The Oman Orbital Development Authority (OODA) was founded by royal decree in March 2027 with a $1.5 billion initial commitment to a feasibility study and materials programme — and a founding charter that committed to no construction timeline, no launch date, and no public capacity target. Its mandate was “a sustained forty-year programme of materials science, orbital construction technique, and cislunar logistics capability, to be reassessed every ten years against what is practically achievable, not what is politically convenient to announce.”
The strategy, as described by current director-general Dr. Mariam al-Balushi at Suhail Station’s November 2086 opening, was to wait for the infrastructure that made orbital megastructure construction economical: lunar-sourced structural material (viable only after Zvezda and Guanghan mass-driver infrastructure matured in the 2050s) and efficient cislunar tugs (viable only after the Kuzmin Drive left the laboratory). OODA spent three decades as “the least interesting press release in the Gulf” and opened the largest pressurised structure ever built off Earth sixty years after its founding.
The smaller Gulf Orbital Testbed (2049–2054) served as OODA’s orbital assembly proving ground. Suhail Station’s construction proceeded in eleven major assembly phases between 2058 and 2086.