Bigelow Aerospace Update Thread (2)

[Jason1701]

With the possible exception of space tourism, and possibly some national ego building, I still don't quite get what customer base Bigelow is addressing.

Why would a company or nation want a manned orbital habitat?

To do research like this:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/benefits/coolstation.html

[Lars_J]

With the possible exception of space tourism, and possibly some national ego building, I still don't quite get what customer base Bigelow is addressing.

Why would a company or nation want a manned orbital habitat?

For the same reason they are interested in ISS participation, I assume.

Therefore the business case for a Bigelow station looks better without ISS in orbit, but ironically the presence of ISS also is responsible for the current push for commercial crew - something Bigelow needs to exist. A tricky situation.

Hopefully they will be able to find some customers in spite of the situation.

[A_M_Swallow]

<snip>

It seems like a major chicken and the egg problem.  Do you forsee this being resolved in the near future, and for real work to start on the BA330?  Or do you think we won't hear anymore about BA330 until commercial crew is ready?

Bigelow needs Commercial Crew.  BA330 does not cost hundreds of millions.  Depending on who's numbers you want to believe, Bigelow may be a bigger customer of Commercial Crew than NASA.

Respectfully,
Andrew Gasser
TEA Party in Space

Andrew Gasser did you mean billions rather than millions?

There is also the cost of the station (hundreds of millions) rather than the short term rental (millions).

[tigerade]

Bigelow needs Commercial Crew.  BA330 does not cost hundreds of millions.  Depending on who's numbers you want to believe, Bigelow may be a bigger customer of Commercial Crew than NASA.

Respectfully,
Andrew Gasser
TEA Party in Space

I didn't say that BA330 cost hundreds of millions.  And frankly, it doesn't matter.  I'm sure the cost is significant to build, launch and maintain the Bigelow Space Station.  And that's not all, it's going to cost ALOT to launch people to the space station.  I think SpaceX's optimistic figure was at best... $20 million per seat?  For those of us in business, that's money.  I don't know much about this, that's what I wanted Orbital Debris to answer.  But, it seems like this space station will cost an enormous amount of money, and the source of customers willing to pay for it to be questionable.

[Ben the Space Brit]

The only serious non-tourist and non-governmental customers for commercial crew/commercial space modules are, in my view, the biggest industries.  With the multi-billion dollar up-front cost of R&D of spaceflight capabilities removed, it is at least hypothetically possible that large chemical, pharmaceutical and materials corporations could decide to fly crewed experiments in LEO.  The question is, of course, the size of that market.  That is a big 'TBD' at the moment because, until commercial crew is a reality, I don't think I can see any large corporation wasting resources trying to figure out if it is worth the expense.

For similar reasons (capability without R&D), I can see some governments without indigenous crew launch capabilities thinking carefully using such products.  Once again, though, I think that real, serious interest won't appear until these technologies are actually available either immediately or in the extreme near-term.

[Robert Thompson]

Why would you want to do that?

Murphy might require flexible, radical approaches to manage an emergent problem. So I wondered what was the 'reusability' of current inflatables technology if it went through a 'duty cycle'.

[RDoc]

With the possible exception of space tourism, and possibly some national ego building, I still don't quite get what customer base Bigelow is addressing.

Why would a company or nation want a manned orbital habitat?

To do research like this:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/benefits/coolstation.html

Hmm. If you look at the items on that page they seem like ones that were either done on the ground to support ISS or could be done by an unmanned system such as DragonLab.

I'm not questioning the value of space labs, my doubt has to do with manned labs. The cost of the life support and safety systems seems pretty high for the extra capabilities humans add.

[Valerij]

Hmm. If you look at the items on that page they seem like ones that were either done on the ground to support ISS or could be done by an unmanned system such as DragonLab.

I'm not questioning the value of space labs, my doubt has to do with manned labs. The cost of the life support and safety systems seems pretty high for the extra capabilities humans add.

Type in Google "Microgravity Science Glovebox", and you will see a great number of links. On delivered on ISS in 2002 the device approximately one year ago it has been spent 10 000 (ten thousand) hours of experiments, and for this year this figure has increased to 12 000. This pure time, that is time for experiment preparation is not considered. It was possible to reach only because c MSG works practically two commands - astronauts on ISS which mount in it experimental installations, and a land command which, actually, and makes experiment

And in the land command working with MSG, can be included and the expert, in which order is made experiment. For this purpose the expert does not need to leave the house - to operate experiment it is possible on the Internet

But such efficiency MSG is impossible without work of cosmonauts in an orbit. Here an example which shows, how, thanks to qualitative preparation on the Earth, in an orbit people can effectively work.

[Nate_Trost]

BA330 does not cost hundreds of millions. 

Support needed for this assertion.

An actual operating BA330 in orbit would be a rather advanced spacecraft. Are you seriously suggesting that getting to the point where a BA330 is sitting on a LV waiting to be launched into orbit doesn't involve hundreds of millions of dollars in development costs?

[Orbital Debris]

I'll step off the soapbox and return to updates or answering questions. 

Sure.  Bigelow says they are waiting on commercial crew to build the BA330 and make a real commercial spacestation.  Reading between the lines, building the space station will cost a huge amount of money, and wouldn't be justified without a customer.  Customers probably won't put down big money for rides to a space station that doesn't exist.  It seems like a major chicken and the egg problem.  Do you forsee this being resolved in the near future, and for real work to start on the BA330?  Or do you think we won't hear anymore about BA330 until commercial crew is ready?

I don't think that it will be resolved anytime soon.  Bigelow has a conundrum in that he is not the type of person to let someone else call the shots, but he is not in a position to finance the whole thing himself.  I do believe that BA330 will cost several hundred million to get into orbit and outfit, particularly if you take into account launch costs.

[simonbp]

I do wonder if someone else will put up a basic, rigid-shell private station before ~2017 and undercut BA's entire business case. Especially if Falcon Heavy keeps from being ridiculously over-cost, a ~50 tonne monolithic Skylab-style station in LEO would provide most of what BA is offering, but without any new technology.

Boeing may be particularly interested, as they could both leverage ISS experience and provide a new revenue stream to CST...

[happyflower]

With the possible exception of space tourism, and possibly some national ego building, I still don't quite get what customer base Bigelow is addressing.

Why would a company or nation want a manned orbital habitat?

I will answer as a wide eyed civilian.

I can see both companies and universities doing Microgravity Research Programs striving to increase understanding of the effects of gravity on biological, chemical and physical systems. What gravity does to these systems on Earth can be understood much better when the effect of gravity can be removed. This R&D process is expensive and payoffs are rare, but when they happen, its usually a CAPOW!! moment. A quick search on-line brings up things like Microgravity Biotechnology, Microgravity Fluid Physics, Microgravity Materials Science, Microgravity Combustion Science, Microgravity Fundamental Physics...

I can also see other countries that dont have their own human spaceflight programs but have something even better... Money. Countries like Japan, Brazil, India that would like to launch humans to space as purely nationalistic endeavors. This kind of pissing up a flag pole should not be discounted.

If B.A. acts in a smart way these entities can be leveraged into paying for launch and maintenance capability of a BA-330.

[Orbital Debris]

Passwords from Bigelow and other aerospace firms posted on line: A hacker group releases cache ... http://t.co/DSsRsBmi

Knowing how wonderful the IT department is there, I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner.

[Robert Thompson]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/12/10/hacker-group-touts-1-6-million-password-dump-to-protest-un-internet-regulation/

"The data dump, according to its accompanying statement, is aimed at “promoting hacktivism worldwide and drawing attention to the freedom of information on the net. For those two factors we have prepared a juicy release of 1.6 million accounts/records from fields such as aerospace, nanotechnology, banking, law, education, government, military, all kinds of wacky companies & corporations working for the department of defense, airlines and more.”"

Aerospace is at least in good company.

[ChefPat]

Bigelow's Discussion board seems to have gone off line too.

[Ben the Space Brit]

Bigelow's Discussion board seems to have gone off line too.

Yeah, they're probably going to keep the system off-line until they've managed to beef up security and contact their users for new passwords.

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

Bigelow's Discussion board seems to have gone off line too.

Yeah, they're probably going to keep the system off-line until they've managed to beef up security and contact their users for new passwords.

The best security is no connection.

[Orbital Debris]

Bigelow's Discussion board seems to have gone off line too.

Yeah, they're probably going to keep the system off-line until they've managed to beef up security and contact their users for new passwords.

Oh, yeah I'm sure thats it.   

[Orbital Debris]

Back to updates.  It appears they have updated the open positions on the website to include Chemical Engineer, Chemist Lab Mgr, Crew Systems, and Life Support systems. 
This is due to the fact they have been ramping up their testing using the rudimentary crew systems test chamber that they built.  From what I hear, they have figured out that it is cheaper to use student volunteers.  BA placed flyers on campus at UNLV for test chamber guinea pigs. 

In other positions, one of the mechanical managers/carbon fiber guru has departed, so they may be looking for that skill soon as well.

[Robotbeat]

Back to updates.  It appears they have updated the open positions on the website to include Chemical Engineer, Chemist Lab Mgr, Crew Systems, and Life Support systems. 
This is due to the fact they have been ramping up their testing using the rudimentary crew systems test chamber that they built.  From what I hear, they have figured out that it is cheaper to use student volunteers.  BA placed flyers on campus at UNLV for test chamber guinea pigs. 

In other positions, one of the mechanical managers/carbon fiber guru has departed, so they may be looking for that skill soon as well.

IT guy, maybe, too?

That they are hiring multiple, skilled people to work on life support-related stuff is promising, though.

Kind of sad that it seems we have to wait another year, then another year, then another year...