Patrick Stakem

Lunar Orbital Platform - Gateway Patrick Stakem

This book covers the topic of the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOP-G), a renaming and restructuring of the Deep Space Gateway, a joint Russian-US effort, and associated missions. This is a step beyond the International Space Station, which will be beyond its useful lifetime in a few years, and will be decommissioned, with some parts being reused, and some re-entered. This will result in a new era of human space exploration, further from Earth. Whether we refer to the emerging facility as a Gateway, a Colony, a settlement, or a habitat, we are talking of a permanently occupied facility. We can consider the habitat to be in orbit (about something), or on the surface of another body, other than Earth. These projects will differ in detail, but will all consist of self-sufficient structures somewhere other than Earth, with an associated logistics train. The Gateway would be continuously crewed, and serves as an outpost form which to explore the lunar and Martian surfaces.