Bigelow Launching New Company to Sell Private Space Stations

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The future of spacecraft in lower Earth orbit (LEO) looks to be an increasingly commercial affair. Bigelow Aerospace, a Las Vegas-based company that builds livable space habitats, has now created a spinoff company known as Bigelow Space Operations (BSO). BSO will market and operate any space habitats that Bigelow sells.

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The creation of BSO signals that Bigelow is preparing for a future of commercial space living. Recently leaked NASA documents show that the Trump Administration wants to convert the International Space Station into a commercial venture, and BSO is betting that businesses including private scientific ventures and hotels will be interested in creating a profit above the Earth.

A prototype Bigelow habitat, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), has been connected to the ISS since 2016. It's proven such a successful addition that last year NASA extended its contract for an additional three years.

But Bigelow is thinking past the BEAM. In its press release announcing BSO, it highlights its planned launches of the B330-1 and B330-2, spacecraft with 6-person capacity, in 2021.

The B330 has its roots in NASA. In 1999, hotelier Robert Bigelow read about an experimental NASA idea called TransHAB. An inflatable habitat could be launched into space in a collapsed form, and " once in orbit, where the acceleration and vibration loads are zero, it would be inflated to the required volume," according to developer William Schneider. While the program showed promise, in 2000 it was canceled by Congress over concerns about spending. President Clinton was "disappointed" in the bill, but he signed it and TransHAB development was paused.

Bigelow has said that because his weaknesses in math ruled out a career with NASA, he resolved he would become rich enough to develop his own space program. After a successful career running Budget Suites of America, a chain of motels, he saw his opportunity with the cancellation of TransHAB. He purchased the abandoned technology from NASA and has been developing it ever since. The company refers to B330s has "an entire space station in one launch."

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Now, BSO will spend a year trying to figure out where the concrete business opportunities in space lie. The B330 could offer “orbit space for science and research at much a lower price than ISS,” Blair Bigelow, the company’s vice president of corporate strategy, wrote in an email to The Verge. Robert, BSO president, also said in a press call that BSO is interested in “helping foreign countries to establish their human space programs.”

There will be no shortage of BSO competitors, both private and public. Elon Musk's SpaceX, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, governments ranging from America to China, all have or want to have a stake in the future of LEO business. But Bigelow looks at the field and sees confusion.

“I get an uneasy feeling that there is not a plan,” Bigelow says of what to do with the ISS and what LEO will look like, in say, ten years. “There is not something in place to actually embrace all the partners and say, we have a future for you [in lower Earth orbit].”

With the creation of BSO, he's given himself three years to make that future himself.

Source: The Verge

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