Rand Simberg wrote:
Prototype or not, Genesis II is a real, operational spacecraft, and
it's been operating for many months now.
http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/genesis_II/
All it lacks, AFAIK, is ECLSS. Add that, scale it up, and you have a
space habitat. Add propulsion, and it can co-orbit with ISS. Bigelow
has already issued a $23M contract for that to Aerojet.
Is that all? ECLSS and propulsion? Whew, I was beginning to think they
still had difficult work ahead. "If we had some eggs, we could have ham
and eggs, if we had some ham."
Who are they contracting for the ECLSS? I'm assuming that since they
were smart enough to contract the propulsion, they wouldn't be fool
enough to try to do the ECLSS themselves. But I could be wrong.