Big plans, low prices

The Space Review ^ | 04/16/07 | Jeff Foust

[KevinDavis]

For the last several years, there has been a degree of mystique surrounding Bigelow Aerospace. While based in a city best known for flashy spectacle and overexuberance, the Las Vegas company kept a very low profile: people in the industry knew they were working on something related to the inflatable habitat technology the company had licensed from NASA after the TransHab effort came to an end—perhaps for space hotels, given that company founder Robert Bigelow owned the Budget Suites of America hotel chain—but beyond that there was little information about the company and its plans for that technology. And that low profile appeared to suit Bigelow and his company just fine.

In the last year or so, though, Bigelow has worked to raise the public profile of his company considerably, granting media interviews and even tours of his North Las Vegas manufacturing facility. In an interview last July, he explained that this change is in part because it was hard to keep his company’s plans secret as they started to launch spacecraft, as they did last July with their Genesis 1 subscale module, and because they had something to sell in the near term through the “Fly Your Stuff” effort. (See “Bigelow Aerospace’s big day at the rodeo”, The Space Review, July 24, 2006) However, the speculation about the company’s long-term plans remained.

[KevinDavis]

[Thrownatbirth]

The problem with for-profit space tourism is that somewhere corners will be cut and safety will degrade. One failed gasket, and that’s it for the industry.

[SunkenCiv]

Private space station test delayed till May
msnbc | 04/17/07 | Alan Boyle
Posted on 04/18/2007 9:47:07 PM EDT by KevinDavis
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1819750/posts

[SunkenCiv]

Mote-L6? Just an idea...