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posted by martyb on Tuesday March 24 2020, @05:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the future-is-up-in-the-air dept.

Bigelow Aerospace lays off entire workforce

Bigelow Aerospace, the company founded more than two decades ago to develop commercial space habitats, laid off all its employees March 23 in a move caused at least in part by the coronavirus pandemic.

According to sources familiar with the company's activities, Bigelow Aerospace's 68 employees were informed that they were being laid off, effective immediately. An additional 20 employees were laid off the previous week.

Those sources said that the company, based in North Las Vegas, Nevada, was halting operations because of what one person described as a "perfect storm of problems" that included the coronavirus pandemic. On March 20, Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak signed an emergency directive ordering all "nonessential" businesses to close.

[...] Robert Bigelow said in a Jan. 28 interview that his company declined to submit a proposal [for an ISS commercial module] to NASA because of financing concerns. NASA, at the time of the competition, said it projected providing up to $561 million to support both a commercial ISS module as well as a separate solicitation for a free-flying facility. "That was asking just too much" of the company, Bigelow said. "So we told NASA we had to bow out."

Previously:
Bigelow Expandable Activity Module to Continue Stay at the International Space Station
Bigelow and ULA to Put Inflatable Module in Orbit Around the Moon by 2022
Bigelow Aerospace Forms New Company to Manage Space Stations, Announces Gigantic Inflatable Module
Bigelow Aerospace Unveils B330 Inflatable Module Mock-Up

Related:
Sierra Nevada Corporation Shows Off an Inflatable Habitat
Expanding, And Eventually Replacing, The International Space Station


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Tuesday March 24 2020, @07:27PM (1 child)

    by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @07:27PM (#975156)

    I'm curious as well, but it would seem they declined to make it public. The fact that they declined to submit an ISS proposal last year - on what would pretty much the only near-term contract they're likely to get - would seem to suggest that they've been facing ongoing financial and/or technological challenges since well before COVID was a concern. Given the admiral performance of BEAM to date, I would guess the technology itself is probably ready, though they may be having issues scaling up production to a much larger module - as least cost-effectively enough to be able to make money off a NASA contract.

    It does answer my previously lingering question as to why Bigelow wasn't selected for the ISS expansion - at least as to why NASA would select some completely unproven company over Bigelow's impressive promise.

    A real shame - they've been developing these inflatable habitats all this time, only to stumble just as the opportunities are finally starting to heat up.

    Or, perhaps this was an excuse to clear out the scientists and engineers now that the technology is mature, and start focussing on production? Might have been systemic personnel issues as well.

    Laying off *everyone* though... that's something serious.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @08:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @08:30PM (#975180)

    I agree, there is more to this story than being said.

    It has to be damn hard to propose something you haven't built and go up against TRL-9 technology in BEAM. Maybe Bigelow really really wants to go after the free-flyer proposal and he knows he's too small to win both. Or maybe Axiom grossly underbid with the expectation they'll get more money later. Some interesting notes about Axiom [spacenews.com]:

    Axiom was founded in 2016 by Kam Ghaffarian, who previously led space industry engineering services company Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies, and Michael Suffredini, who was program manager for the ISS at NASA for a decade prior to his retirement from the agency in 2015. The company has several former astronauts in leadership positions, including former NASA administrator Charles Bolden, listed as a “business development consultant” on the company’s website.

    Axiom says it believes that experience, as well as an industry team that includes Boeing, Thales Alenia Space Italy, Intuitive Machines and Maxar Technologies, played a key role in its selection. “There is a fantastically steep learning curve to human spaceflight,” Suffredini, president and chief executive of Axiom, said in a company statement. “The collective experience at Axiom is quite far along it. Because we know firsthand what works and what doesn’t in LEO, we are innovating in terms of design, engineering and process while maintaining safety and dramatically lowering costs.”

    And this:

    NASA did not disclose in its statement why it selected Axiom for the module. The agency’s statement did feature laudatory comments from Texas’ two senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, as well as Rep. Brian Babin, whose district includes Axiom’s headquarters near the Johnson Space Center.

    I can see laying off the whole company while closed (although I don't agree with that). I guess we'll see who gets hired back when this is over and they're ramping up for the free-flying station proposal to be released.

    Or (and the cynic in me thinks this is the reason), that Axiom was wired to win it all along, and Bigelow either knew that, or was told that, and gracefully exited the process (with a promise to be awarded the next one?).