Tag: space station

Private space station builder Bigelow is hiring again.

5:47 pm

This bodes well: Private space station builder Bigelow is hiring again.

One interesting tidbit from this article is the description of the company’s negotiations with NASA to attach a Bigelow module to ISS.

The company has been negotiating with NASA for about two years on the potential deal, and that Bigelow has completed various planning and development milestones for NASA. “We’ve been in a series of discussions with NASA over the past two years, with regard to the BEAM project,” Gold told Space News. “They were initiated as part of a proposal in 2010, and we’re hopeful an announcement will be made in the not-too-distant future.”

NASA gave no sign that a deal with Bigelow was imminent. “We do have a no-cost contract with Bigelow to cover early requirements development [for BEAM] but it is not for the flight article,” NASA spokesman Josh Buck said in a March 20 email. “The Agency has not made a decision to go to a flight system yet.” [emphasis mine]

Two years to discuss “planning and development,” and still no decision. My guess is that NASA management doesn’t want to buy a Bigelow module, as it would be relatively cheap and therefore wouldn’t spread much money to NASA centers. They just can’t say no for political reasons.

And if they do want to do it, the slow pace of their decision-making process demonstrates clearly why they shouldn’t be entrusted to build anything in the future.

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The story behind China’s planned space station begins to emerge

9:39 am

The story behind China’s planned space station begins to emerge.

China first said it would build a space station in 1992. But the need for a manned outpost “has been continually contested by Chinese space professionals who, like their counterparts in the United States, question the scientific utility and expense of human space flight”, says Gregory Kulacki, China project manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “That battle is effectively over now, however, and the funds for the space station seem to have been allocated, which is why more concrete details are finally beginning to emerge.”

Though I am always skeptical of comments from the Union of Concerned Scientists, in this case Kulacki makes sense. He also illustrates a further example of what I wrote in 2005, “After more than 40 years of debate, the argument is over and the supporters of manned spaceflight have won.”

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