There are too many rocket companies to list. This commercialization drives down launch costs and increases capacity, which benefits private companies and public research institutions.

There was just a record number of people in orbit (19) that'll get broken again in the coming years. The ISS will get new modules. Tiangong has been expanding. The Lunar Gateway station is under construction. Several private space stations are under construction. And multiple companies and countries are working on new crewed vehicles.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The ISS will get new modules.

You serious?

And yet no one thought about skipping the gravity well and mine/process asteroids... baby steps i guess.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Yeah, Axiom is working on a private space station that would bud off the ISS when it deorbits. Although they have some money problems right now.

For asteroid mining, look up AstroForge. They're working on mining platinum group metals from near Earth m-type asteroids. They launched a forge demo sat and soon will launch an asteroid RPO demo sat.