There’s an interesting piece on Explorersweb about Robert Bigelow and his plans for space habitats. It provides a good overview of his success in launching two Genesis prototypes and his plans for full-scale Sundancer space stations.
The Genesis modules have performed as advertised, but the Achille’s heel of the whole operation remains transportation into orbit, which is neither plentiful nor cheap. The only vehicles that could make the trip are:
- American space shuttle
- Russian Soyuz
- Chinese Soyuz-derived Shenzhou
NASA plans to retire the shuttle, which is too expensive anyway. The Russian and Chinese vehicles are three seaters – too few to make a space station profitable even if they were available for commercial flights, which they are not. So, what are Bigelow’s options?
Bigelow in fact set up an American Space Prize some years ago, offering $50 million to the first American-built, privately funded rocket/spacecraft that can send five people into orbit, dock with a Bigelow Aerospace habitat and stay there for 6 months. The deadline for the Prize is set for January 10, 2010.
Elon Musk is pretty confident he is Bigelow’s man: “SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launcher is scheduled to carry a payload for Bigelow Aerospace in 2009 or 2010,” Elon said last year, “and Bigelow’s vision of a system of orbiting space habitats serve as a promising destination for SpaceX’s Dragon crewed spacecraft.”
Musk’s company, SpaceX, must built a human-rated version of the Dragon, which neither he nor Bigelow seem to have enough money to fund on their own. Hence, Musk has been publicly lobbying for NASA to provide an additional $300 million under its COTS program, which has been helping to fund the development of the Dragon freighter and its Falcon 9 launch vehicle. And he would have to do that in less than a year.
Good luck with that.
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SpaceX has been developing the man-rated Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule for some time now, both of which are almost ready to fly. The Dragon vehicle has to meet NASA’s man rating criteria before it can even launch cargo to the station since it will inhabited by the crew once it is attached to the station.
The only real development hurdle remaining to actually putting a crew on board is the launch abort system (LAS). The $300 million that SpaceX is lobbying for is to accelerate the development of the LAS. SpaceX can and will develop it on their own if they have to, but the extra NASA funding could bring results much faster.
Bigelow is doing several things wrong.
1) He should be proving a Sundancer or a BA-330 by selling it at costs to NASA. In fact, they could see it to Britain. Either model could be attached to the ISS and simple act as a warehouse, or just spare room. If NASA or the others are truly concerned about how strong, then simply keep it closed except when using it. After a year, this could be used. The advantage is that it would be CHEAP to bring up on the last shuttle AND it would prove to regular customers that it is effective.
2) Bigelow will get fairly cheap rides via SpaceX. BUT they need more variety. If anything, they should be getting Scaled to be building their SSIII Concept. There is little doubt that it will be a nice way to get humans to space, at a low costs as well. Combine SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Heavy, Falcon 9 with a dragn, and a Scaled Composite SSIII, and Bigelow is a HUGE hit.
One last thing. 400M of the recent stimulus bill IS earmarked for SpaceX and the human rating. Basically, Musk HAS the money.
Haven’t heard of Bigelow in about a year! Is the company still running?
Yes. Waiting for an affordable ride into space.