Added: 1 year ago
From: 21stCenturyComm
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  • Interesting, so basically the only thing they need for this to work is a reliable, commercially available transportation to orbit. Let's hope it materializes.

  • Do not underestimate Burt Rutan. I watched a documentary on the Spaceship 1 flight back in 2004. He had a "gleam' in his eye as he talked about future space stations. Especially regarding heat test strips of the craft after its 1st flight. His designs are intended to BE orbital.Theyll require no heatshields (tiles) because he'll do what I would, a POWERED DESCENT to the atmosphere till the 50 mile mark and at Mach 3 go to the standard entry. Simple. And no need to attach tiles or damage to them.

  • Put 4 of them on the international space station for more room to spare.

  • Wow,make hundreds of them and send them to the moon and mars too.

  • those walls are super thick

  • Sorry, that previous is @unatics

  • They have two (unmanned) working prototypes in space already. One is 10% size, one is 45% size. They've both done okay. NASA did the original design, and seems to think it will work . . . can you link us to the paperdream data that led you to state this wouldn't work?

  • Perhaps you could use a mag-lev launch system to place it into space ??

  • That big module is a bit daunting because if you could lift one to orbit you wouldn't stop at one imagine a space station with between 3 and 5 or even 6 of these modules you could get totally LOST in there……………seriously.

  • Wish someone would gag that bloody woman in the background....

  • Greatly respect NASA, but it has an inherent handicap. It has to pioneer new frontiers with incredible safety standards. Commercial space flight will have greater losses, sadly, but move much more quickly. Mr. Bigelow famously said by the time we get back to the Moon, the Chinese will be there to greet us (or not since theoretically they could have 'claimed' the whole moon with a colony by then.)

  • How do they plan on erecting all that interior scaffolding when the module is so much smaller before it inflates?

  • @baillou2 I'm sure part of the payload will consist of flat-packs that will be assembled when in orbit.

  • The Falcon Heavy should be able to launch their big module no problem

  • Very cool i want one

  • unfortunately it is a paperdream. Lack of pressure, low temperatures versus high temperatures in sunlight, space radiation will collpase the idea.

  • @unatics Bigelow Aerospace has 2 working modules in orbit right now and a team full of talented engineers. Pressure, temperature, & radiation are all solvable problems. These guys wouldn't be wasting their time and Bigelow wouldn't be wasting a large percentage of his fortune unless he was totally committed and confident that their is a profitable market.

  • It is foolish that NASA does not allow these inflatable habs to be apart of the ISS !!

  • This + Falcon Heavy or the planned Falcon X after it...WIN!

  • I get the feeling this will merge well with the Virgin flights.

  • @the26thhour

    Virgin will not be going into earth orbit, they are only suborbital - they'd need like 10 times more power to get there. SpaceX on the other hand will have the ability to serve/cooperate with Bigelow.

    Virgin = amusement for rich people. Sure, if i had the dough, why not.. but it just up, feel weightless and fall back down again

  • Saturn V could lift 130 tons to LEO and 50 tons to the moon. If we had continued to use the Saturn V.... and not wasted our money on the Shuttle (which costs a lot more than they claim), we could have modified the Saturn V program to make the first stage recoverable by parachute as well as attachable boosters like the shuttle which could have given it much more lifting capability.

  • Comment removed

  • These folks will dwarf what NASA can do and have a complete station up and spend nowhere near $1 billion dollars. Imagine... every fortunate 500 company and every nation on Earth can have one of these? With advanced propulsion this bigelow design could get anywhere in the solar system? We have the lifting and orbital technology down to a science... If we can get a power supply that can generate 1 kilowatt fir every kilogram of power plant and run continuously for 1 year.. Mars here we come!

  • @granddad2002 Sounds like you're already there

  • @granddad2002

    Too bad its nothing but a lease, though. Also for every person you send into space, it will require more support personell. If a country sends on of their aspiring scientists to one of these "scientific resorts", a pysciatrist would need to be on call. :) hehe.

  • @granddad2002 NASA sent a probe to every planet in the solar system. Nothing these guys have on deck is close to that.

  • @monokhem No one is saying that NASA's accomplishments aren't impressive, but you are comparing a 50-year old program to one that is about 1/5th that old. Imagine where NASA would be today if they worked as efficiently as Bigelow. I have no doubt that Bigelow will be synonymous with "space" in just a few short years.

  • @nick2253 Nasa would have a lot of inflatable moduals in orbit, we would be getting there in appolo capsules on Saturns 1b's which would be the most powerfull rocket we would have. We would have no deep space probes, no hubble telescope, and no martian rovers.

    NASA doesn't do things "efficiently", it does things no one has ever done before, and you get to do one or the other. Bigelow gets to be efficient because they do one thing that NASA has been doing for decades.

  • @monokhem That is not at all the case. Doing something novel does not exclude the possibility of "efficiency". Most companies are doing new things, but they are constantly called out on inefficiencies. And NASA is no exception. Under Clinton, NASA began work on TranHub (over 10 years ago). Bigelow (with 115 workers) is almost done; NASA, with 18k employees, isn't. Yes, NASA has a lot more than one project. But no project has run at the speed or efficiency of Bigelow.

  • @nick2253 All of Bigelow's work is based on the tranhub, so you have to include all the work NASA did developing the tech in what it took to get Bigelow's opperation where it is today.

    You might as well say imagine where we would be today if Christopher Columbus had worked as effeciently as Trans Atlantic ocean liners. He was an explorer, and they were a commercial method for traveling well established routs.

    Context.

  • ok, pretty cool that the 2100 could be lifter all at once if we had a Super Heavy Lifter... but how many flights would we need to put the ISS in orbit if we ALREADY had a Super Heavy Lifter?

  • @rogerpenna If we're talking in the 100 tonne class the ISS would take at least 4 flights if only going by mass.

  • @thedeviluknow

    thanks. But either way, it would have been assembled much faster if we already had a heavy lifter.

  • God I hope they actually build the BA-2100. That thing is massive!

  • It's amazing to think that they could launch in one go a pre-assembled module with twice the capacity of the ISS. Snap two of those together (for the added safety of redundant systems) and you've got a Moonbase, or a spaceship that could take over a dozen people to any of the outer planets in comfort. Truly amazing.

  • A truly breathtaking look into the future of humanity.

  • Kewl, thanx.

  • PS: the first Sundancer - the 180 cu/m module - is manifested to go up on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in 2014-2015.

  • Bigelow's modules have their own propulsion systems and can be assembled into a station by remote control. Each station would also have a large propulsion bus/hub for docking the modules, orbit maneuvering etc. There are numerous attachment ports on the hub, so an EVA module isn't out of the question and IMO very likely for doing repairs.

  • Correction, I meant full station assembly, I understand the individual modules inflate.

  • Will the module assembly require EVA, or can it be assembled remotely?

  • Very cool

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