Bigelow Aerospace's Space Station

Bigelow Aerospace Vice President Jay Ingham provides this overview of the company's commercial space station plans using scale models at the International Symposium for Private and Commercial Spaceflight.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• space tourism
• space commercialization
• space tourists
• Bigelow Aerospace
• Robert Bigelow

[mattetjus]

@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

[SteeVeeDeeBoy]

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

[Winner8501]

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.

[THEORIGINALEXSCAPER]

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.

[centaurusa99764]

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

[centaurusa99764]

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

[ActiveStorage]

those walls are super thick

[chris24jh]

Sorry, that previous is @unatics

[chris24jh]

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?

[spacemouse1]

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

[Risenangelicaegis]

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.