Meet the IIT Bombay professor who wants to build cities in space

These are the kind of questions that Chowdhury pondered upon for a long time, before finally finding a potential ‘out-of-the-world’ solution. Last year, Chowdhury and Tausif Shaikh, an IIT Bombay alumnus, established InspeCity, a startup that aims to establish “cities” or “factories” in space, where energy and resources will not be as constrained as on Earth.

“InspeCity—pronounced ‘ɪn speɪs ˈsɪti’—came to life in mid-2022 with a simple dream of building a city up there in space, so that we don't fight over resources here on dear earth,” their website says.

Drawing inspiration

For those who have watched or read The Expanse, Interstellar, Dune and so on, this may seem like an idea very far into the ‘sci-fi’ segment, but for Chowdhury, this is very much doable.

“This is not, so to say, a ludicrous idea. The technology (to make such cities) has been there since the 1970s. Now we are 40 years down the line and nothing is stopping us from doing it,” he said.

Chowdhury draws his inspiration for InspeCity from American physicist Gerard K. O’Neill, who in the 1970s introduced the idea of creating habitable ecosystems somewhere between the Earth and the Moon. Although the idea snowballed, factors such as high launch costs and low cadence prevented the project from taking off.

An artist's rendition of an O'Neill colony | Source: Wikipedia

Since then, O’Neill’s plan to build human settlements in space has inspired countless others apart from being celebrated in popular culture—for example, in Interstellar, where in the last scene the character played by Matthew McConaughey meets his aged daughter in a habitable, cylindrical ecosystem inspired by O’Neill’s ideas.

So, in real life, how would it work?

“Essentially, it is a rotating cylinder. Imagine some kind of rotating body which is creating artificial gravity by centrifugal force. You just have to choose the diameter and the rotational speed accordingly. It is that simple,” Chowdhury said.

The first step

So among the key qualifying technologies that InspeCity has now set out to develop in its long-term vision of creating such space cities/factories are autonomous robotic platforms in space.

To begin with, InspeCity plans to use these platforms for maintaining satellites, and eventually use them to make space factories and cities.

The platform, called Vehicle for Life-Extension and Deorbiting Activities (VEDA), will have its own propulsion systems and will be retrofitted with a robotic arm (termed RAMA).

VEDA, the autonomous platform that InspeCity is building | Source: InspeCity

The, re-usable, in-orbit platform will have the ability to come close to structures such as satellites and with the help of the robotic arm, it will be able to service them by refueling or de-orbiting them. (Their website says that they want to become the greatest “Space Mechanics”).

The need for such a maintenance facility in space can be attributed to the the high number of satellites that are estimated to be launched by 2030 -- around 25,000. Antler, a deep tech VC, which recently invested in InspeCity, estimates that 10 per cent of such satellites, around 2500 of them will need maintenance right after launch.

Chowdhury pointed out that sending astronauts to repair such structures (for instance the Hubble Telescope Servicing Missions) is very expensive, due to the high prices of launches, and a re-usable autonomous robotic platform can drive down costs significantly.

Realising the O’Neill dream

Going forward, VEDA will eventually aid InspeCity in creating ecosystems from the structures that are already in space.

How?

“Imagine a rocket heading for space,” Chowdhury said. “The last stage of the rocket is shaped like a cylinder, and it has a tank for oxygen and nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen."

"So if we can leverage that tank, cut it open, weld some more components into it; and if there are several such modules, I can put them into some kind of circle (with the help of VEDA) and start rotating it,” Chowdhury said.

According to the O’Neill cylinder theory, two cylinders rotating in opposite directions would provide artificial gravity.

A still from Interstellar showing Cooper Station, a habitable ecosystem based on physicist Gerard K O'Neill's theories

For doing this, Chowdhury said he is in talks with rocket manufacturers such as Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace, which last year became the first Indian private company to launch a rocket into space, and Agnikul Cosmos, the Chennai-based startup that is planning to launch its maiden rocket soon.

“I'm sure that we can get along in that direction. We can start leveraging materials that are already up there, manipulate it autonomously in space,” he said.

Many tests necessary

To build this platform and to work on his startup, Chowdhury has taken a one-year leave from his role as a professor at IIT Bombay.

He will be working on creating a robust propulsion system and an artificial intelligence-based rendezvous and proximity operation system that will allow the platform to approach satellites or bodies. They will also be needing a robotic arm.

“Innovation is going to be in these three areas. We have targeted that we should be able to demonstrate the propulsion system in space,” he said. The rendezvous and proximity tests will be conducted on-ground, he added.

The startup recently secured $1.5 million in pre-seed funding from deep tech venture capital firm Speciale Invest to develop these technologies and expand InspeCity’s team.

Chowdhury declined to comment on a timeframe for these tests, as he said that there was a bottleneck in the electronics supply chain, and their work would depend on how quickly they could acquire such components.