Orbital Reef: Commercial space station by BlueOrigin, Sierra Space, Boeing
orbitalreef.com
orbitalreef.com
On the gripping hand the original moonshot had a national context that a corporate space station does not.
USA in 1960s did not have an alternative option of using someone else's launch vehicle for a fraction of what it would cost to build one themselves; companies who want to build a commercial space station do have an option to buy launch capacity from SpaceX instead of Boeing/BlueOrigin, which would still be more expensive even if all their plans and promises materialize on the scheduled time.
Maybe they want SpaceX to establish space travel, and use their technology to jump directly for Earth Orbit Domination™ or Space Amazon Headquarters™.
However, the space industry will produce many opportunities, and plenty of companies, including ones that don't yet exist, will have a chance to carve out large, profitable niches.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/25/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-unvei... is good coverage with some links to various previous episodes.
From the article you linked it's going to be between 2025-2030... which by previous history of these companies it's likely going to be 2040+
> This is like a who’s who of companies that spacex have been making look bad recently.
Their own lack of innovation and constant delays are making themselves look bad. (and outright maliciousness on blue origin with moon contracts).
2. I do not for a second believe Blue Origin and Boeing can deliver on this.
3. I really want them to prove me wrong.
I wish I could go into space, but don't expect to become a billionaire or live long enough for it to be cheap.
While Elon is...eccentric...he managed to assemble the team led by Gwynne Shotwell at SpaceX which can accomplish massive amounts in very short periods of time. Their success rate is extremely high so I would hesitate to ever bet against them.
Blue Origin has for a long time been a side-thing for Jeff. As a result, it apparently suffers from a serious lack of focus, commitment and sheer f'ing will. This is not a judgement of the front-line employees, but of the leadership which has let them all down.
Boeing is...well, Boeing.
I want to go into space as well. And I'm actually much more optimistic than you about the price and accessibility. At our current rate of change, it'll not just be possible within our lifetimes - it'll be commonplace.
Why? Take the example of landing first stage boosters. This was something that had never been successfully done. SpaceX started working on landing in 2013 and successfully did it in 2016. Since then it has become commonplace - sticking the landing isn't even newsworthy. Each tipping point, such as reusability, is happening faster and faster.
I love Gwynne as much as the next guy and she it clearly, but the team is lead by Elon. Gwynne helps keep the company running, makes the deals and has relations with DoD and NASA, makes sure nothing gets missed and so on. Flat out, Musk is the leader, he says what development happens, when and how. He decides how much money is spent and so on. Gwynne has said as much as well.
It seem like people love to use Gwynne to say 'SpaceX is successful despite Musk', you didn't quite go so far, bu t still. This line of reasoning just doesn't work.
If Starship is successful, many people will be able to afford to go to space.
Not so! See Delta Clipper ca. 1996: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z46RiuZvh6c
The SpaceX advancement may be more business than tech. They have a way to thrive without pork contracts paying them to build a new launcher every mission. The fat, complacent, dinosaurs will have trouble dieting down to parity.
In fact, maybe that's why Delta Clipper didn't advance to the next stage: not enough fat milk for contractors!
Propulsive landing has existed as long as the space industry of course.
> The SpaceX advancement may be more business than tech.
No it really isn't. This is sort of myth people perpetuate because they don't like SpaceX. Fact is, SpaceX did a huge amount of development to actually achieve a really reusable first stage.
Early on data was flowing from NASA to SpaceX, but pretty quickly it was NASA monitoring SpaceX and asking them for data because they simply don't have it. SpaceX had to figure out things like supersonic retropropulsion. The engine SpaceX development achieved things nobody has done before.
People point to a few research projects that thought about some individual things SpaceX did, but those never came even close even as a sum of all of them.
Sounds like a good idea, but I don’t think we need to start considering how to execute on that until we’ve made a half-decent attempt to stop ruining our current basket. Maybe add that to the to-do list for the next millennium.
Think of it this way:
1. The tree trunk is rotting.
2. There is a very real chance we cannot fix the rot, no matter how much we try.
3. Fixing the rot will not consume 100% of our available resources (fixing our environment is costly but logically cannot consume all we have)
4. Moving some eggs to a new nest in a new tree will not consume even close to 1% of our available resources (assuming a small but self sustaining set of colonies off-world)
5. The outcome of not getting new nests and not fixing the rot is extinction
6. The outcome of getting new nests and not fixing the rot is successfully avoiding extinction
A friend of mine put it this way: what is the cost of being wrong? If the cost is extinction, then we must act. Self-sustaining space colonization is the only outcome that guarantees success.
Therefore, we absolutely must do both, but not relying on earth is both less expensive and higher priority.
1. substantial new contributions to greenhouse emissions
2. diversion of attention and resources away from other things, that may make your (2) self-fulfilling
3. dilution of sentiment that we have an obligation to try to fix what we've done here.
7. The outcome of not getting new nests and fixing the rot is that we're much, much prepared to subsequently get new nests.
> Therefore, we absolutely must do both, but not relying on earth is both less expensive and higher priority.
I was very clear we must do both.
Thus:
* If we fail at fixing the rot, and we do not gain a new nest, we go extinct
* If we fail at fixing the rot, but gain a new nest, we avoid extinction
* If we fix the rot, but do not gain a new nest, we avoid extinction
* If we do both successfully, we avoid extinction
Out of four outcomes, two of the three successful scenarios all involve gaining a new nest.
Also, the assumption "we go extinct" is pretty strong, and IMO, unwarranted.
The premise of the argument that we must focus on the earth instead of space exploration is fundamentally flawed because it assumes that the two are mutually exclusive.
If fixing the rot were genuinely an extinction-level imperative, I'd say we should devote zero resources to space exploration. However, I don't think there's an extinction-level event or period coming at any point in the foreseeable future, so I don't think we have to be that dogmatic about it. Even so, I'd far rather see us defer all fossil-fueled adventures until (if!) we get this place into better shape.
A 1% change in overseas vacation habits has a much larger impact than this hypothetical space program.
Exactly. I'm not sure what motivates many people to push this argument against colonization but it definitely isn't grounded in what they say.
Life on say, Mars, would be kind of unpleasant after the novelty of "I'm on another planet!" wears off. The sky is yellowish-red most of the day, it's nothing but rocks and sand as far as the eye can see, there is no outdoors without a space suit, ... etc.
It's a freaking dead lifeless planet. You will never see a flowing stream ever again, squirrels running up trees, nor birds flying through the air.
P.S. Maybe it's the depression talking but I'm not completely sold on "humanity must survive at all cost" frankly ... I mean so what if all of us die? We all die eventually. The universe won't care. 99.9% of all species that have ever existed have gone extinct, we will just be another drop in that ocean.
* My thinking is that even orbital colonies are doable, hollowed out asteroids that are spun up, etc. Lots of ways to do this if the success criteria is self-sustaining but at smaller scale.
* It isn't the depression talking; I've asked myself the same thing. As for depression, if you need someone to chat with hit me up - I've been there and want to help.
Their experience from ISS is decades ago.
On a side note, I'm kind of disheartened by all the negativity in this thread. Isn't it good that companies other than SpaceX are trying to go to space too? Why put all our eggs in one company? Especially one run by someone as mercurial Musk?
Do people on this site really want Bezos to give up and spend his billions elsewhere so Musk can have a near monopoly on space access?
I get that Bezos isn't the nicest guy but Musk is no saint either.
I'm starting to get the impression many on this site aren't really pro-space, they are just pro-Musk.
How about not blocking everybody else constantly suing everybody and delaying the process. If he actually wanted to achieve a goal, that's what he would do.
Bezos is driven by pride more then anything else. It was clear that SpaceX was way ahead of them in terms of rockets. Instead of leveraging that and investing in space station or moon lander, they had to 'beat' SpaceX at rockets.
BO has been chasing its own tail and then suing everybody and claiming everything is unfair.
For a company that has achieved mostly nothing, to claim everybody else shouldn't get contracts and that they would be better is just the hight of arrogance. Not surprising it has left many space fans with a bad taste.
Additionally, this is a station that will only be build for a government contract. BO might be willing to spend actual money on idealism, but Boeing and Sierra are not.
> I'm starting to get the impression many on this site aren't really pro-space, they are just pro-Musk.
Maybe they are pro companies who actually achieve things and are not happy that the can finally sue everybody to 'flex their legal muscle' as BO CEO actually said.
Nobody dislikes Firefly, RocketLab, Relativity or any number of other space companies.
I don’t know. If his ego is so wrapped up in it wouldn’t he be putting more effort into Blue Origin? BO is mostly run by people he hired no?
Why is he suing? I don’t know. Maybe he does feel his company isn’t given the fair opportunity to participate.
Frankly if it’s prideful behavior you have a problem with, Musk isn’t doing too hot in that department either.
Remember when he slandered that British guy helping to free kids trapped in a cave in Thailand, damaging the guy’s reputation? All because the guy called him out on his publicity stunt.
Or the time he attacked CNN over ventilators although all CNN did was report the news verbatim - imagine being so hard up for recognition over what is supposed to be an act of charity.
In the worst case, we have 3 prideful billionaires trying to get into space.
Yet Musk is the only one getting good press … while the other 2 get nothing but negativity and equally accomplished but relatively poorly funded companies like ULA, no one really talks about.
Well, but here is the thing, they weren't. The already complained to GAO and the GAO confirmed that the competition was fair. Usually that is the end of it, but the continued on suing.
The are literally delaying the nations moon program. Bezos himself said in an interview a few years back that the reasons we can't do Appollo today was that the losers in the competition would sue. He called this the biggest problem in modern space flight.
And then a few years later he turns around doing exactly that. Talk about being part of the problem.
> Frankly if it’s prideful behavior you have a problem with, Musk isn’t doing too hot in that department either.
What national program has Musk delayed?
> Remember when he slandered that British guy helping to free kids trapped in a cave in Thailand, damaging the guy’s reputation? All because the guy called him out on his publicity stunt.
The British guy who also didn't actually do anything and was jealous that he didn't get much attention and attacked him first by slandering him in the media? This made Musk look like an asshole to be sure, but it was not out of nowhere.
If you actually read beyond the slanderous headline, the story is quite different. The SpaceX team talked to the actual diving team, they worked with them for a specific backup scenario that the divers said could a be a problem. The 'submarine' was never thought to be 'the solution', as was heavy implied by the media, and they never tried to make this the general solution.
And it was not a 'publicity stunt', Musk and a group of SpaceX engineers went there to help. It generated an absurd amount of attention because Musk tweets are so wide reaching, but he was just tweeting what they were doing. Media then latched on to the story because the 'clueless billionair builds submarine' apparently generated more clicks then 'Team of SpaceX engineers works with divers on backup solution'-
> Or the time he attacked CNN over ventilators although all CNN did was report the news verbatim - imagine being so hard up for recognition over what is supposed to be an act of charity.
So attacking CNN over false reporting is somehow bad now? They basically made fun of him because apparently he had order the wrong ventilators during Covid. Another repeat of the 'arrogant clueless Musk only craves attention' story the media endlessly repeats. Turns out, because Tesla was very involved in China they had talked to hospitals in China they had learned what machines were likely to be required and they ordered those machines.
Later it was confirmed by multiple hospitals that they had gotten the machines and that they were indeed very helpful. This part of course was never reported.
> In the worst case, we have 3 prideful billionaires trying to get into space.
Musk wasn't even a billionaire when SpaceX started. SpaceX has been a well operated commercial business for a long time now. Musk is a partly billionair because of SpaceX, its not that he was a billionaires and then decide to play around in space.
And Musk is not even really trying to go to space himself primarly, if he wanted to he could have years ago.
> Yet Musk is the only one getting good press … while the other 2 get nothing but negativity and equally accomplished but relatively poorly funded companies like ULA, no one really talks about.
The other two are getting bad press because they are selling vanity roller-coaster rides. Branson project is consistently lying about capability to boost the public stock and they have a terrible technical solution that has killed multiple people already.
BlueOrigin gets bad press because they insert themselves into every program and demand to be treated like an accomplished space company when they have never delivered a single product despite having an absurd amount of resources to spend. And then when they fail they sue everybody and claim that their propels were better.
SpaceX gets good press because they have successfully accomplished one difficult program after another at low cost to the government.
Not sure why it is surprising that companies who execute well under budget and achieve amazing should get more good press.
If you think ULA is 'equally accomplished' to SpaceX you are totally misinformed about the space industry. And among actual space fans and not the general media that is totally clueless anyway, everybody knows perfectly well what ULA does and they are talked about quite often.
He publicly accuse the man of being a pedophile. That slander no matter how you look at it.
It's funny you accuse the man of wanting attention when that's exactly what he called out Musk on. Musk had no business getting involved but wanted to be in on the publicity. Musk of course having his ego damaged overreacted as usual - when a normal person would just brush it off. Projection at it's finest.
> So attacking CNN over false reporting is somehow bad now?
It wasn't false. CNN report that the governor said the hospitals didn't receive the ventilators which is 100% true - the governor did say that.
> And Musk is not even really trying to go to space himself primarly, if he wanted to he could have years ago.
That one thing you have to give Bezos, he was the first of the 3 to be willing to dogfood his own rockets. Frankly I think he did it, despite the risk, just because he really wanted to visit space.
> If you think ULA is 'equally accomplished' to SpaceX you are totally misinformed about the space industry
ULA has been around a long time and recently sent a probe to the Sun - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Solar_Probe. They are pretty darn capable and reliable. They just don't get much press - or money for the matter.
But I'm probably wasting my time. You seem like a huge fan of Musk and will just rationalize away everything I say.
Personally I think Musk and his companies are overhyped - frankly to an annoying level; and I'm not the only one to think that give people have created r/EnoughMuskSpam.
There are many great feats of space exploration that get gloss over while every time SpaceX does something it's seen as major news even if it's one of their just test rockets blowing up.
e.g.
The Japanese sent a probe to an asteroid, landed on it, collected a sample and sent it back to earth - all autonomously. That's a remarkable feat of engineering IMHO. 2 days on space related social media at most.
SpaceX launch something. People: "OMG it's so beautiful!!!" + Endless spam of the videos.
I really don't know the exact incident you speak of. What I remember is endless accusation that Musk was delivering the wrong things that would be useless and that it was all a media stunt.
This was not the case, they did deliver the right thing that helped people. That at the end is what matters to me more then whatever bullshit is happening on twitter and the endless 'he said', 'she said', 'they reported what he said' and so on.
> They are pretty darn capable and reliable.
I didn't say they are not reliable or capable. I said they were not 'equally accomplished' and they aren't. Why are you moving the goal post?
Literally nobody in the space industry believes ULA has achieved as much as SpaceX.
ULA is government created company that got a monopoly over US launches. During the time they existed they managed to get a grant total of 0% of the global commercial launch market.
> They just don't get much press - or money for the matter.
Now you are just joking. ULA got absolutely absurd amounts of money for a decade+. The prices they charged the government up every single year until SpaceX finally sued their way into competition was absolutely absurd. In addition to that they got almost 1 billion per year to be launch ready.
ULA basically farmed the government, and when SpaceX showed up magically their prices dropped to less then half. Crazy how that happens.
ULA is a child company of Boeing and Lockeed and both of those have absurd amounts of government contract. The money Boeing gets for SLS alone blows everything SpaceX gets out of the water.
> There are many great feats of space exploration that get gloss over while every time SpaceX does something it's seen as major news even if it's one of their just test rockets blowing up.
No they don't. Again, maybe if you follow mainstream media, but the space community is well aware of ULA and what other agencies are doing.
> frankly to an annoying level; and I'm not the only one to think that give people have created r/EnoughMuskSpam.
You mean the cesspool of people who publish and believe every nonsense rumor on twitter. Those are the people you want to associate with? Have you read that subreddit? People there are bordering on insane often with the nonsense they are willing believe as long as it is against Musk.
Even things that Musk is only associated with threw 3 different intermediaries are apprently him pulling the strings behind the back. Everything any costumer of SpaceX does or even says they do these people will claim 'Musk is doing X'.
I'm not saying there are not major criticism you can make of him, but the people that sub are delusional for the most part.
> The Japanese sent a probe to an asteroid, landed on it, collected a sample and sent it back to earth - all autonomously. That's a remarkable feat of engineering IMHO. 2 days on space related social media at most.
It was a great mission to be sure. But the nature of such missions is that they deliver a few media pictures for a few moments and then its a space craft that flies threw dark space for a few years.
What exactly do you want people do keep talking about? The scientific results are not available for a long time. There is very little content published about the engineering specially in english.
And while its a cool mission, these are just individual costume science missions. They are very, very expensive and have huge teams behind them. We have been doing missions like that for 50 yeras. All that is fine, but its not gone fundamentally change space as we know it. Its evolutionary improvements over past missions at best.
> SpaceX launch something. People: "OMG it's so beautiful!!!" + Endless spam of the videos.
The reason people get exited about Starship Test launches is because if its successful, its gone fundamentally change space industry forever.
These science missions you seem to love could do 100x more science because you can make a far larger mission for a lower price.
Just transportation alone used to be like 50% of some of these missions. And they suffer from major constraints in weight and size. If you can build them bigger and not require gravity assist, the price for these missions can drop a huge amount.
He went nuts on Twitter bashing CNN. It was kind of pathetic if you think about it.
I honestly don’t get the appeal of Musk.
Maybe I’m just old and don’t get excited anymore for proclamations of pie in the sky ideas - funny thing is, even if he hasn’t delivered on his proclamations people already give him the credit for it; e.g. neural link.
In fact, I quite warily of him.
I’m no psychologist but Musk pretty much displays almost every sign of NPD - https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/narcissistic-....
After the “last 4 years” of 45 I have growth very warily of people with such personality traits.
The similarities don’t stop there. They both kind of have a cult of personality around them.
Ruthless businessman like Gates and Bezos at least wear their characters on their sleeves and generally behave in a logical and predictable manner. Neither of them try to style themselves as some kind of visionary and obsessively hog the media limelight - unless there is a material benefit to doing so.
Even Jobs, who many accused of being somewhat of a narcissistic cult leader, to my knowledge set the record straight on his deathbed - told his biographer to tell it as it is flaws and all; frankly I think he ran with the visionary leader image the media gave him because it benefited Apple.
He has delivered on enough to have credibility. When he starts a new project you know its going to get a lot of funding.
People give credit that somebody is TRYING to do it.
> Maybe I’m just old
If you are not exited about Starship or reusable rocket in general it has nothing to with your age.
> I’m no psychologist but Musk pretty much displays almost every sign of NPD - https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/narcissistic-....
> After the “last 4 years” of 45 I have growth very warily of people with such personality traits.
Maybe he does. He publicly stated aspergers. I don't really care, more about what he does and how he behaves most of the time. Judging everybody that lives by their worst moment is a bad tendency in todays world.
> Neither of them try to style themselves as some kind of visionary and obsessively hog the media limelight
He doesn't need to push himself into the limelight, that happened by itself. Elon was the same person in 2005 when nobody cared about him.
> Ruthless businessman like Gates and Bezos at least wear their characters on their sleeves
Read anything by journalist and authors about Musk, Musk is very genuine. When he gets angry, you can see it. When he is bored he will tell you. He says his opinion, when its popular its popular and when its not, its not.
He is described as very funny and engaging sometimes, but also very competitive if you get cross with him.
Compared to Gates and Bezos he shows way more of his actual personality. He has no PR department or endless media training in the art of saying nothing.
You can dislike that, but accusing you of fake is just wrong. Just as Trump wasn't fake if you want to compare them, he was presenting himself as he actually was (and that was a moron).
> told his biographer to tell it as it is flaws and all
Elon never claimed he was flawless and he has authorized books about him that clearly show that.
You can read Liftoff as a recent book about SpaceX. Elon has good and bad moments in that book but there is no question that he is genuine.
Ashlee Vance who did the original biography also believed he was genuine. And that book equally has plenty of negatives about him.
Btw, if James Cameron is reading this, maybe it's time to reshoot Titanic as a space opera? Thing hits space junk starts crashing toward earth, burning up in atmosphere, involves a Baumgartner level skydive from an escape pod, Tom Cruise does his own stunts. Call me.
BlueOrigin has endlessly complained about SpaceX selection of HLS but so far nothing.
This strategy doesn't work when a better and cheaper competitor exists.
edit for link: https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/19/senate-budget-committee-te...
BO needs to figure out why the BE-4 engine has been such a challenge, and Boeing needs to figure out why Starliner has been such a challenge. If they credibly re-build the teams on those projects and turn them around, then perhaps that will inform their efforts on something grander.
Culture is a defining characteristic of an organizations ability to execute against a plan or vision. So I agree it is a large part of the problem, or more simply a great place to start on the solution.
SpaceX has the massive rockets, crew vehicles, cargo transporters, experience with human space flight and are vertically integrated to build these station modules as well.
Blue Origin has the big rocket to launch it (at least in theory). Boeing has the crew transport (again in theory). Sierra Nevada has the cargo transport (at least in theory).
Will be interesting what design SpaceX will come out with. They often surprise. Many people believed they would bid Starship for the Lunar Station resupply but they came out with Dragon XL. Many people didn't believe SpaceX would use Starship to bid on Human Lander for the Moon landing.
I would be shocked if its not designed around Starship. But the question is if they would just launch huge modules with Starship or literally build the station out of Starships. You could even use the gigantic tanks of the Starships as living room. You just need to make the likeable in orbit.
I hope the integrated something to test different G forces. Would be great for testing things that need to work on moon, mars and so on.
P.S: Those that have missed it, Lockeed Marin and Nanoracks are another competitor. That system seems smaller and they can use current rockets and they will use Dragon for Transport. See: https://spacenews.com/nanoracks-and-lockheed-martin-partner-...
Axiomspace will almost certainty bid something too. They are working Thales Alenia Space for manufacturing.
So far Northrop Grumman is not in any of the camps as far as I know.
RocketLab, Firefly, Astra, Relativity Space are all small and have proven little. RocketLab has the most but its still a tiny rocket with a high failure rate so far. But yeah great that they exists. ABL Space belongs in that group.
I think the companies that actually want to do things in space are just as interesting and get less talked about.
SpaceX could send their Starship 2.0 (12m diameter opposed to 9, it was going to be 15m) and turn those into stations, which would seem to be a cheaper and quicker solution
They have at least 10 slightly used Dragon 1 capsules that, if they can be refurbished, will save them a lot of money.
> or literally build the station out of Starships.
It's entirely possible to build a module like that using a slightly modified lunar version (no heat tiles, no wings), a docking adapter at the very top and enough solar panels and radiators in the trunk to be installed on the outside. Engines could be removed and added to other vehicles for in-orbit assembly (that may be a little bit more complicated - working with pressurized gloves is not great).
In fact, I imagine a whole series of different vehicles derived from the Starship design and riding to orbit on top of the Super Heavy - non-reusable ones, simple booster and orbital tug with light, disposable fairing (and a ridiculous cargo capacity during ascent), vehicles designed to be assembled into larger structures, with inflatable modules with a centrifuges, maybe an Earth-Mars cycler...
I don't think that's how Dragon XL will be built. No need for most of what is on Dragon and the wrong shape.
More likely built with the same tooling as the 2nd stage of Falcon 9 combined with the systems from Dragon Cargo (the new one).
> In fact, I imagine a whole series of different vehicles derived from the Starship design
Agree. There are lots ways you can do it. Will be interesting to see how they do it.
> Engines could be removed and added to other vehicles f
Or just bring them back to earth.
True. Put them into the now empty cargo bay of a returning Starship and attach them to a new one.
The future seems a lot of fun again.
Video of the in-space assembly of Orb2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3GBE_NS6Y8
Orbital reef on the other hand looks like a rehashed ISS.
I would be very scared of any partnership with Sierra Space. The new CEO Tom Vice just drove Aerion, supersonic business jets, into liquidation. That was only after forcing a $300m hq move from Las Vegas to Melbourne, FL where he lives.
Prior to Aerion, he pulled the same move at Northrop Grumman Aerospace where he placed a major program in Melbourne. Then he was let go because the company missed a major hiring goal.
(Submitted title was 'Orbital Reef – 'Commercial' Space Station by Boeing, BlueOrigin and Co')
The station will be built by Boeing and operated, so I thought it should be in the name.
We don't want misleading titles and of course you're right, corporate press releases tend to do that.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
For 9 figures you could take a Starship, kit it out on Earth, launch it into LEO and land it 6 months later, replenish supplies, swap experiments and launch again.
Sierra Nevada has been involved in some research for these. I think they also did some thing for Bigelow as well.
I'm not a big fan of these inflatables. They are good for the in-between space, larger then the biggest rockets, smaller then a really built structure. I prefer us to actually figure out how to construct real structures in orbit.
From there you can then build real structures onto it.
Same rules would apply I expect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_law
"Objects launched into space are subject to their nation of belonging, including people."
The US will happily prosecute you for going to Thailand to sleep with underage prostitutes. They'd be happy to do the same here, especially as you're probably launching from and landing on their territory anyways.
The ISS was built after lots of launches of components, they can also build small satellites or other things that stay in space.
That's the current use. But in the far future, space ships or habitats probably. Things that can't hold together under the weight of gravity or areodynamic drag. Like tyco station in the expanse.