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Business is looking up for space station designers

Illustration: Cutaway view of laboratory workspace on Starlab space station
This cutaway view shows the interior of the Starlab space station’s laboratory. (Starlab Illustration)

How do you design a living space where there’s no up or down? That’s one of the challenges facing Teague, a Seattle-based design and innovation firm that advises space companies such as Blue Origin, Axiom Space and Voyager Technologies on how to lay out their orbital outposts.

Mike Mahoney, Teague’s senior director of space and defense programs, says the zero-gravity environment is the most interesting element to consider in space station design.

“You can’t put things on surfaces, right? You’re not going to have tables, necessarily, unless you can attach things to them, and they could be on any surface,” he told me. “So, directionality is a big factor. And knowing that opens up new opportunities. … You could have, let’s say, two scientists working in different orientations in the same area.”

Over the next few years, NASA and its partners are expected to make the transition from the aging International Space Station to an array of commercial space stations — and Teague is helping space station builders get ready for the shift.

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Cosmic Tech

Virgin Hyperloop updates its vision for pod odysseys

Hyperloop station
Artwork depicts a hyperloop portal in Mumbai, India. (Virgin Hyperloop Illustration)

Virgin Hyperloop’s latest concept for pod trips through a tube suggests that riders will never get a window seat — and that passersby along the route will never see the pods whizzing by.

The venture’s vision for hyperloop travel is laid out, from start to finish, in a video animation released this week.

Virgin Hyperloop’s head of passenger experience, Sara Luchian, told Architectural Digest that the design of the pods is meant to strike a balance between convenience and coolness.

“There’s no question that some people will ride for the novelty, but we have to assume that people will ride more than once,” she said. “And in that case, you don’t want bells and whistles every day.”

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Seattle firm creates showcase for … Airbus?

Image: Airbus Experience Center
Visitors can take the controls in the interactive Briefing Room at the Airbus Experience Center in Washington, D.C., which was designed by a Seattle-based firm. (Credit: Hornall Anderson)

Captain Kirk from the original “Star Trek” is celebrating Star Wars Day today, so maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising that a Seattle-based branding and design firm helped create the Airbus Group’s state-of-the-art Experience Center in the nation’s capital.

Hornall Anderson is behind the look of the exhibit space, which takes up about half of the 20,000-square-foot Airbus office space that opened last month on Pennsylvania Avenue. The Experience Center’s videos and interactive displays highlight facets of the Europe-based consortium’s operations in the United States and worldwide.

“You’ll see our Rosetta spacecraft that landed on a comet,” Airbus Group Chairman and CEO Allan McArtor said in a news release. “You’ll see the Perlan II glider that is going to ride wind currents into the stratosphere. You’ll see U.S. Army helicopters that are built in Mississippi, and A320 single-aisle aircraft being built in Alabama.”

A design company based in Seattle may seem an unusual choice for Airbus, considering that the Boeing Co. is building rival 737 jets down the road in Renton. There are Boeing-centric “experience centers” in Renton and other locales. But Airbus decided that Hornall Anderson, which recently did the rebranding for Seattle-based, all-Boeing Alaska Airlines, was the right firm for the job.

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