🚀 Thunderbird: A Candidate to Replace the ISS?

After the ISS mission ends in 2030, NASA plans to focus on exploring the Moon and Mars, while stations from the agency's private contractors would occupy near-Earth orbit. One such project is Thunderbird from the U.S. startup Max Space.

The company is developing compact, expandable modules that can be delivered into orbit with a single Falcon 9 launch. For comparison, it took over 40 flights and more than 10 years to fully assemble the ISS.

The Thunderbird's body will use multilayer, reconfigurable synthetic fibers instead of titanium or aluminum. After reaching orbit, the station will expand to 350 cubic meters, which is about one-third the size of the ISS. Even so, the startup founders claim that the new station will be more spacious and functional. It will be able to accommodate a crew of four people for long-duration missions and up to eight for short stays in orbit.

💰 Launching Thunderbird into orbit could cost as little as $100 million, and manufacturing the module could cost up to $300 million. The ISS, with a total cost of $150 billion, is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most expensive object ever built by humans.

⏳ The startup aims to launch a small prototype of Thunderbird in early 2027 and in future, hopes to also deploy the expandable habitats on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

@hiaimediaen