In New Space Race, Enter the Entrepreneurs

They only thing Mr. Bigelow has missing in my mind is either one of our 1.2 MW Solar Solar Arrays, a 8 MW European Sail Tower Module and 2 (two) 50 cm DS4G Ion Drive to go to the moon in 25 minutes. (45 if he wants to stop). Kevin

Date: Monday, June 7, 2010, 4:14 PM

FYI,

"In New Space Race, Enter the Entrepreneurs"
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/science/space/08space.html

: At the Bigelow Aerospace factory here, the full-size space station
: mockups sitting on the warehouse floor look somewhat like puffy
: white watermelons. The interiors offer a hint of what spacious
: living in space might look like.

: "Every astronaut we have come in here just says, `Wow,' " said
: Robert T. Bigelow, the company founder. "They can't believe the
: size of this thing."

: Four years from now, the company plans for real modules to be
: launched and assembled into the solar system's first private space
: station. Paying customers primarily nations that do not have the
: money or expertise to build a space program from scratch would
: arrive a year later.

: In 2016, a second, larger station would follow. The two Bigelow
: stations would then be home to 36 people at a time six times as
: many as currently live on the International Space Station.

: If this business plan unfolds as it is written the company has
: two fully inflated test modules in orbit already Bigelow will be
: buying 15 to 20 rocket launchings in 2017 and in each year after,
: providing ample business for the private companies that the Obama
: administration would like to finance for the transportation of
: astronauts into orbit the so-called commercial crew initiative.

: President Obama's budget proposal for 2011 calls for investing
: $6 billion over five years for probably two or more companies to
: develop spacecraft capable of carrying people into space. Then,
: instead of operating its own systems, like the space shuttles, NASA
: would buy rides for its astronauts on these commercial space taxis.

: "This represents the entrance of the entrepreneurial mind-set into
: a field that is poised for rapid growth and new jobs,"
: Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden Jr., the administrator of the National
: Aeronautics and Space Administration, said in February. "And NASA
: will be driving competition, opening new markets and access to
: space and catalyzing the potential of American industry."

: Officials have been careful not to say their commercial crew plan
: relies on a market beyond NASA, but for now, Bigelow appears to be
: the only non-NASA buyer for commercial crew services.

: "Nobody," Mr. Bigelow said of competition he sees on the horizon.

: Thus, the rosier promises of the president's plan rest on this
: enigmatic, 100-employee company located on 50 acres of desert not
: far from the casinos and strip clubs and the ability of
: Mr. Bigelow, an iconoclast who made his fortune in real estate
: including the Budget Suites of America hotel chain, to get his
: dreams off the ground.

: He has spent about $180 million of his own money so far and has
: said he is willing to spend up to $320 million more. An expansion
: of the factory will double the amount of floor space as the company
: begins the transition from research and development to production.

: Mr. Bigelow only occasionally gives interviews, and except for
: Michael N. Gold, the director of Bigelow's Washington office, the
: employees almost never speak publicly. A company document titled
: "Some Important Bigelow Aerospace Cultural Values" implores
: employees, "Keep your work and the work of your co-workers very
: private from people outside the company." (Mr. Gold said that the
: confidentiality stems from federal regulations designed to protect
: technological information and that the engineers are busy working.)

: The Las Vegas site is hemmed by barbed wire and patrolled by armed
: guards.

: The soundness of the business case is unknown to outsiders.
: Mr. Bigelow declines to say if he has firm commitments from any
: countries or companies to rent space on his space stations. In
: recent years, he has played down the notion that he is building a
: space hotel for rich tourists, although he says space tourism could
: provide a part of his business.

: Over the past year, Mr. Gold visited countries like Japan, South
: Korea, Singapore, the Netherlands, England and Sweden to gauge
: interest. A stay on a Bigelow station, including transportation, is
: currently priced at just under $25 million a person for 30 days.
: That is less than half the more than $50 million a seat that NASA
: is paying for rides alone on Soyuz spacecraft to the International
: Space Station. Doubling the stay to 60 days adds just $3.75 million
: more.

: For a country or company willing to sign up for a four-year
: commitment, the lease for an entire six-person module would cost
: just under $395 million a year, and that would include
: transportation for a dozen people each year. "You see why this is
: attractive for the sovereign client market," Mr. Gold said.

: The Bigelow prices are good through 2018, and Mr. Bigelow said the
: prices would drop by then if, as he expects, rocket prices drop.

: "We're very comfortable with our numbers," he said, although he
: declined to discuss the details. Space Exploration Technologies
: Corporation, or SpaceX, which is the most optimistic in reducing
: launching costs, estimates that rides to space on its Falcon 9
: rockets would be $20 million a seat.

: "You have to trust a little bit that we're making these investments
: because we think it's going to make sense economically at the end
: of the day," Mr. Bigelow said. "We won't execute our business plan
: if those numbers aren't there."

: His space stations are not his only interest in space. "I've been a
: researcher and student of U.F.O.'s for many, many years,"
: Mr. Bigelow said. "Anybody that does research, if people bother to
: do quality research, come away absolutely convinced. You don't have
: to have personal encounters."

: He added: "People have been killed. People have been hurt. It's
: more than observational kind of data."

: Other views that run counter to mainstream science include a belief
: in the power of prayer and a disbelief in the Big Bang theory.

: The idea of inflatable spacecraft dates back almost to the
: beginning of the space age, solving a stubborn conundrum with
: putting stuff in space. Rockets are tall, but not particularly
: wide. With inflatable spacecraft, the structure can be packed
: tightly into the payload and then filled with air once in orbit.

: NASA's Echo I and Echo II satellites, launched in 1960 and 1964,
: were large Mylar balloons. NASA commissioned Goodyear to build
: prototypes of an inflatable space station, which looked like a big
: rubber inner tube.

: The rubber space stations never flew, in part because of an obvious
: design weakness they could pop if hit by meteoroids.

: The idea remained dormant until the 1990s, when NASA started
: exploring how to build living quarters for a human mission to Mars.
: William C. Schneider, then the senior engineer at the Johnson Space
: Center in Houston, returned to the inflatable design.

: Instead of rubber like the 1960s Goodyear design, Dr. Schneider
: used an airtight bladder surrounded by Kevlar straps. "It dumps its
: pressure load into the straps," Dr. Schneider said. "Those two
: together make a very efficient design."

: Outside the straps, alternating layers of aluminized fabric and
: foam absorb and disperse the impacts of micrometeoroids, providing
: better protection than metal structures, Dr. Schneider said.

: Even though he was sure the design was sound, he built two
: prototypes of the TransHab module and demonstrated their resilience
: in a swimming pool and a vacuum chamber. "People would think of it
: as a balloon," said Dr. Schneider, who now is a visiting professor
: at Texas A&M University. "In cases, it was six times as good as
: needed. It's absolutely verified."

: In the meantime, the Mars plans were shelved as too expensive, and
: TransHab was reimagined as a crew quarters module for the
: International Space Station. Then the space station costs grew, and
: in 2000, Congress prohibited NASA from spending any more money on
: TransHab.

: Mr. Bigelow, 66, said that he was inspired by NASA's successes of
: the 1960s, culminating with the Moon landings, and that he always
: hoped to invest in space someday. He read about TransHab in 1998,
: and learning of the project's imminent demise, he established
: Bigelow Aerospace in 1999 and bought an exclusive license to the
: NASA patents.

: Dr. Schneider joined Bigelow as a consultant. The Bigelow designs
: are essentially very close to his NASA work, Dr. Schneider said,
: with some changes like replacing the Kevlar with Vectran, another
: bullet-resistant fabric. There are also some notable improvements
: like the addition of small windows, already tested on the Genesis I
: and II test modules that were successfully launched from Russia
: using converted ballistic missiles.

: "He had great manufacturing capability," Dr. Schneider said. "They
: have some real good engineers as well. I'm sure they will be very
: successful."

: The biggest hole in his plans, Mr. Bigelow said, is the one not
: entirely in his control: getting to and from the space stations.

: For a while, Bigelow and Lockheed Martin were collaborating on a
: small capsule that would launch on an Atlas V rocket, which
: currently launches Air Force satellites and other payloads.
: Lockheed Martin won the NASA contract for building the Orion crew
: capsule for NASA's Constellation program and dropped out of the
: work with Bigelow.

: Mimicking the $10 million X Prize that spurred the development of
: the suborbital spaceplane SpaceShipOne, Mr. Bigelow offered
: $50 million to anyone who could build an orbital spacecraft. No one
: tried to claim the prize before it expired in January.

: Bigelow is collaborating with Boeing using $18 million that NASA
: has provided for preliminary design of a commercial crew capsule.

: Keith Reiley, the program manager at Boeing for the capsule, said
: he was not very familiar with Bigelow's space station plans, but
: was impressed with what Bigelow has contributed to Boeing's
: capsule. "They're a lot more entrepreneurial than we are,"
: Mr. Reiley said, "and it's refreshing for us."

: If the Boeing spacecraft is ready by 2014, that is when the dance
: of Bigelow space station modules will begin.

: A habitat called Sundancer, with an inflated volume of about
: 6,400 cubic feet, would launch first. A separate rocket would then
: carry two Bigelow astronauts to take up residence in Sundancer as
: additional pieces a second Sundancer, a larger habitat of about
: 11,700 cubic feet, and a central connecting node are launched.
: The modules are to dock by themselves with the astronauts present
: to fix any glitches.

: Once the stations are up, Bigelow still needs to demonstrate that
: it can juggle the logistics of supplying food, water and air, as
: well as fix the inevitable glitches that will arise. Mr. Bigelow
: said that he would hire people with the needed experience and
: skills, and that space stations were not all that different from
: hotels.

: "I've had four decades of serving people, tens and tens and tens of
: thousands of people, all over the southwest part of the United
: States," he said. "I have four decades of building all kinds of
: things. The principles are the same."

: As a private company, Bigelow can operate space stations much more
: efficiently than NASA and its governmental partners can operate the
: International Space Station, Mr. Bigelow said. (Another of the
: company values declares: "Make up your mind quickly. Don't take
: forever, people are waiting, the company is waiting, the future is
: waiting and time costs money.")

: NASA's interest in inflatables has also been revived once again.
: Among several large technology demonstration projects proposed in
: the president's 2011 budget is an inflatable module for the
: International Space Station. Bigelow is currently talking to NASA
: about that.

: Mr. Bigelow envisions variations of the inflatable modules being
: used for a Moon base or a mission to Mars.

: "Our hope is that we can serve NASA," he said. "Because we can do
: it so much more economically."

Mark Reiff