Countdown to new era in microgravity research

After all the months of hard work, of the long days put in by everyone from the Houston team to Kentucky students, we are now in the countdown to the scheduled Monday launch of the NanoRacks Platform on board Shuttle Discovery, STS-131.

The platform is scheduled to be inserted permanently on board the International Space Station’s U.S. National Laboratory. The platform is for me — and for all of us — a work of elegant art. It represents the best of engineering principals: hardware that is functional and efficient. The platform will allow up to 16 experiments using the CubeSat form factor, a design and shape known to university and researchers world wide. We call them CubeLabs — named by Kris Kimel of Kentucky Space, our major partner.

Not that it was simple to develop this platform. It took the experience of our Houston team, the enthusiasm of students in Kentucky Space and the creativity of everyone involved. What is simple is the premise: that through use of standardized hardware, the cost of space station utilization will be dramatically lowered.

Our idea is already working, we have signed five commercial customers from the Valley Christian High School and Quest Institute to a new pharmaceutical crystal growth effort. That is really exciting for all of us.

But now comes the countdown — I’m heading down this weekend for the launch and to see old friends and begin my own new journey, to promote and market the commercial utilization of our section of the U.S. Space Station National Laboratory. I'm glad that Jim Lumpp from the University of Kentucky will be there. NanRack’s Mike Johnson is staying in Houston because this veteran of so many launches and space engineering projects is just too blasé to be at the Cape! Mike says he would have been there but it's Easter.

Countdowns are nervous - whether cargo ships or manned. This one more so for all of us at NanoRacks and Kentucky Space, but the mission of STS-131 is one heck of a way to launch a new business!

Jeffrey Manber

Comments

[Doug]

Count down...38 years and still counting for something to come from the billions spent on Zero-G R&D and ISS since Gene Cernan stepped off the moon. The ROI from Zero-G is laughable. I stopped drinking the ISS zero-G kool-aid years ago. So go peddel it somewhere else! The biggest return from Nano-rocks already happened and that is the inspiration it generated from the students. Hopefully congress can pull NASA out of Griffin/Augustine/Obama death spiral it is currently in. Best way to that would be to do something truly inspirational, something that could actually provide those students with a career someday. "Shoot the Moon"! kick off the LEO iSS shackles and move outward!