Space Industries Incorporated was a company formed in the 1980s for the purpose of building a privately ownedspace station, which was to be called theIndustrial Space Facility (ISF). At the time, the idea ofprivatedevelopment in space was a pioneering one.
Space Industries was founded inHouston,Texas byMaxime Faget, who had recently retired as chief of engineering and operations atNASA, as well as entrepreneurs James Calaway, Guillermo Trotti, and Larry Bell. Their plan was to build a space station that would feed off thelife support system of theSpace Shuttle when it visited, but would not maintain continuous life support between shuttle visits. Faget proposed this plan because maintaining continuous life support would be cost prohibitive.
Joe Allen, aphysicist andastronaut, was a partner, as wasWestinghouse Electric Corporation. Investors includedRoy M. Huffington, anoilman and laterUnited Statesambassador toAustria; James Elkins, not to be confused withJames A. Elkins who was the co-founder of theVinson & Elkins law firm; and Walter Mischer, adeveloper.
Calaway lobbied theUnited States government to be ananchor tenant in the proposed space station. In 1988, theReagan Administration requested $700 million from the annualbudget in order to participate in the project, but the request was not approved byCongress, and the space station was never built.
The company eventually merged with Calspan Corporation, which in turn merged withGeneral Dynamics Corporation.[1]
The ISF was scheduled for launch in the early 1990s. It was to have 31 payload racks housing up to 11,000 kg (11 tons) of commercial industrial and microgravity manufacturing experiments. It was to have a pair of 140 m2 (1500 sq. ft.)solar panels each producing 20 kW ofpower.[2] Software was developed that used a learningheuristicalgorithm in order to most efficiently use the ISF's resources.[3]
| Current |  | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Past |
| ||||||||
| Canceled |
| ||||||||
| In development |
| ||||||||
| Proposed | |||||||||
| Concepts | |||||||||
| Related |
| ||||||||
Notes: † Never inhabited due to launch or on-orbit failure, ‡ Part of theAlmaz military program, ° Never inhabited, lacks docking mechanism. | |||||||||