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Bigelow Aerospace has created a spinoff company that will manage its orbital space stations, and has announced plans for an inflatable module that would be even larger than the B330:
Bigelow Aerospace — the Las Vegas-based company manufacturing space habitats — is starting a spinoff venture aimed at managing any modules that the company deploys into space. Called Bigelow Space Operations (BSO), the new company will be responsible for selling Bigelow's habitats to customers, such as NASA, foreign countries, and other private companies. But first, BSO will try to figure out what kind of business exists exactly in lower Earth orbit, the area of space where the ISS currently resides.
Bigelow makes habitats designed to expand. The densely packed modules launch on a rocket and then inflate once in space, providing more overall volume for astronauts to roam around. The company already has one of its prototype habitats in orbit right now: the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, which has been attached to the International Space Station since 2016. The BEAM has proven that Bigelow's expandable habitat technology not only works, but also holds up well against the space environment.
Now, Bigelow is focusing on its next space station design: the B330. The habitat is so named since it will have 330 cubic meters (or nearly 12,000 cubic feet) of interior volume when expanded in space. That's about one-third the volume provided by the ISS. Bigelow hopes to launch two B330s as early as 2021, on top of the United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rockets, and the company even has plans to put a B330 around the Moon. After that, Bigelow has bigger plans to create a single station with 2.4 times the entire pressurized volume of the ISS, the company announced today. Such a huge station will need to be constructed in an entirely new manufacturing facility that Bigelow plans to build — though the company hasn't decided on a location yet.
Bigelow's BEAM is currently attached to the ISS and has a volume of about 16 cubic meters, which has been described as that of "a large closet with padded white walls". The B330 will have 330 cubic meters of pressurized volume. The newly proposed module is called the BA 2100, or "Olympus", with 2,250 cubic meters of volume, compared to the ISS's total 931 cubic meters. The mass of the BA 2100 could range from 65 to 100 metric tons, likely requiring a super-heavy launcher such as the SLS Block 1B/2 or SpaceX's BFR.
Also at Space News, Motherboard, and Space.com.
Related: How to Get Back to the Moon in 4 Years, Permanently
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(Score: 2) by Tara Li on Wednesday February 21 2018, @04:58PM (3 children)
The BA-2100 has been proposed for a long time now - at least a couple of years, I think. The spin-off is the big news. I wish Bigelow had been working with SpaceX all along, though - I expect they will be soon enough. If the BA-2100 comes in at the low end of the estimated mass, it could possibly be launched by a Falcon Heavy, though I think there might be volume constraints within the fairing - I seem to remember something along those lines being mentioned.
Pressurized volume of the ISS is currently 931 m^2 - so three B330s up would double the available on-orbit shirt-sleeve space. A single BA-2100 would triple it by itself.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:13PM
Longer than that I think. I want to say it was proposed right along with the 330, long before construction of the BEAM or its free-floating predecessor began.
Could be the actual announcement is more in line with "we're now starting serious work on the design details", or even "are tooling up to start producing the things", rather than just a pie-in-the-sky long-term goal. Rather like SpaceX and the recent BFR announcement - the project has moved from "future goals" to "active business consideration". Would make sense too - now that there's actually a rocket that could (maybe) lift the thing, and SpaceX announcing another that could easily lift it within 5-10 years, they probably want to have something ready to ship as soon as possible. After all, their most profitable business window is potentially quite narrow, existing primarily between the point where we can launch such large things into space affordably, and when we can start building much more substantial structures from raw materials mined in space. That might only last a few decades, after which inflatable modules will likely become the the commodity "quick and flimsy" solution suitable primarily as spacecraft modules and initial planetary outposts, where more massive solutions present serious difficulties.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:26PM (1 child)
I probably fucked up the part about BA-2100 since I hadn't heard of it or didn't remember it.
Given the timeline, with the first B330s launched around 2021, I would expect BA-2100 to fly on a BFR rather than Falcon Heavy. BFR is planned for launches as soon as 2022-2024 and would replace both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy due to its full reusability. It would be able to put a BA-2100 in LEO in reusable mode. So if a BA-2100 is going up a few years after 2021, BFR should be ready by then, even if delayed a bit.
Much has been made of Falcon Heavy's ~5 years of delay, but a big factor was that Falcon Heavy consists of Falcon 9s strapped together. Falcon 9 evolved significantly since the Falcon Heavy was originally announced, gaining the ability to lift heavier payloads originally intended for Falcon Heavy and adding reusability features. I doubt the BFR launch timeframe is going to shift by 5 years.
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(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday February 21 2018, @08:08PM
> I doubt the BFR launch timeframe is going to shift by 5 years.
Per Musk track record, a two-years delay is the bare minimum.
Besides that, the primary question is how many test flights will end up with Big Fireworks Report, causing people with precious cargo to wait until reliability improves. Getting that big of a rocket right the first time would be quite a feat (and a giant FU to SLS).