Robert Bigelow

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“The Company Was Working To Perfect Space Hotels Before Private Launch Vehicles Were Ready”

March 30, 2016 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

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bigelowspacehotelIf it weren’t for the lack of tourists, the space-hotel business would be booming.

Someday Airbnb-E.T. will come along and disrupt the inflatable space-hotel industry, but first there has to be such a sector. Inflatables meant for life on Mars and the moon are said to be possible right now–hopefully they’re superior to the average Earth cruise ship–but the stratosphere won’t become a tourist trap until we’re ready for takeoff. Until Musk and many others can put us on another planet, such outfits depend on government contracts with NASA to sustain and develop them.

From Emily Calandrelli’s Techcrunch piece on the topic:

Bigelow Aerospace was founded over 15 years ago by Robert Bigelow who made his fortune from his ownership of the Budget Suites of America. Bigelow originally licensed inflatable habitat technology from NASA after Congress cancelled their expandable habitat project known as TransHab in 2000.

However, the concept of space-based inflatables dates back to the early 60’s. In fact, NASA’s first communications satellite, Echo 1, was a spacecraft based on a balloon design. While the inflatable technology at the time worked sufficiently for satellites, available materials, like rubber, simply wouldn’t cut it for crewed missions.

In recent years, advanced materials have made human-rated inflatable habitats possible. Bigelow Aerospace was founded on the premise that space tourists would be interested in staying in space hotels orbiting the Earth. The company successfully launched its first (uncrewed) modules, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, in 2006 and 2007, and they’re both still in orbit today.

Unfortunately, Bigelow Aerospace was a bit ahead of their time. The company was working to perfect space hotels before private launch vehicles were ready to launch people (paying space hotel customers) into orbit. These factors contributed to a mass-layoff of 30-50 employees from their 150-person workforce earlier this year. Even now, human-rated vehicles won’t be ready until 2017 or 2018.

So in the meantime, Bigelow Aerospace has pursued contracts with NASA.•

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“Bigelow Wants To Experiment With Inflatable Habitats That Will Allow People To Live In Space”

May 26, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Robert Bigelow wants to be a realtor to the stars–literal stars. 

The Space Act just passed by Congress makes it legal (in this country, at least) for U.S. companies to keep anything they mine from asteroids, other planets, etc. The entrepreneur Bigelow wants the government to go further and give him permission to develop inflatable real estate on a patch of the moon.

From Brian Fung at the Washington Post: 

Under the SPACE Act, which just passed the House, businesses that do asteroid mining will be able to keep whatever they dig up:

Any asteroid resources obtained in outer space are the property of the entity that obtained such resources, which shall be entitled to all property rights thereto, consistent with applicable provisions of Federal law.

This is how we know commercial space exploration is serious. The opportunity here is so vast that businesses are demanding federal protections for huge, floating objects they haven’t even surveyed yet. …

Technically the FAA’s jurisdiction covers launches and reentries only — but under a request from hotel and aspiring aerospace mogul Robert Bigelow, that power could grow.

You see, Bigelow wants to experiment with inflatable habitats that will allow people to live in space. By getting an FAA launch license that gives him access to space, Bigelow would be able to stake out an exclusive piece of the moon.

Space law experts believe that this exclusive territory could be very, very big. That’s because under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, crewed vehicles are entitled to operate inside a 125-mile “non-interference” zone designed to keep astronauts safe, Joanne Gabrynowicz, the former editor of the Journal of Space Law, told Harvard Political Review. If the same standard were applied to commercial space operations on lunar or other extraterrestrial bodies, then Bigelow could become a leader in the first major land rush of outer space.•

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