Quote from: Danderman on 10/01/2011 02:43 amAfter a decade of building buildings, making mockups and flying subscale models, it may be the case that Mr. Bigelow has decided that his business plan didn't make sense, apart from the small business with Boeing.No one here ever presented a realistic scenario where a Bigelow station could turn a profit. Howabout revenues being higher than expenses?
After a decade of building buildings, making mockups and flying subscale models, it may be the case that Mr. Bigelow has decided that his business plan didn't make sense, apart from the small business with Boeing.No one here ever presented a realistic scenario where a Bigelow station could turn a profit.
In any industry, there are companies that fail. One company failing does not mean that the next company will fail. There were plenty of search engine companies that failed leading up to Google.The reasons why Bigelow had to lay off a bunch of people has nothing to do with the overall viability of the commercial space sector. It has much more to do with the fact that Bigelow had the least viable business case of any major NewSpace company.Whenever your business case has the words "some day" in it, you are in big trouble, as in "some day there will be affordable space transportation so our prospective customers can some day visit our space station".
Bigelow has other sources of income to sustain his business at a low level for a long time if necessary.
I agree, I don't see Mr. Bigelow closing the doors, just ramping down to a core to wait for "some day" when there is cheap access to space.
...The reasons why Bigelow had to lay off a bunch of people has nothing to do with the overall viability of the commercial space sector. It has much more to do with the fact that Bigelow had the least viable business case of any major NewSpace company....
BTW, those who argued that we shouldn't fund commercial crew fully because there won't be a market besides NASA for the services are providing a pretty good example of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Congress listened, decided to put off full funding for commercial crew and tech demos (the decision isn't final, but even Congress's waiting to finalize the budget causes delays, obviously), then we hear about Bigelow laying off workers. You can't expect government stimulus/seed-funding to work very well if you don't fund it fully.
As far as we can tell, this is far more about transportation timelines than about the business case, so people arguing that point on either side are showing their agenda.
Quote from: Robotbeat on 10/01/2011 05:47 pmBTW, those who argued that we shouldn't fund commercial crew fully because there won't be a market besides NASA for the services are providing a pretty good example of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Congress listened, decided to put off full funding for commercial crew and tech demos (the decision isn't final, but even Congress's waiting to finalize the budget causes delays, obviously), then we hear about Bigelow laying off workers. You can't expect government stimulus/seed-funding to work very well if you don't fund it fully.Nope.There is a clear market for commercial spaceflight services, both suborbital and orbital. It is demonstrated.There is no clear market for a commercial space station as Bigelow intended to build. Although humans in orbit need pressurized volume, there is plenty of that available without Bigelow. What Bigelow was offering was industrial scale pressurized volume, and there don't seem to be customers for that.
Quote from: Diagoras on 10/01/2011 08:11 amAs far as we can tell, this is far more about transportation timelines than about the business case, so people arguing that point on either side are showing their agenda.I don't agree. Transportation was, and continues to be a serious problem, but the business case was never very convincing. HSF is largely a propaganda activity. Paying some commercial provider to do it for you doesn't have the same value as doing it yourself. Even the countries that effectively paid Russia for a flight to ISS (e.g. Korea, Malaysia, Brazil) could put a gloss of "international cooperation" on it. With a purely commercial venture you can't do that. It's just shipping tax payer dollars off to a foreign supplier for very little tangible return.It boggles my mind how there is so much hand wringing about US loss of HSF "leadership" and "outsourcing" it to the Russians, while the same people seem to expect other countries to be falling over themselves do the same thing.Individual wealthy tourists are the only proven market. Bigelow has insisted that this isn't his market, presumably because he doesn't think it's large enough to make his business case close.
I disagree on a point - As I see it, HSF in America is about technology push, the technology developed for HSF translates directly into new products, fabrication and manufacturing techniques and services.
The faster we can get the private sector to utilize the new market space (no pun intended), the better our economy will become.
It's just like the next SpaceX flight, it could be that it's being held up by the recent Russian failure, ...
Quote from: BrightLight on 10/01/2011 09:15 pmI disagree on a point - As I see it, HSF in America is about technology push, the technology developed for HSF translates directly into new products, fabrication and manufacturing techniques and services.For the sake of argument, let's take this as a given. Now imagine you are the prime minister of India, and could spend a few hundred million on some missions to a Bigelow station, or spend the same money at home on aerospace technology.In the former case, you don't get much technology or know-how. You just get the results of whatever experiment you flew, and some minor HSF experience. Virtually all the money goes to foreign suppliers. Political backlash is likely.In the latter case, you get a bunch of technological capability that is yours to keep and exploit forever. Maybe a decent down payment on your own HSF program. You get a big propaganda bonus too, and most of the money you spend goes into your own economy.To justify flying with Bigelow, the return on the proposed experiment would have to be extremely high. Going from the history of microgravity research, it seems implausible that a country would achieve such a high value breakthrough with a few visits to a rented space station.QuoteThe faster we can get the private sector to utilize the new market space (no pun intended), the better our economy will become. This applies to investing in domestic commercial supply. I was talking about government customers using a foreign supplier. In that case, the improvement to the customers economy is essentially nil. I'll update my previous post to make this clear.
....I apologize for the rant, but I actually respect most of the dialog that goes on here, and wish to contribute.
Hop, I think we are in agreement - HSF for the U.S. is about technology, economy and PR. For Bigelow to sell services especially to off shore clients, the product must be very high in value. It is precisely these costs that create a market-barrier, thus if you own the infrastructure and have a low cost method to exploit the resource you can in theory make money. Its possible that the Bigelow business case was over estimated, I don't have any proof one way or the other.
