Update on Bigelow’s ISS module
This article is a nice overview of Bigelow’s planned inflatable module for ISS, due to launch next year, and includes some good images.
I found this paragraph especially intriguing:
Earlier this year, Bigelow announced how much it’ll cost you to spend some time inside the BA 330 when it launches. Expect to pay $25 million for a sixty day lease of one-third of the station — if you can get yourself there and back. Should you need a ride, round-trip taxi service between SpaceX and your local launching pad will run you an additional $26.5 million.
That’s a total cost of just over $50 million for a sixty day stay in space.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
This article is a nice overview of Bigelow’s planned inflatable module for ISS, due to launch next year, and includes some good images.
I found this paragraph especially intriguing:
Earlier this year, Bigelow announced how much it’ll cost you to spend some time inside the BA 330 when it launches. Expect to pay $25 million for a sixty day lease of one-third of the station — if you can get yourself there and back. Should you need a ride, round-trip taxi service between SpaceX and your local launching pad will run you an additional $26.5 million.
That’s a total cost of just over $50 million for a sixty day stay in space.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
“Until someone manages to figure out how to get a space elevator up and running, sending stuff into space is going to remain enormously expensive”
Uhh, why wouldn’t this fictional technology also be expensive?
“if you can get yourself there and back. Should you need a ride, round-trip taxi service”
Wasn’t Bigelow saying the cost of transit was included in the price?
Is this an all-inclusive price? (i.e. does it include consumables – food, water, oxygen) :)
No, the cost of transport is not included in Bigelow’s price.
TANSTAAFL. Or Air is extra. :) But I do think it is all in.
Thanks for the clarification, guess I misremembered that.
Space elevators may remain fictional, as they are terribly susceptible to space debris, among other problems.
There was a fellow giving talks, in my area, advocating the nano-tube “tether” version. Whenever I went to one of his talks, I would be sure to ask how it would avoid debris, as any space elevator would cross the orbital plane of everything in Earth orbit (including screws and paint chips, up to the altitude of the elevator’s counterweight) twice a day.
If I still had the floor, I would also ask about countering the instability introduced by Coriolis forces (tethers already flown were somewhat unstable and “twisty” at a mere two-miles long, much less tens of thousands of miles long).
I think that Bigelow’s space stations will fare much better, in the near future, than a space elevator, but I am curious about the logistics of station maintenance (e.g. does the leasee perform station repair, or is there an onsite Bigelow facilities manager?).
At that price it seems to be cheaper just to buy the habitat and service it yourself.
Which could be their ultimate goal. Why should they operate the habitat when they could just outright sell it and go onto building the next one.
A new company could come into play.
Someone to build and operate a central utility module with power, water, air, food, cooling and a bunch of docking collars.
Bigalow owners could dock their modules to it and be charged for services and utilities. If they don’t pay their module could be undocked and left to drift in some safe area.