Aerospace America, October 2024
Gary Calnan traveled to the White House in 2022 with a proposal to melt parts of the International Space Station down into rocket fuel. His firm, CisLunar Industries of Colorado, was developing technology to recycle and reuse machinery in orbit, and the National Space Council and the Office of Science, Technology and Policy were interested to hear more.
The company had previously published a white paper with several other companies — including Astroscale, a Japan-based debris removal company — describing how radiators, solar panels and batteries could be reused and how other parts of the station could be turned into an orbital salvage yard. For example, CisLunar was developing technology in partnership with the Australian company Neumann Space that could melt metal structures in orbit into rods of aluminum that could serve as fuel for electric propulsion, a concept that the U.S. Space Force awarded Cislunar a $1.7 million contract last year to explore.
