Gravitics

StarMax is a single rigid aluminium cylinder 7.6 metres across and nearly ten tall, enclosing about 400 cubic metres. That is roughly forty per cent of the pressurised volume of the International Space Station in one piece. Because it is machined metal rather than an inflatable, it can be fitted out completely on the ground, with racks, radiators, solar arrays and external payloads installed before launch, then flown up inside a Starship-class fairing.

Gary Hudson has been trying to build cheap access to space since Rotary Rocket, and the premise here follows from that fairing. Once a rocket can carry a module that large, the obstacle between anyone and a space station stops being launch and becomes manufacturing. Gravitics decided to sell the manufacturing rather than operate a station, positioning itself as the supplier to whoever wins the race, and Axiom Space ordered a module in 2024 for $125 million.

Then the market moved. Axiom repeatedly delayed and descoped its station, and in March 2026 NASA's Ignition strategy said plainly that the commercial station business case "does not make sense" and that the companies pursuing it "cannot deliver an operational capability anytime soon", proposing that NASA build its own core module instead. That is the anchor customer for the whole sector saying the sector does not close, after putting under $600 million into it against more than $3 billion of private capital. Gravitics has since put its weight behind Orbital Carrier, a free-flying garage that holds maneuverable vehicles in orbit and releases them on command, which won up to $60 million from SpaceWERX and is a different business with a real budget behind it. The company has still flown nothing. Its most substantial public hardware result remains a 2023 pressure test, and Orbital Carrier's first flight is set for 2027.