Either way, 30 day or 90 day, Bigelow and his customers are likely to be a major customer of the commercial crew transporters. The large number of countries that want to have inexpensive space programs and the large number of companies and universities that have ideas for microgravity experiments suggests to me that commercial manned space will be a booming business within a decade.

I expect both Sierra Nevada and Blue Origin to be in this manned launch business within ten years, with XCOR and Virgin Galactic working on entering this business before 2030.

I also expect Orbital ATK to put a manned version of their Cygnus spacecraft in orbit to compete with Bigelow for space habitat/space station services. Such a Cygnus module has been (unofficially?) proposed for use with Orion to provide additional crew space for long-duration cis-lunar missions.

Bottom line? Even with only a single two-module station on-orbit, Bigelow will account for 65% – 80% of crew transfer missions. Given that, unlike NASA, he seems to have no objections to use of used boosters or spacecraft in providing such services, his percentage of the total dollar value of crew transfer missions will not be so large at first, but it will still go a long way toward doubling NASA’s part of the market and will be at least as profitable to the providers.

CCDev proposes 12 crewed flights, starting around 2018. Since the current plan is to decommission the ISS in 2024 (though there are talks in process to extend this to 2028), I think we can conclude that there should be about two flights per year through the course of the CCDev’s current plan.

Four flights per year may be enough to keep two companies in business, and eight per year may provide incentive for a third company to get into the business.