The gap
STMD funds crew health and habitation technology to TRL 3 or 4 through GCD, SBIR Phase I and II, and university grants. ESDMD programs buy at TRL 7 and above. Nothing in the budget structure owns TRL 4 to 7.
Examples of what is stuck there today: deep pressure sleep restraint (flown parabolic, 2024, no path to a station test); full body haptic EVA trainer (reviewed by five offices at Marshall, no office with a line item to buy it); worn crew ultrasound on Butterfly silicon (parabolic campaign this October, no HRP mechanism to fund a station demo); soft pressure walls and deployable interiors (concept stage, no analog to test in).
The Moon Base Architecture User’s Guide still lists FN-H-101, FN-H-102, and FN-X-103 as unfilled. Delivery has CLPS. Mobility has the LTV services contract in work. Crew health and habitation have no equivalent service model.
Why the middle has no owner
Marshall owns habitation systems and the HDU. JSC owns crew health, HRP, and training. Ames owns human factors. Each competes for the same directorate budget, so a center that matures hardware for another center’s program strengthens a rival.
Primes on HHPC2 and the Moon Base contracts develop in house because internal engineering is billable and outside hardware is a subcontract to justify. SBIR firms reach the end of Phase II at TRL 4 to 5 and find no Phase III buyer because the program is not funded yet. Commercial station operators are now each building training, countermeasures, and interiors in parallel, with no shared shelf.
The Lab
SAL is an independent frontier lab based in San Francisco and Washington, built on seven years of advisory work with station operators and primes, structured like a focused research organization (Convergent Research, Arc Institute, Astera). Its entire mission is TRL 4 to 7 for crew health and habitation. The four technologies above are its portfolio; we know where they are stuck because we are the ones stuck.
Closest precedents: Aerospace Corporation as FFRDC for the Space Force, APL and JPL for NASA, LSII with LSIC as its convening layer. LSII matures surface technology to TRL 5 or 6 inside the agency and hands it to a program; nothing outside the agency owns the handoff to a commercial buyer, and nothing inside it covers the human side of a surface stay.
The lab applies the GCD maturation mechanisms outside the agency, led by the person who ran that portfolio at STMD: shared figures of merit per technology, a two week technical integration meeting across centers, primes, and operators, and a facilities and experts appendix so hardware is tested at the center with the chamber, not the center with the budget.
Funding: strategic capital for the portfolio, Space Act Agreements and BAA awards for demonstrations, Phase III and offtake commitments for the shelf. Output is hardware at TRL 6 to 7 with a test record, sold to whoever flies it.
The open question
The lab does not bid on the contracts it integrates for, or the neutral position collapses; the integrator function is firewalled (separate entity, no equity in outcomes it advises on). What it cannot do is self appoint. The mandate has to come from the Administrator, OMB, an appropriations rider, or a coalition of operators and primes who sign offtake letters.
Prior attempts to occupy the middle (CASIS as ISS National Lab manager, Centennial Challenges, T2 licensing) show what happens without a mandate and a buyer at the end. We are working on which path is realistic in FY27 and which program is the first buyer.
We are in residence at Evermay in Georgetown through October. If you have a technology stuck in the middle, or a view on the mandate, come by. Tea, a walk of the garden, and an hour of argument.