Bigelow Aerospace business plans

http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/3722

Pretty neat. $15M for a 4-week stay on orbit; that's quite an
improvement over $20M for a 5-day stay. And $88M/year to lease your own
300-m^3 space station module? That's a real bargain.

In such an environment, I can imagine a lot of smaller countries
developing an astronaut corps that way. NASA will look a bit foolish
when there are twice as many Japanese astronauts on orbit as Americans,
and they're paying a fraction of what we pay for that capability.

The cool thing about this is, even if the schedule slips and the prices
creep a bit (as they are almost certain to do), it's still a starting
point much lower than anything governments have done. And once there
are regular paying customers, prices will continue to come down and
performance will go up, both in the launchers and in the on-orbit
facilities. Bigelow won't long be the only player in that space. And
besides direct competitors, there will be lots of room for support
companies providing on-orbit fuel, power, tug service, and much more.
Real space infrastructure at last!

Joe Strout wrote:

Real space infrastructure at last!

Or until it fails, whichever comes first.

--
Get A Free Orbiter Space Flight Simulator :
http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html

If it weren't for the anticathode worth of the naked moon itself being
such a sitting duck, life outside of our magnetosphere would become a
whole lot safer for us humans of such frail DNA.

Bigelow's POOFs would actually be better off at Venus L2(VL2) because,
even keeping well under our magnetosphere's shield, and having mother
Earth blocking half of your cosmic and/or solar exposure, in places
near the SAA or wherever the halo CME charged packet of wind punches a
hole through that protection is not exactly going to benefit those
having paid the really big bucks for having spent their $4M per day
while in space, whereas at any moment our sun or something cosmic
could have their name associated with such energy that's headed
towards and for the most part going to pass directly through most
every other strand of their frail DNA, and without sharing so much as
a wham, bam, thank you mam.

http://science.hq.nasa.gov/kids/imagers/ems/gamma.html
"Today, these gamma-ray bursts, which happen at least once a day, are
seen to last for fractions of a second to minutes, popping off like
cosmic flashbulbs from unexpected directions, flickering, and then
fading after briefly dominating the gamma-ray sky."

According to this NASA official research, "at least once a day" our
naked moon gets evey other cm2 of it's surface hit by some new cosmic
dosage of gamma, that's potentially worth a good saturation of 10,000
counts per cm2, and perhaps for something more than 5 seconds worth,
or roughly we're speaking 50,000 extra counts per event that goes
above and beyond the otherwise passive background of perhaps a little
over one count per second or 100,000 hits/cm2/day of those pesky hard
cosmic gamma hits, making your daily dosage total worth 150,000 hits/
cm2.

By way of other ongoing research, the numbers of such gamma flashbulbs
popping off is actually much greater, so there's still no good
accounting of the potentially lethal aspect to space travel outside of
our magnetosphere that you can take to the bank (sort of speak). In
other words, those official counts of cosmic hits/cm2 are basically
all over the place, and if you're not a robust and rad-hard robot is
perhaps why the chances of your DNA surviving any extended space
travels within the tradition of something NASA/Apollo worthy, are
perhaps worth less than zilch.

Because that moon has a great deal of its mass representing its salty
basalt deck, plus having meters worth of cosmic and local solar system
meteorrite and of secondary shards of even somewhat greater density to
work with, is why the local surroundings of your being situated upon
that physically dark lunar terrain are going to be sharing that same
physically lethal environment along with a great deal of hard and soft
gamma, plus receiving those very next generation of pesky hard and
soft Xrays, thereby having to share all of that combined trauma along
with the other unavoidable solar influx plus the local emmissions of
yet another bath of a secondary/recoil shower or flood of those
unavoidable hard and soft Xrays, that's clearly in addition to
whatever's within the cache of the cosmic induced gamma.

Since it's nearly impossible as to not being surrounded by at least
3.14e6 m2, or rather we're speaking of 3.14e10 cm2 worth of what's
terribly anticathode/reactive and even a little extra radioactive and
double IR/FIR to boot, is why your frail DNA doesn't hardly stand a
chance in hell of surviving more than a few minutes worth of such
potentially lethal trauma within your fully butt-naked moonsuit that's
worthy of hardly any shield density against such gamma and Xray
energy. An earthshine mission might buy off an EVA surface hour our
two, that is if there's hardly any of those pesky cosmic flashbulbs
having gone off, and you've got that personal cache of banked bone
marrow standing by, just in case.
-
Brad Guth

Joe Strout wrote:

:http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/3722
:
:Pretty neat. $15M for a 4-week stay on orbit; that's quite an
:improvement over $20M for a 5-day stay. And $88M/year to lease your own
:300-m^3 space station module? That's a real bargain.

How many customers do they have signed up?

--
"Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute."
-- Charles Pinckney

"Joe Strout" wrote in message
...
http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/3722

Pretty neat. $15M for a 4-week stay on orbit; that's quite an
improvement over $20M for a 5-day stay.

The going rate for a trip to ISS is reportedly $25 million.

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

In article ,
"Jeff Findley" wrote:

"Joe Strout" wrote in message
...
http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/3722

Pretty neat. $15M for a 4-week stay on orbit; that's quite an
improvement over $20M for a 5-day stay.

The going rate for a trip to ISS is reportedly $25 million.

Right, thanks for the correction. So $15M/4 weeks looks even better.
Maybe even Lance Bass will be able to afford it.

Joe Strout wrote:

http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/3722

Pretty neat. $15M for a 4-week stay on orbit; that's quite an
improvement over $20M for a 5-day stay. And $88M/year to lease your own
300-m^3 space station module? That's a real bargain.

That's a _prediction_, not a bargain, based on zero experience and
much speculation.

In such an environment, I can imagine a lot of smaller countries
developing an astronaut corps that way. NASA will look a bit foolish
when there are twice as many Japanese astronauts on orbit as Americans,
and they're paying a fraction of what we pay for that capability.

They are also getting a fraction of the capability - or did you miss
the difference between being a passenger and being an operator? (My
guess is that did, seeing that you call them astronauts.)

The cool thing about this is, even if the schedule slips and the prices
creep a bit (as they are almost certain to do), it's still a starting
point much lower than anything governments have done.

There have been many powerpoints projecting starting points lower than
anything the goverment can do. Note how many have actually borne
fruit.

And once there are regular paying customers, prices will continue to
come down and performance will go up, both in the launchers and in the
on-orbit facilities. Bigelow won't long be the only player in that
space. And besides direct competitors, there will be lots of room for
support companies providing on-orbit fuel, power, tug service, and
much more. Real space infrastructure at last!

Ahh... and the closing hymm of "Marching Hand in Hand to a Brilliant
Future" rings out of the chorus!

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

On Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:08:21 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Derek Lyons) made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:


There have been many powerpoints projecting starting points lower than
anything the goverment can do. Note how many have actually borne
fruit.

It roughly correlates with the number that have been actually funded.
As I've noted in the past, the only thing at which the government has
actually excelled is getting its hands on billions of dollars for this
stuff.

On Apr 13, 2:13 pm, (Rand Simberg)
wrote:
On Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:08:21 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Derek Lyons) made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

There have been many powerpoints projecting starting points lower than
anything the goverment can do. Note how many have actually borne
fruit.

It roughly correlates with the number that have been actually funded.
As I've noted in the past, the only thing at which the government has
actually excelled is getting its hands on billions of dollars for this
stuff.

....that it then gives to contractors to make it happen. Do you think
that NASA and the AF wouldn't rather give KR or SpaceX a fraction of
what they give Boeing or LM for the same thing?

h (Rand Simberg) wrote:

:On Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:08:21 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Derek Lyons) made the phosphor on my monitor glow
:in such a way as to indicate that:
:
:
:There have been many powerpoints projecting starting points lower than
:anything the goverment can do. Note how many have actually borne
:fruit.
:
:It roughly correlates with the number that have been actually funded.

Which correlates strongly with the number that had viable business
cases.

:As I've noted in the past, the only thing at which the government has
:actually excelled is getting its hands on billions of dollars for this
:stuff.

I thought you were a fan of the free market, Rand...

--
You are
What you do
When it counts.