket operators like SpaceX will also be a part of this future, as may technology used in the public-private Bigelow Expandable Activity Module added to the ISS last year. But the new airlock, built entirely with private funds, marks a major step toward a privatized orbital sector.

But even if NanoRacks helped usher in this new era, it may need to adapt its business model.

It鈥檚 not clear whether one of its key operations 鈥� deploying 鈥渃onstellations鈥� of small satellites for Earth-imaging or testing the components of larger satellites 鈥� will always provide a reliable source of income.

Manber says that Earth-imaging companies 鈥渓ike the low orbit鈥� provided by the ISS. But Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, points out that one of these firms, , recently shifted from space-station deployment to regular rockets, which can bring satellites into higher orbits than the ISS鈥檚 400 kilometers, about 249 miles.

Some firms, he explains, would prefer to place their operational satellites at 500 to 600 kilometers, where they鈥檒l last longer before re-entering the atmosphere.

鈥淭hey'll still use the space station for when they want to test something out,鈥� Dr. McDowell tells the Monitor,鈥� but the bulk of their business is going away from the space station. And I wonder if that's going to be true for a lot of other companies in the long run, that the space station orbit is just going to be too low for the operational constellations, where the bulk of the business is going to be in five years.鈥�

But on the whole, he sees the new airlock as a logical next step for aerospace firms. 鈥淎ll we need to do is get this thing up in the trunk of a Dragon, slap it on the spare port, and then getting the cargos up there, the satellites up there, is a proven path. So I think it's a pretty clear business case for them.鈥�

Manber, not surprisingly, agrees. "Every signal is that we're entering a new chapter of extraordinarily robust commercial [activity] in space, and this is what this airlock is all about.鈥�