Hotels, pharma labs ... it’s all possible

While Axiom, Bigelow and NanoRacks aim to one day replace the International Space Station, in the short run, all three companies hope to become a bigger part of the current station. Bigelow currently has a modest expandable docked at the space station that serves as a closet and demonstrates that the technology works. NanoRacks is pushing Nasa to add a hub that would accommodate three commercial modules, enabling different companies to offer different capabilities to different customers — space hotels for the rich, autonomous factories of fiber optics, laboratories for pharmaceutical research.