Dr. Mariam al-Balushi is the director-general of the Oman Orbital Development Authority (OODA), the institution that opened Suhail Station at Earth-Moon L5 in November 2086 — the largest pressurised structure ever built off Earth.
Her summary of OODA’s sixty-year strategy became the defining articulation of the station’s institutional philosophy: “We were not building a hotel in 2027. We were building the capability to build a hotel, at a moment when that capability didn’t exist yet at any price. Lunar-sourced structural material wasn’t economical until the mass-driver infrastructure at Zvezda and Guanghan matured in the 2050s. Efficient cislunar tugs weren’t economical until the Kuzmin Drive left the laboratory. We spent three decades being the least interesting press release in the Gulf. We are comfortable with how that turned out.”
Asked about a regional retrospective noting Oman had been mocked for lack of ambition in the 2020s and now owned the largest off-Earth structure, she declined to gloat: “We were never in a hurry. That was the whole strategy.”