Bigelow Aerospace hiring
The competition heats up: Bigelow Aerospace hired two former NASA astronauts today as part of a broader expansion of the company in anticipation of .the completion of its first two private space modules in 2017.
Bigelow said the smallest space station his company plans to fly will require two BA330 modules, each of which has 330 cubic meters of internal space. The company expects to finish building the first two BA330s by 2017, Bigelow said.
Ham and Zamka are former military aviators who have piloted and commanded space shuttle missions. Their NASA and military credentials are part of the appeal for Bigelow, who plans to put both former space fliers to work as recruiters. “I would like to see us have half a dozen astronauts onboard by the end of the year,” Bigelow said.
Each Bigelow Aerospace space station would require about a dozen astronauts, including orbital, ground and backup personnel. The 660-cubic-foot stations would host four paying clients, who would be assisted by three company astronauts responsible for day-to-day maintenance, Bigelow said. Initially, clients and crews would cycle in and out of the stations in 90-day shifts, Bigelow said. Eventually, the company hopes to shorten that cycle to 60 days.
The company had laid off many of its workers several years ago and was essential dormant, waiting for the development of some sort of affordable commercial manned spacecraft capability. It now appears they are expecting SpaceX, Boeing, or Sierra Nevada to succeed in providing this service in the next few years.
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The competition heats up: Bigelow Aerospace hired two former NASA astronauts today as part of a broader expansion of the company in anticipation of .the completion of its first two private space modules in 2017.
Bigelow said the smallest space station his company plans to fly will require two BA330 modules, each of which has 330 cubic meters of internal space. The company expects to finish building the first two BA330s by 2017, Bigelow said.
Ham and Zamka are former military aviators who have piloted and commanded space shuttle missions. Their NASA and military credentials are part of the appeal for Bigelow, who plans to put both former space fliers to work as recruiters. “I would like to see us have half a dozen astronauts onboard by the end of the year,” Bigelow said.
Each Bigelow Aerospace space station would require about a dozen astronauts, including orbital, ground and backup personnel. The 660-cubic-foot stations would host four paying clients, who would be assisted by three company astronauts responsible for day-to-day maintenance, Bigelow said. Initially, clients and crews would cycle in and out of the stations in 90-day shifts, Bigelow said. Eventually, the company hopes to shorten that cycle to 60 days.
The company had laid off many of its workers several years ago and was essential dormant, waiting for the development of some sort of affordable commercial manned spacecraft capability. It now appears they are expecting SpaceX, Boeing, or Sierra Nevada to succeed in providing this service in the next few years.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
So are these modules intended primarily for space tourists?
Bigelow will rent his modules to anyone. He has a memorandum of understanding with six countries, so it isn’t just space tourists who are his customers. He offers a very inexpensive way for a nation to gain its own manned space program.
Q: These modules appear to be inflatable in construction, do they have self healing properties if they are penetrated either by space junk or other space particles?
They are inflatable but their hull isn’t like a balloon, it is structurally as rigid as any other spacecraft. Think of the modern RVs with sections that can expand outward to make the RV larger when it is parked.
As of 2014, the only thing that’s penetrated a space station hull has been an errant Russian spacecraft!
Actually it’s more like a foot thick of somewhat self healing material vs. most thin aluminum skins on other craft. A bullet wouldn’t do much to it.
You could say expandable. According to Bigelow, they are better than the ISS at dealing with micrometeorites. The fabric layers are like a bulletproof vest.
The test videos must be hilarious.
It looks as though Mr. Bigelow must be planning to launch his initial station configuration of paired BA 330’s on a Falcon Heavy.
The only currently extant launch vehicle he could use is the Delta IV Heavy. It would take two of these, at a minimum, to boost two BA 330’s into LEO. BA 330 mass is 20 tonnes. Delta IV Heavy LEO lift capacity is 23 tonnes. Depending upon how much mass the ancillaries – docking and connecting hubs, air locks, solar arrays – weigh, a third mission of some sort might be necessary to complete a twin-BA 330 station, though probably not a third Delta IV Heavy mission. If all the various bits are not able to self-rendezvous and self-assemble/deploy, a fourth – and manned – mission might be necessary to put everything together.
The cost to go this route would be prohibitive. The needed launch vehicles, in any case, would probably be unavailable. ULA will doubtless need all the Delta IV production it can manage to fulfill its manifest of national security missions over the next few years in the substantial absence of its former workhorse, the Atlas V, due to the cutoff of RD-180 engines by Russia.
From a strictly mass standpoint, a single FH could put up two BA 330’s plus a considerable mass of ancillaries on a single mission – probably enough mass for a complete station configuration. This would almost certainly require a larger than standard payload fairing for FH, however. The Standard SpaceX Falcon payload fairing, also used on the F9, is 5.2 by 13 meters. The BA 330 is 13.7 meters long along its axis. Perhaps Bigelow already has SpaceX working on an enlarged payload fairing design for FH. If an entire two-module station was designed to be self-deploying an interesting question is whether Bigelow would go for a wide, squat payload fairing that would permit twin BA 330’s to ride up side by side with their connecting structure crosswise between them, or if they would have to launch end-to-end with both modules fully attached to their connecting structure using a payload fairing that might be able to be the same diameter as SpaceX’s current model, but much longer – maybe as much as 30 meters. From an aerodynamic standpoint, I suppose the latter would be preferable; it punches a smaller hole through the air. How wide the fairing would have to be to accommodate a side-by-side folded configuration I don’t know as I can’t find any information on what the diameter of a pre-deployed BA 330 is. I eagerly await the public release of more details.
Almost more interesting than the announcement about the deployment timeline for Bigelow’s first BA 330-based station is the information about its projected operation. Each BA 330 module can accommodate six people. A two-module station can accommodate 12. Bigelow states that his own crews and customer personnel will initially do only 90-day tours and that he wants to get this down to 60-day tours as quickly as possible. Rotating 12 people four times a year would require 8 annual crew transfer missions using any of the CCDev craft currently in development. That dwarfs the pair of annual crew transfer missions the ISS requires given both the smaller permanent staffing level of ISS and their crews’ 180-day stays. When Bigelow gets to six rotations per year, that’s a dozen CCDev missions. And that’s per station. Bigelow makes no secret of his intention to put up as many stations as the market will bear. If each station needs a dozen crew transfer missions a year, the future of the crew transfer to LEO business looks so bright it’ll have to wear shades.
Fun times ahead, people! Fun times ahead! And not very far ahead at that!
I think they are only a few inches thick and use a proprietary way of folding to help keep its size down before being fully deployed in space.
One atmosphere of pressure would keep that thing pretty stiff.
Plus the eventual occupants could put some interior structure into it that will help keep make it more solid like ‘floors’ or dividers and privacy rooms.