Question Your World: Orbiting Refuel and Repair Stations?

Consider yourself lucky if you’ve never run out of gas while driving your car. This small and easily preventable inconvenience can be a real problem for getting to work on time or just looking smooth on a date. The problem becomes way worse when you’re far from the closest gas station. It’s bad enough to be stranded fifty miles away, but imagine being hundreds of miles away from the Earth’s surface and running into the same issue. Running out of fuel in such a hostile and foreign environment would be a really dangerous problem. Engineers and scientists are currently tackling this problem by designing orbiting refueling and repair stations, or as they call them MEVs - Mission Extension Vehicles.

Listen to this week’s Question Your World Radio report by the Science Museum of Virginia.

Discover more on this topic here.