The Bigelow Space Hotel

A remarkable technology that envisions building inflatable modules, developed by NASA and once envisioned for the International Space Station, could prove to be a key to opening up the high frontier of space for commercial development. If this becomes the case, it could prove to be the ultimate example of a "spin-off", in which something made for the space program benefits the private sector.

The concept, developed in 1997 at NASA's Johnson Space Flight Center, was called "transhab." Transhab was envisioned as replacing the more conventional habitation module planned for the International Space Station. Eventually it would have been the basis of inflatable modules for lunar and Mars expeditions.

Transhab would have consisted of two dozen layers of material that was designed to protect equipment and people inside it from micrometeor impacts, radiation, and the heat and cold of outer space. The key to the debris protection would have been successive layers of Nextel, a material commonly used as insulation under the hoods of many cars, spaced between several-inches-thick layers of open cell foam, similar to foam used for chair cushions on Earth. The Nextel and foam layers would have caused a particle to shatter as it hits, losing more and more of its energy as it penetrates deeper.

Many layers into the shell would have been a layer of superstrong woven Kevlar that would have held the module's shape. The air would been have held inside by three bladders of Combitherm, a material commonly used in the food-packing industry. The innermost layer, forming the inside wall of the module, would have been Nomex cloth, a fireproof material that also protects the bladder from scuffs and scratches.

Made from lightweight carbon-fiber composite materials, the central core would have been a hard tunnel with a shell interface providing three floors and dividers between various compartments. A center passageway would have run the length of the module, providing access to all levels. The flooring and dividers would have been unfolded and extended after the module was inflated. An integral water storage tank would have wrapped around the middle level's crew quarters to provide protection from solar radiation storms when needed. Some areas of the floor would have been open as passageways between levels, creating a roomy atrium effect. A pressurized docking cone consists of a common berthing mechanism and hatch, interior hatch, and an interior bulkhead.

At launch, the uninflated TransHab would have had a diameter of 14 feet (4.3 meters), but once it was inflated it would have had a diameter of 27 feet (8.2 m), and have a volume of 12,000 cubic feet (339.8 cubic meters). The galley and dining table would have been located on the first floor. Six sleeping compartments (81 cubic feet per compartment) would have been located on the second floor. Each compartment would have contained a personal storage area and a computer entertainment center for recreation and personal work. The third floor would have contained an exercise space, medical areas and bathrooms.

Transhab would have provided many times the amount of useful space on the International Space Station than a conventional habitation module. But because the US Congress was skittish about yet another redesign of the International Space Station, the transhab was cancelled in the year 2000.

Enter Bigelow Aerospace. Bigelow Aerospace is an entrepreneurial company founded by Los Vegas hotel tycoon and owner of Budget Suites of America Robert Bigelow. Bigelow's goal is to build what would be in effect a private space station in low Earth orbit, a "space hotel." The Bigelow space hotel would be used by paying customers for for research, manufacturing, entertainment and other uses. It would consist of a number of transhab-like inflatable modules connected together.

Bigelow concluded that transhab technology, in which space modules are launched and then inflated in space, would be the perfect basis for his planned space hotel. Bigelow signed an agreement with NASA licensing transhab technology in 2002. Since then some of the same engineers who worked on the transhab have worked on the Bigelow space hotel at the Bigelow plant outside Los Vegas. Bigelow has so far invested seventy five million dollars of his own money in the project and has pledged five hundred million dollars.

The first step in realizing Bigelow's dream of a space hotel was realized on July 12, 2006, when a one third scale prototype of a Bigelow space module, known as the Genesis 1, was launched on a Russian Dnepr rocket and successfully inflated in low Earth orbit. The Genesis 1 is the first of a series of prototype modules that will test the inflatable module concept against the rigors of space in low Earth orbit.

In a demonstration of how the public and the private is providing a kind of synergy to facilitate the opening of the high frontier of space, NASA Ames Research Center flew a small payload on the Genesis 1 called GeneBox. GeneBox will offer alternate ways to address the response of living beings to the rigors of space flight, including microgravity and radiation. Future flights of Bigelow prototype inflatable modules will feature an opportunity for ordinary people to fly personal mementos such as photographs.

By 2015, Bigelow hopes that his space hotel will be flying and will be accepting paying customers, both from the public and private sectors. Customers would consist of everyone from scientists wanted opportunities to conduct experiments to the well heeled and adventurous in pursuit of the ultimate adventure vacation.

Beyond the space hotel, Bigelow envisions bases on the Moon and Mars built of his inflatable modules. It could well be that the first communities of human beings on other worlds will live in these modules. Even NASA might find itself renting space in a Bigelow lunar and/or Mars facility, rather than build bases on the Moon and Mars itself.

Bigelow has even thought about the problem of people getting to his space hotel in a timely, cost effective fashion. Toward that purpose, he has offered America's Space Prize, which will award fifty million dollars to the first entity that flies people and material in low Earth orbit in a vehicle financed solely by the private sector and built and tested in the United States.

With the success of Genesis 1, Bigelow's dream is in the process of taking form in reality. Should Bigelow succeed, the era in which the vast majority of people living and working in space are highly paid government employees will be over. The high frontier of space will be open to all people. When that happens, the true age of space will have finally begun.