How do you make research in space less expensive? Why not build a space station where half of the structure functions as a luxury hotel–and the other half belongs to NASA's astronauts?

That's the idea behind the Managed, Reconfigurable, In-space Nodal Assembly (or MARINA, for short), a conceptual design from five MIT graduate students that recently won the graduate division of NASA's Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts design competition. Acting as a tenant of the space hotel concept would cost NASA about $360 annually–drastically less than what it costs to operate the International Space Station. It would save 16% of NASA's overall budget–about $3 billion per year.

According to Matt Moraguez, a graduate student in MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics who led the proposal, MARINA has a modular design, with standardized interfaces that could connect any single point on the structure to any other. This standardization would allow other companies to create products and services for people living on MARINA–and create more possibilities for monetizing valuable space. Modularity would also enable the structure to transform into a vehicle for transporting people to Mars.