New frontiers for recycling NanoRacks

A long-dormant plan for a space station built in space from recycled parts may be getting new legs. NASA has signed an estimated $10 million contract to study the possibility of turning used rocket stages into functioning labs with support for a crew.

Before Skylab, the first US space station, went into orbit in the 1970s, Wernher von Braun proposed to separately send parts for a space station and astronauts aboard two Saturn IB rockets, which would launch within a day of one another. Launching separate payloads would be key to saving weight, given the rockets’ capacity limitations.

When both rockets were in orbit, astronauts would remotely vent any remaining fuel from the uncrewed rocket’s hydrogen tank, install life-support equipment, and move in. This would reuse a fuel tank that would otherwise be discarded.


Although von Braun’s idea was eventually abandoned in favour of launching Skylab fully equipped, the cost-saving benefits of this low-Earth-orbit manoeuvre have once again become attractive.

Better resource use

A group of three US companies – NanoRacks, United Launch Alliance and Space Systems Loral – has now been contracted to examine whether building a recycled space station will work, amid a push from other private spaceflight companies for reusable rockets.

United Launch Alliance will provide the used second stages of Atlas V rockets, for which NanoRacks will prefabricate a lab and living space, with robotic outfitting from Space Systems Loral. As with the previous plan, the idea is to use two rockets, with the astronauts assembling the lab equipment in space once the fuel tank is used.

“This innovative approach offers a pathway that is more affordable and involves less risk than fabricating modules on the ground and subsequently launching them into orbit,” wrote NanoRacks founder and CEO Jeff Manber in a blog post. The upper stages of Atlas V rockets are currently discarded after a single use, so turning them into mini space stations could be free money in the bank.

Although the financial risks are lower, the human ones may not be. Turning spent shells into environments capable of supporting both astronauts and experiments will be a challenge, as will asking astronauts to retrofit them for life and use while in orbit. But if NanoRacks and its partners can manage this, reviving von Braun’s concept could significantly lower costs for space stations, either in orbit or further into deep space.