I’ve discussed throughout my blogs and my first essay Elon Musk’s company SpaceX. But until now I have overlooked another very important private company what, like SpaceX, is attempting to dramatically reduce the costs of going to and from space. The only difference between SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace is that rather than constructing rockets, businessman Robert Bigelow is concerned with creating places for astronauts to live. Like SpaceX, Bigelow is attempting to solve the problem of huge costs in the space industry by taking an innovative approach to the issue. Rather than continue letting NASA spend millions of dollars on heavy, difficult to construct metal sections of the ISS, Bigelow wants to pioneer a new era of inflatable space habitations. The idea is that if your space “houses” are inflatable, not only will the difficulty of constructing them be dramatically reduced, but the cost in rocket fuel as well: they’ll be much lighter. Not only that, but Bigelow asserts that his habitats’s 18 inch thick walls will better protect astronauts from spaces debris and radiation. The trick to making all this possible is the material called kevlar, a fabric used to make bullet proof vests. In May of this year, a Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or B.E.A.M. was sent to the ISS and upon successfully docking with and becoming a “part” of the ISS, inflated with nitrogen and oxygen to its full size. As of yet, the B.E.A.M. is not being inhabited by humans. It is still undergoing testing which means that the module, over the course of 2 years will be visited four times a year by astronauts to ensure that everything onboard the B.E.A.M. onboard is running smoothly. If the tests are positive, Bigelow and his inflatable habitats are one step closer to becoming a big part of our presence in space. Bigelow’s hopes for the B.E.A.M. is that it can one day be used as a habitat for visitors to the Moon or to Mars. IN the short term, however, he foresees further use of his B.E.A.M. aboard the ISS and even, he says, as habitats for space tourists. Almost comically, this is not surprising. Bigelow made his fortune as the owner of a line of cheap hotels in the south western United States. It’s doesn’t take a wild imagination to see how Bigelow went from owning a chain of low budget hotels to pioneering inexpensive habitats in space. Like Bigelow Aerospace, Robert Bigelow the man has his eccentricities. Despite breaking into the ever growing group of “space entrepreneurs” Bigelow is remarkably old fashioned. He does not own a laptop and does not use email. His inspiration for space, he says, came as a child from his grandparents telling him of an encounter they believed to have had with a UFO. Robert Bigelow is a firm believer in extraterrestrial life.
Nov 132016