Blue Origin, Sierra Space Orbital Reef space station in limbo

Habitable space stations have long been an interest for Blue Origin, with Bezos’ vision for the company to create a future where “millions of people are living and working in space to benefit Earth.” Similarly, Sierra has been developing an habitat concept for years, known as LIFE (“Large Integrated Flexible Environment”).

Several companies are also working to build private space stations, with competing projects being led by Axiom, Voyager Space, Northrop Grumman and Vast.

The Orbital Reef team also includes Boeing, Redwire, Amazon, Genesis Engineering Solutions, and Arizona State University underneath Blue and Sierra.

Orbital Reef is not seen as a top priority for either company, according to three people familiar with the companies. Two of those sources pointed CNBC to a shift in Blue Origin’s interests after the company won a $3.4 billion NASA contract to build a crew lunar lander – noting its space station and lunar lander programs compete for resources in the same business unit.

Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith is leaving at the end of the year and new leader Dave Limp will need to execute on other major projects – including its New Shepard and New Glenn rockets, as well as its BE-4 engine production.

Similarly, much of Sierra’s resources are devoted to getting the initial cargo variation of its reusable Dream Chaser spaceplane flying. It has been developing Dream Chaser for more than a decade, under contract to fly cargo for NASA to the International Space Station.

The company earlier this week raised $290 million in new funding and hopes to fly Dream Chaser to the ISS for the first time next year.

There have been signs the Orbital Reef project was unraveling: The website for the project, created jointly by Blue and Sierra, hasn’t published an update on the station’s development in more than a year. As of Thursday, neither company’s careers websites have job openings that mention “Orbital Reef,” despite having dozens of listings mention the project in the past. And Sierra Space dropped references to Orbital Reef in its most recent press releases, focusing solely on its own habitat work.

From NASA’s viewpoint, changes to the structure or involvement of different companies in the first phase of a project like this one are not surprising. For example, Northrop Grumman didn’t rejoin Blue Origin’s team when the company bid a second time for a crew lunar lander. And, more relevant to the CLD program, another space station project called Starlab saw Airbus take the place of Lockheed Martin as the core habitat’s builder.

For its part, Sierra has continued to test and develop LIFE – an inflatable module that made up a major part of the Orbital Reef architecture. Sierra has regularly posted updates about milestones in testing habitats, such as a recent “burst” testing of a sub-scale prototype. Last month, Sierra announced plans to launch a “pathfinder” demonstration mission of its LIFE (Large Integrated Flexible Environment) habitat in 2026.