14 DAY TRIAL // Officials at Bigelow Aerospace announce that the company has just signed six individual memorandums of understanding with different countries, for the construction of space habitats.
Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden, Australia and the United Kingdom are all interested in establishing presences in space, inside their own habitats, or small space stations, without depending on anyone else to get the job done.
“These are countries that do not want to be hostage to just what the International Space Station may or may not deliver,” Robert Bigelow told Space in an exclusive interview.
The space entrepreneur is the chief of the company, which was funded back in 199 in Las Vegas. Thus far, more than $200 million have been invested in developing and launching space habitats as technology demonstrators.
On two instances, in July 2006 and in June 2007, space habitats were launched into low-Earth orbit (LEO), an achievement that allowed the company to advertise its services to governments, research groups, private corporations and national space agencies.
Bigelow is currently using $20 million to expand its facilities, in a move that was planned so that the company becomes able to produce increasingly-larger space habitats.
“That expansion is currently under way. We broke ground a few months ago. We've got a lot of steel in the air. I'm also in the middle of developing a new client leasing guide that will be available toward the end of the year,” Bigelow added.
“It will have new and exciting pricing opportunities that are very dramatic. We want to open up the window and doors for a lot of participation for folks that need to spend less,” he went on to say.
In terms of access to space, Bigelow Aerospace has been working together with The Boeing Company for several years. The goal is to get to the Orbital Space Complex using the CST-100 space capsule.
The spacecraft is being developed by Boeing under the NASA's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program. It can fly either unmanned, or carrying a top number of 7 passengers.
The Boeing capsule would be delivered by the Atlas 5 delivery system, which has proven its worth over and over again, in 22 successful launches out of 23.
“We have much more confidence in regards to the crew transportation solution since there is, arguably, no system safer, more reliable and more cost-effective than leveraging the tried and true Atlas 5 with a capsule built by Boeing on top of it,” said Michael Gold.
“It has a track record. It exists. That's a message that has resonated quite well with the international clients. The Atlas 5 is an example of how those two actually go hand in hand,” he added.
“That rocket's flight heritage will create the safety that we demand and our customers require,” concluded Gold, who is the Bigelow Aerospace operations and business growth director.