Frank White, OAC advisor & author of The Overview Effect
Orbital Assembly Corporation (OAC) described as the leader in providing low gravity technologies enabling humanity to work, play and thrive in the space ecosystem, has received positive feedback in NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program (CLD) which announced funded providers yesterday.
The CLD program is part of NASA’s broader LEO commercialization strategy, tied to its plans to transition from the International Space Station to one or more commercial stations. Earlier this year, Orbital Assembly was the first company to announce a low Earth orbit space station with artificial gravity, similar to that on the moon.
According to NASA’s assessment of OAC in awarding contracts, “(OACs) significant strengths included a flight demonstration of automated on-orbit assembly of truss. Its strengths included more than two crew members at initial operations; modularity to increase flexibility and growth potential for the CLD; a design that provides capacity for large payloads; an artificial gravity proposal that includes external payloads, which could benefit future technology development; a maintenance crew for the CLD; and strong emergency response and redundancy planning.”
“I’m immensely proud of our team that turned around a robust, detailed CLD plan in the very narrow six-week window that NASA provided during the summer for proposal submission,” says Rhonda Stevenson, chief executive officer. “Although we didn’t win, this program advanced our time to an operable Pioneer Space Station by several years and our competitive advantage using artificial gravity. We congratulate Blue Origin, Nanoracks and Northrup Grumman on their contract awards.”