COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado — Next-generation space habitats for low Earth orbit, the moon and beyond are on display here at the Space Foundation's 41st annual Space Symposium.

Max Space has unveiled a large sub-scale version of their expandable habitat, giving viewers a real look at how best to offer far greater habitable volume for future space endeavors. "This is more than a model," said Saleem Miyan, co-founder and CEO of Max Space, based in Florida. "It is a physical demonstration of a new approach to space infrastructure, far greater habitable volume, lower launch mass and logistics burden, scalable architecture for commercial low Earth orbit stations, lunar surface systems, and future deep space missions."

If we are serious about permanent human presence on the moon and in space, Miyan told Space.com, "we need real estate that is scalable and built for how humans will actually live and operate off Earth."

Practical readiness of materials

Many refer to what's called Technical Readiness Levels (TRL's) of their products being readied for use in space.

Max Space relies heavily on its over three decades of material science expertise, referring to and also refers to that knowhow as PRM's - the Practical Readiness of Materials, said Miyan. "And they are truly ready for long duration space flights and lunar habitation," he said.

The next era of space habitation will not be built with small thinking, Miyan said.

Strategic partnership

In February a new strategic partnership was announced between Voyager Technologies and Max Space.

"This technology reflects a fundamental shift in how humanity will live and work in space," said Dylan Taylor, chairman and CEO of Voyager — a defense and space technology company. Sustained operations on the moon "require infrastructure designed for endurance, scalability and industrial execution," he said in a press statement.

"The moon is no longer a single destination or a flags-and-footprints exercise," Taylor added. It is the next operational domain in a growing space economy, he said.

Phased development path

Max Space has been an early pioneer in expandable structure development.

The company's lightweight expandable habitat launches compactly and expands 20 times larger once deployed in orbit or other destination, allowing a large, fully equipped habitat to launch on a single SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The strategic partnership blueprints a phased development path, including ground validation and in-space demonstrations later this decade. That development path's goal is to enable operational moon and Mars capabilities aligned with NASA's exploration timelines.

For more on Max Space, visit the company's website.

Commercial space infrastructure firm Voyager Technologies is backing lunar habitat developer Max Space with a new multi-million-dollar investment aimed at accelerating development of expandable modules for future missions to the moon.

The companies say the partnership will help move expandable habitat technology toward operational missions by scaling up production, bolstering engineering efforts and integrating Voyager's technology systems with Max's habitat infrastructure.

"Expanding human presence beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) requires infrastructure that is scalable, resilient and purpose-built for permanence,” Dylan Taylor, chairman and CEO of Voyager, said in a March 9 statement. "By pairing Voyager’s integrated platform with Max Space’s expandable habitat architecture, we are accelerating the transition from demonstration missions to durable lunar capability.”

Max Space's expandable habitat technology is designed to fold into a tightly packed configuration capable of fitting inside the payload fairings of rockets like SpaceX's Falcon 9. Once delivered to orbit, the moon or another planet, the structure expands to drastically increase its interior living space, offering the dual benefits of lightweight launch mass and greater usable volume than traditional rigid spacecraft.

"Voyager’s investment is a powerful validation of our expandable habitat thesis and long heritage in orbit. Together we are building habitats designed not just to reach the moon but to stay there," said Saleem Miyan, co-founder and CEO of Max Space.

The companies did not reveal the exact value of the investment.

Denver-based Voyager markets itself as a commercial space infrastructure innovator focused on mission services and technologies for system operations beyond low Earth orbit. The company is also developing, along with Airbus, a commercial space station called Starlab, which NASA selected as one of several private LEO destinations intended to succeed the International Space Station (ISS) after its retirement in the 2030s.

Expandable habitats themselves are not a new idea. NASA tested the concept in an on-orbit demonstration with the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), a small inflatable test habitat that was attached to the ISS in 2016 to study the technology’s performance in space.

BEAM was built by Bigelow Aerospace, which had its own plans for large expandable space stations, but was forced to close its doors due to financial struggles at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Max hopes to scale the concept much further, creating bigger space modules that support astronauts for deep space missions and long-term stints on the lunar surface.

Max and Voyager say their combined initiative is in direct response to a recent NASA announcement outlining a new roadmap for its Artemis program and the agency's efforts to land astronauts on the moon in 2028. The Artemis program aims to establish a permanent human presence on the moon and will need a variety of surface modules to sustain crews.

The companies hope their partnership helps support future lunar missions, "including cislunar mission management, surface logistics, propulsion, power systems and future surface infrastructure, reinforcing a shared vision of the moon as an operational domain, not a temporary destination," according to the March 9 statement.

It's high time to crank up the volume in space! That's the shout from several private firms that want to see an inflation factor for the future.

What is now being evaluated and tested is the use of "softgoods" to fashion inflatable/expandable airlocks and off-Earth habitats, not only for low Earth orbit, but also to provide comfy housing for future moon and Mars explorers.

First, however, there's a memory lane trip about this idea worth taking, one that also underscores how far things have evolved.

The roots of inflatable space tech 

Take for example, Project Echo, which involved two American spacecraft, the first launched in 1960 and the second in 1964. They were thin-skinned Mylar balloon satellites. These gassed-up balloons — Echo 1 expanded to 100 feet (30.48 meters), while Echo 2 inflated to 135 feet (41 m) — tested the reflection of microwave signals from one point to another on Earth.

Related: Could these big expandable habitats help humanity settle the moon and Mars?

Then, in March 1965, Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov made use of an inflatable airlock attached to his Voskhod 2 spacecraft to carry out humanity's first spacewalk. But that milestone turned out to be no stroll in the park. 

The tethered Soviet spacewalker's suit stiffened so much in the vacuum of space, Lenov had to bleed off some of his suit's pressure, allowing him to finally bend the spacesuit joints to clamor back into his mothership.

Bigelow birthright

Enter the 21st century and the pioneering work of Robert Bigelow and his team at Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace.

The company built two uncrewed free-flying expandable prototype modules that launched to Earth orbit in 2006 and 2007, respectively, under its Genesis program. They are still circling the globe to this day. 

While drawing from NASA's canceled TransHab effort, the Bigelow Aerospace enterprise was a creative hub that furthered expandable space module technology. 

An outgrowth of their labor is now attached to the International Space Station (ISS). The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM for short, arrived at the ISS and remains attached to its Tranquility module to this day.

Bigelow Aerospace and its ground-breaking work in expandable modules included use of proprietary extensions of Vectran shield fabric, a stronger alternative to Kevlar. Vectran is a high-performance liquid crystal polymer fiber offering superior attributes compared to Kevlar.

Bigelow is no longer operating — the company closed its doors in 2020 — but its influence may still be felt going forward.

Expanding competition

Today, several leading firms are pushing forward on expandable structures in space, such as the new startup Max Space, which is working on inflatable habitats for Earth orbit, the moon and Mars.

And Sierra Space is involved as well, developing a habitat called the Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE).

Similarly, Lockheed Martin is testing inflatable structure concepts that offer advantages over all-metal counterparts.

Each group is eyeing the promising potential for expandable technology. And each company has its own proprietary "secret sauce" embedded in their products. 

Related:   NASA's moon-orbiting space station will be claustrophobic, architect says

Megastructures

"The future of space is limited by space," explained Maxim de Jong, co-founder of Max Space, based in Jacksonville, Florida with design offices in Vancouver, Canada. 

No stranger to expandable space structures, de Jong designed the pressure restraining hulls of Bigelow's Genesis 1 and 2 — the first spacecraft on orbit to successfully incorporate large-volume, high-stress inflatable architecture. 

"We are gearing up to fly our maiden mission in 2026," de Jong told Space.com. Within that process, the group has recently performed successful deployment tests of a new space debris shield design. "That is a real progress discriminator, given how challenging, in terms of design, time and cost, debris shield development is."

The Max Space goal is to have a family of scalable habitats in space, ranging from 20 cubic meters (700 cubic feet) to 100 cubic meters (3,500 cubic feet) to 1,000 cubic meters (35,000 cubic feet) thru 2030. There's the potential to scale up to 10,000-cubic-meter (350,000 cubic feet) "megastructures" that could be launched into space on a single flight, using SpaceX's Starship megarocket or Blue Origin's New Glenn, "once they're online," the Max Space website states.

Greater volume and less mass

Lockheed Martin experts explain that inflatable structures offer greater volume for less mass. That translates into larger habitable volumes capable of being rocketed into space, tucked inside reasonably sized payload fairings.

Recently, a pathfinder unit built for airlock applications underwent pressurization and depressurization checks. The airlock design was put through multiple cycles to assess "creep" factors of its Vectran material makeup.

Lockheed Martin, in partnership with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, initiated a 100-hour "creep" test in which the softgoods unit is pressurized to a percentage of its ultimate burst pressure of 285 pound per square inch (PSI) and held at this pressure until a burst failure occurs as a result of creep. 

Creep is permanent material deformation.

"The targeted time-to-failure for this test was around 100 hours," said Uy Duong, habitation chief engineer at Lockheed Martin. "This test has already made it past the 1,500-hour mark without failure, and we will continue the test until burst or mid-December if no burst event occurs between now and then." 

Duong and company colleagues are eyeing large, inflatable habitats for use at the moon and Mars, as well as in low-Earth orbit.

Lots of room

Shawn Buckley is vice president of Space Destinations and In-Space Infrastructure at Sierra Space in Louisville, Colorado. Formerly, he was a key BEAM architect at Bigelow Aerospace.

Now, at Sierra Space, Buckley and his team are busily at work on the LIFE habitat, blueprinting a product evolution line that could lead to a module offering 5,000 cubic meters (175,000 cubic feet) of volume by expanding to over 70 feet (22 m) in length and 62 feet (19 m) in diameter. 

The first product in the Sierra Space roadmap is a large, expandable three-story structure that is 27 feet (over 8 m) in diameter. It can be placed into Earth orbit by a conventional rocket outfitted to house four astronauts, with "spacious" room for science experiments, workout gear, a medical center and a special greenhouse that grows food for explorers on long-duration missions. 

"In a little over 2.5 years, we have been able to build and test seven articles, and now going into our eighth. We're moving at a fast rate," Buckley told Space.com. "The technology is really gaining momentum, and we're moving very quickly."

Buckley said that repeat testing is essential. "That is what gives NASA and our customers the confidence. At the end of the day, the more data that we can get the better informed we are," he said.

Niche purpose

Inflatable habitat structure systems "have a role as one tool in our toolkit for expanding, so to speak, human spaceflight for new markets and missions," said Brent Sherwood, a noted space architect and space domain lead for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. His past posts include being a senior vice president of space systems development at Blue Origin.

"Like all tools, they're best used for a niche purpose," Sherwood told Space.com. Expandable structures may find particular use as "connector elements," he added. 

"For example, on the lunar surface, fairly soon we will need physically compliant ways of connecting separate habitat modules," Sherwood said. 

"Compliant means accommodating different floor levels — say, from a lander to a pressurized rover — imprecise surface positioning, such as in early base construction, and thermal expansion and contraction due to lunar day/night cycles," Sherwood said. 

A little compliance can go a long way to simplifying the overall system architecture, said Sherwood. "So it may be that one of the best uses is comparatively small connector elements rather than the goal of 'making big modules bigger,'" he pointed out.

"Eventually, we will have to learn how to fabricate super-big pressure vessels in space, but we have a lot of market growth and validation to do between now and then," Sherwood concluded.

COLORADO SPRINGS — Max Space wants to help humanity expand into the final frontier.

The startup is developing a range of inflatable space habitats, the largest of which could provide as much internal volume as a sports stadium. These plans, which Max Space unveiled on Tuesday (April 9) here at the 39th Space Symposium, are designed to help our species make the difficult leap off its home planet.

"The problem with space today is, there isn't enough habitable space in space," Max Space co-founder Aaron Kemmer said in a statement on Tuesday. "Unless we make usable space in space a lot less expensive, and much much larger, humanity's future in space will remain limited."  

Related: Living on the moon: What it would be like (infographic)

Back in 2010, Kemmer co-founded the off-Earth manufacturing company Made In Space, which has sent multiple 3D-printing devices to the International Space Station (ISS) over the years. (Made In Space was acquired by Redwire in 2020.)

He says that experience helped convince him that expandable habitats are the future, citing one of the machines Made In Space modified for use on the ISS.

"It's like a three-story system on Earth, and all the engineering wasn't to make it work in space — it was actually to get it down to a locker [size], just because there wasn't enough real estate in there," Kemmer told Space.com in an interview here at the symposium on Tuesday.

Expandable habitats, as the name suggests, launch in compressed form to fit inside rocket fairings but increase in size greatly when deployed in space. They therefore offer much more bang for the buck volume-wise than traditional "tin can" module designs. 

An expandable habitat with 100 cubic meters (3,530 cubic feet) of pressurized volume, for example, would be "at least an order of magnitude cheaper" than a comparable metallic one, Kemmer said. (For perspective: The ISS offers 388 cubic meters, or 13,700 cubic feet, of habitable volume, not including the space provided by visiting vehicles.)

This is not a sci-fi concept; three expandable module prototypes are actually circling Earth right now. They are Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, which are free fliers that launched in 2006 and 2007 respectively, and the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), which has been attached to the ISS since 2016. 

All three were built by Nevada-based company Bigelow Aerospace, which closed its doors in 2020. The pressure-restraining hulls for Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 were designed and manufactured by Thin Red Line Aerospace, a small Canadian company run by Maxim de Jong — Max Space's other co-founder.

The new startup, which has been in operation for about a year, is commercializing Thin Red Line Aerospace technology, Kemmer and de Jong said. But that tech isn't just a Genesis retread.

"It's a very, very, very different approach, where you're just putting fibers in an uncoupled scenario where they don't conflict with one another," de Jong told Space.com on Tuesday. The result, he and Kemmer said, is a cost-effective module that expands in a predictable and reliable way, and is highly scalable to larger sizes.

The new tech will get its first off-Earth test just two years from now, if all goes according to plan: Max Space has booked a spot on a SpaceX rideshare launch in 2026.

That mission will send a module the size of two large suitcases to orbit. However, that's the habitat's compressed configuration. Once deployed, it will expand to a pressurized volume of 20 cubic meters (706 cubic feet).

This deployment will set a new record for expandable habitats. The two Genesis prototypes both feature 11.5 cubic meters (406 cubic feet) of internal volume, while BEAM has 16 cubic meters (565 cubic feet).

Max Space has already built a full-size prototype of the first flight unit, which the company is using for ground testing, Kemmer said. It has started manufacturing the flight vehicle, which will not feature life-support systems but will have the same shielding and strength as human-rated versions.

Related:   NASA's moon-orbiting space station will be claustrophobic, architect says

Max Space plans to keep moving fast after this pioneering module makes it to orbit. The startup aims to launch its first 100-cubic-meter (3,531 cubic feet) module in 2027 and to get a 1,000-cubic-meter (35,314 cubic feet) behemoth up by 2030. Even larger variants could potentially launch thereafter, aboard SpaceX's Starship megarocket or Blue Origin's New Glenn vehicle, the company said. 

The goal is to provide a variety of destinations to a range of customers, from pharmaceutical companies that want to mass-produce medicines in microgravity to commercial space stations that want to expand their living space all the way to movie studios looking to film in orbit.

"We have several space production companies that we're talking to," Kemmer said. The company has already secured some customer contracts, including from the U.S. Space Force, he added.

But Earth orbit will be just the starting point for Max Space modules, if all goes according to plan.

"My dream is to have a city on the moon before I die," Kemmer said. "So I look at this like, this is going to be the habitat, the structures, that are going to go inside the lava tubes buried under the [lunar] surface."

The company's modules would then make their way to Mars, if all goes well, for Max Space wants to be a key enabler of off-Earth settlement. Indeed, that's why Kemmer and de Jong founded the company — to help humanity extend its footprint out into the solar system.

"That was the entire reason," Kemmer said.

NASA's decision to buy an inflatable new room for the International Space Station may push the module's builder —commercial spaceflight company Bigelow Aerospace — one step closer to establishing its own private stations in orbit.

Last week, NASA announced that it will pay $17.8 million for the Nevada-based company's Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), which will be affixed to the huge orbiting lab as a technology demonstration.

NASA and Bigelow will discuss the deal during a media event Wednesday (Jan. 16) in North Las Vegas, where the company is headquartered. BEAM could help prove out the viability of inflatable crew habitats, potentially jump-starting Bigelow's ambitious plans in low-Earth orbit and, perhaps, on the surface of the moon.

Expanding access to space

Bigelow Aerospace was founded in 1999 by Robert Bigelow, who made his fortune in real estate and finance. He also owns the Budget Suites of America hotel chain, for example. [Photos: Bigelow's Inflatable Space Station Idea]

Bigelow Aerospace specializes in expandable habitats, which launch in a compact form and then inflate upon reaching space. The company says expandable modules offer greater on-orbit volume and better protection against radiation and micrometeoroid strikes than traditional "tin can" designs can provide.

Inflatable modules were first pursued seriously by NASA, which developed a design called TransHab (short for "Transit Habitat") for possible use on the International Space Station. When Congress cancelled the TransHab program in 2000, Bigelow officials licensed the patents and began adapting the technology for the company's own purposes.

The company's goals are big: to establish private space stations that could be used by many different clients for a variety of purposes, from research to tourism.

"We are primarily focused on providing sovereign clients (individual or groups of nations) and companies with the opportunity to lease space and resources aboard our habitats for a broad array of activities, ranging from turn-key astronautics to conducting ground-breaking and lucrative biotech research," Bigelow Aerospace's website states.

"We offer a way for countries to bolster their human spaceflight programs while at the same time reducing their budgets, or for smaller countries that thought human spaceflight was beyond their financial reach to enjoy capabilities that until now only the wealthiest nations have been able to sponsor."

Making it happen

Bigelow has already put hardware into space, launching the prototype modules Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 to orbit in 2006 and 2007, respectively.

Both Genesis habitats are 14.4 feet long by 8.3 feet wide (4.4 by 2.5 meters), with about 406 cubic feet (11.5 cubic m) of pressurized volume. The BEAM module that will be attached to the International Space Station in two years or so will likely be of similar size.

But Bigelow is developing a much larger module, called the BA-330 because it offers 330 cubic meters of usable internal volume. The company envisions linking up two or more BA-330s in orbit to create its first space stations, which have already attracted attention from potential clients.

For example, Bigelow has signed memoranda of understanding with seven governments that wish to use the company's orbiting facilities — Australia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Japan, Sweden and Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.

Bigelow will offer a variety of rental packages to its clients when the stations are up and running, perhaps starting with $28.75 million for an all-inclusive 30-day stay for one astronaut (the company has quoted this figure in the past).

Clients may have several different ways to reach Bigelow's habitats. The company has set up a partnership with the California-based firm SpaceX to use its Dragon spacecraft, and another with Boeing for use of its CST-100 capsule.

Bigelow's dreams don't stop in low-Earth orbit. Robert Bigelow has voiced an interest in setting up outposts on the moon, which would employ BA-330 habitats that are joined together in space, flown down to the lunar surface and then covered with moon dirt to protect against radiation, temperature extremes and micrometeorite impacts.

As such ambitious goals demonstrate, Bigelow seeks to fundamentally transform the way humanity uses space, opening up the final frontier to greater exploration and exploitation.

"Mr. Bigelow created Bigelow Aerospace with the express purpose of revolutionizing space commerce via the development of affordable, reliable and robust expandable space habitats," the company's website states.

Follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+.