History
The Stark Space Station was designed by Tony Stark's new company Stark Enterprises after he regained his fortune following Obadiah Stane's appropriation of its predecessor, Stark International. Stark kept the creation of the Stark Space Station in low profile, but intended to use it as a publicty rocket to launch Stark Enterprises.[5]
Tony got the idea for creating the space station after helping the government reroute a stray satellite. He realized that due to the increase of the United States' activities in outer space, humanity would need a permanent station to monitor the hundreds of satellites already in orbit, where scientific experiments requiring zero-gravity could be performed.[6] Tony envisoned the station as a global research station dedicated to the betterment of humankind,[7] and the vanguard in the commercial and humanitarian exploration of space.[8] Stark and his allies spent the following weeks persuading potential contributors, and the project was made public at the Eastwick Hotel Convention Center. A month later, Iron Man took to oribt the station's first components, its power plant.[6]
The following months, Iron Man and Jim Rhodes regularly flew up to the station to assemble its components.[9] When they worked on the installation of the station's final components, A.I.M. agents stowed away aboard Rhodes' shuttle and infiltrated the station's data storage labs to confiscate evidence of their orbital lens which the station's equipment had recorded since they happened to be in proximity of each other. After installing the station's monitor systems, Iron Man and Rhodes caught notice of the stowaways and confronted them. Before escaping, the A.I.M. soldiers released the self-replicating organic matter-consuming bio-weapon Omega Bacillus, which began to spread through the station. Iron Man and Rhodey managed to escape, and were forced to leave the station to become entirely contaminated by the plague, thus inoperable.[5] Since a full-scale cleanup would be cost prohibitive,[10] the station remained abandoned and was only visited by Tony once during the Armor Wars crisis to use its scanners to track down the unique radiation given off by the his stolen technology.[7]
When a governmental experimental creature known as the Satellite Killer ravaged the deep-space laboratory named the Koontz where it had been created, it escaped and sought the nearest man-made object, which was the Stark Space Station. Tony Stark was approached by government officials to have Iron Man investigate the Koontz, and he tracked down the monster to the Stark Space Station. After finding himself cornered by the Satellite Killer, Iron Man managed to kill it by sealing it inside a room and activating the air supply, with the oxygen reawakening the Omega Bacillus.[10]
One of Stark Enterprises' potential partners, Winston Cauwfield of Cauwfield Chemicals, who intended to lease the station, proposed Tony a procedure to destroy the virus that could be implemented by Iron Man by releasing the contents of two canisters, one agent to mutate the virus into a non-dissolving form and another to destroy it. After installing the first cylinder, Iron Man activated the stations' gravity and air supply to spread the agent. An A.I.M. bomb that had gone unnoticed reacted to the oxygen supply, causing it to explode and trap Iron Man under rubble when he was trying to dipose of it, as well as causing damage to his armor's systems. Stark managed to escape from the rubble and activated the second cylinder, getting rid of the virus.[8]
Destruction
The station remained under lease to Cauwfield, and it was the place of creation of the Technovore, the accidental result of two scientists' last ditch effort to produce compelling results in their nanotechnology project to avoid having it shut down. The Technovore escaped, and began to assimilate the station's crew members. When Stark Enterprises lost all contact with the station, Stark sent his remotely-piloted Iron Man Armor to investigate. After encountering the crewmembers assimilated by the parasite and destroying its bodies, the creature regenerated into a single form.[2] The Technovore began to assimilate the entirety of the station, growing in size and apetite, and eventually engulfed the entirety of it, twisting it to its image. Iron Man managed to stop the creature from getting down the gravity well of the Earth and Stark destroyed it by self-destructing the remotely-controlled armor while inside the monster.[3]
Years later, the Stark Space Station had been redesigned and rebuilt. It was put to use by Arno Stark to look for signs of a looming Extinction Entity,[11] a delusion caused by Arno's relapsing illness.[12] As part of his ill-conceived plan to save the Earth from this non-existing threat, Arno retrofitted the Stark Space Station with a device capable of taking control of people's minds. He was stopped by Tony Stark and his allies.[13]Residents
Notes
- The Stark Space Station was originally located 22,300 miles above Earth,[6][5] in the High Earth orbit.
- The station was complemented by a shuttle nicknamed the Skyhoop One that was test-piloted by Jim Rhodes.[14]
- The station is solar powered, but it's equipped with a back-up nuclear reactor.[10]
- With the exception of the Iron Man Armor, Tony Stark felt that the space station was his crowning technical achievement.[8]
Trivia
- The Stark Space Station cost 500 million dollars.[3]
See Also
- 17 appearance(s) of Stark Space Station
- 1 appearance(s) in handbook(s) of Stark Space Station
- 1 minor appearance(s) of Stark Space Station
- 5 mention(s) of Stark Space Station
- 9 image(s) of Stark Space Station
Links and References
References
- ↑ Iron Man #293
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Iron Man #294
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Iron Man #295
- ↑ Iron Man 2020 (Vol. 2) #3
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Iron Man #215
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Iron Man #205
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Iron Man #230
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Iron Man #256
- ↑ Iron Man #210
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Iron Man #237
- ↑ Iron Man 2020 (Vol. 2) #1
- ↑ Iron Man 2020 (Vol. 2) #6
- ↑ Iron Man 2020 (Vol. 2) #5
- ↑ Iron Man #206