Bigelow Aerospace to offer $760 million for spaceship

http://space.newscientist.com/articl...spaceship.html

Here are the interesting bits:

The company plans to break ground in less than a year on a factory
to mass-produce its inflatable space stations, but they are worried
that without an affordable commercial crew launch vehicle, none of
its potential customers will be able to pay to get to these space
stations, Bigelow said.

"We could find ourselves with a nice new facility, a number of
modules on the floor ready to launch, and nowhere in sight is an
affordable or even existing transportation vehicle - a capsule and
a lifting vehicle that make economic sense," he said.

"It's becoming much more of a crisis to us, so we probably are
going to be announcing fairly soon that we're going to offer a
contract - to whomever - where we will state how much we're willing
to pay per seat or per launch," he said.

The contract or purchase agreement would be worth $760 million in
total for eight launches. To show that Bigelow Aerospace is serious,
it will deposit $100 million in an escrow bank account up front if
the plan goes forward.

The potential offer tops the $500 million NASA has budgeted for its
Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) programme, which
is part of the agency's own effort to spur development of commercial
orbital crew launch capabilities.

Jeff
--
"When transportation is cheap, frequent, reliable, and flexible,
everything else becomes easier."
- Jon Goff

Jeff Findley wrote:
http://space.newscientist.com/articl...spaceship.html

Here are the interesting bits:

The company plans to break ground in less than a year on a factory
to mass-produce its inflatable space stations, but they are worried
that without an affordable commercial crew launch vehicle, none of
its potential customers will be able to pay to get to these space
stations, Bigelow said.

"We could find ourselves with a nice new facility, a number of
modules on the floor ready to launch, and nowhere in sight is an
affordable or even existing transportation vehicle - a capsule and
a lifting vehicle that make economic sense," he said.

"It's becoming much more of a crisis to us, so we probably are
going to be announcing fairly soon that we're going to offer a
contract - to whomever - where we will state how much we're willing
to pay per seat or per launch," he said.

The contract or purchase agreement would be worth $760 million in
total for eight launches. To show that Bigelow Aerospace is serious,
it will deposit $100 million in an escrow bank account up front if
the plan goes forward.

The potential offer tops the $500 million NASA has budgeted for its
Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) programme, which
is part of the agency's own effort to spur development of commercial
orbital crew launch capabilities.

NASA and Mr. Big sure do seem a little uptight about launch services.

Who do they think they're going to shake out of the woodwork in 30 days?

Aren't these guys thinking things through at all? They could put a
SpaceX Merlin powered upper stage on top of an Atlas V common core, and
call it a day. That's one alternative launch vehicle architecture.

I've got many more. Will somebody please have Mr. Big give me a call.

kT wrote:

Jeff Findley wrote:

http://space.newscientist.com/articl...spaceship.html

Here are the interesting bits:

The company plans to break ground in less than a year on a factory
to mass-produce its inflatable space stations, but they are worried
that without an affordable commercial crew launch vehicle, none of
its potential customers will be able to pay to get to these space
stations, Bigelow said.

"We could find ourselves with a nice new facility, a number of
modules on the floor ready to launch, and nowhere in sight is an
affordable or even existing transportation vehicle - a capsule and
a lifting vehicle that make economic sense," he said.

"It's becoming much more of a crisis to us, so we probably are
going to be announcing fairly soon that we're going to offer a
contract - to whomever - where we will state how much we're willing
to pay per seat or per launch," he said.

The contract or purchase agreement would be worth $760 million in
total for eight launches. To show that Bigelow Aerospace is serious,
it will deposit $100 million in an escrow bank account up front if
the plan goes forward.

The potential offer tops the $500 million NASA has budgeted for its
Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) programme, which
is part of the agency's own effort to spur development of commercial
orbital crew launch capabilities.

NASA and Mr. Big sure do seem a little uptight about launch services.

Who do they think they're going to shake out of the woodwork in 30 days?

Aren't these guys thinking things through at all? They could put a
SpaceX Merlin powered upper stage on top of an Atlas V common core, and
call it a day. That's one alternative launch vehicle architecture.

I've got many more. Will somebody please have Mr. Big give me a call.

Looks like a bargain for only $750 Million for a Space Station, I imagine
the price will only go up after the first one. Kind of like the price on a
Soyuz is heading up, is $25 Million now, or is it $30 Million.

Maybe NASA will buy the first one for storage at the Space Station. Of
course, Mr. Bigelow will have to charge them another $750 Million for the
paperwork that NASA will want.

Craig Fink wrote:
kT wrote:

Jeff Findley wrote:
http://space.newscientist.com/articl...spaceship.html
Here are the interesting bits:

The company plans to break ground in less than a year on a factory
to mass-produce its inflatable space stations, but they are worried
that without an affordable commercial crew launch vehicle, none of
its potential customers will be able to pay to get to these space
stations, Bigelow said.

"We could find ourselves with a nice new facility, a number of
modules on the floor ready to launch, and nowhere in sight is an
affordable or even existing transportation vehicle - a capsule and
a lifting vehicle that make economic sense," he said.

"It's becoming much more of a crisis to us, so we probably are
going to be announcing fairly soon that we're going to offer a
contract - to whomever - where we will state how much we're willing
to pay per seat or per launch," he said.

The contract or purchase agreement would be worth $760 million in
total for eight launches. To show that Bigelow Aerospace is serious,
it will deposit $100 million in an escrow bank account up front if
the plan goes forward.

The potential offer tops the $500 million NASA has budgeted for its
Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) programme, which
is part of the agency's own effort to spur development of commercial
orbital crew launch capabilities.
NASA and Mr. Big sure do seem a little uptight about launch services.

Who do they think they're going to shake out of the woodwork in 30 days?

Aren't these guys thinking things through at all? They could put a
SpaceX Merlin powered upper stage on top of an Atlas V common core, and
call it a day. That's one alternative launch vehicle architecture.

I've got many more. Will somebody please have Mr. Big give me a call.

Looks like a bargain for only $750 Million for a Space Station, I imagine
the price will only go up after the first one. Kind of like the price on a
Soyuz is heading up, is $25 Million now, or is it $30 Million.

I thought it was 65 million heading to 80 million.

Maybe NASA will buy the first one for storage at the Space Station. Of
course, Mr. Bigelow will have to charge them another $750 Million for the
paperwork that NASA will want.

750 million for eight launches. These are 100 million dollar launches
any way you look at them, EELV, Falcon 9, Soyuz, or mix and match.

I'm still sticking with the SSME on the Ares/Orion upper stage (SSTO).

I'll still need all the other launchers, so nobody loses here.

The only thing that fails to meet the cut here is the Stick.

On Oct 26, 8:50 am, Craig Fink wrote:
kT wrote:
Jeff Findley wrote:

http://space.newscientist.com/articl...erospace-to-of...







Here are the interesting bits:

The company plans to break ground in less than a year on a factory
to mass-produce its inflatable space stations, but they are worried
that without an affordable commercial crew launch vehicle, none of
its potential customers will be able to pay to get to these space
stations, Bigelow said.

"We could find ourselves with a nice new facility, a number of
modules on the floor ready to launch, and nowhere in sight is an
affordable or even existing transportation vehicle - a capsule and
a lifting vehicle that make economic sense," he said.

"It's becoming much more of a crisis to us, so we probably are
going to be announcing fairly soon that we're going to offer a
contract - to whomever - where we will state how much we're willing
to pay per seat or per launch," he said.

The contract or purchase agreement would be worth $760 million in
total for eight launches. To show that Bigelow Aerospace is serious,
it will deposit $100 million in an escrow bank account up front if
the plan goes forward.

The potential offer tops the $500 million NASA has budgeted for its
Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) programme, which
is part of the agency's own effort to spur development of commercial
orbital crew launch capabilities.

NASA and Mr. Big sure do seem a little uptight about launch services.

Who do they think they're going to shake out of the woodwork in 30 days?

Aren't these guys thinking things through at all? They could put a
SpaceX Merlin powered upper stage on top of an Atlas V common core, and
call it a day. That's one alternative launch vehicle architecture.

I've got many more. Will somebody please have Mr. Big give me a call.

Looks like a bargain for only $750 Million for a Space Station, I imagine
the price will only go up after the first one. Kind of like the price on a
Soyuz is heading up, is $25 Million now, or is it $30 Million.

Maybe NASA will buy the first one for storage at the Space Station. Of
course, Mr. Bigelow will have to charge them another $750 Million for the
paperwork that NASA will want.

But they'll only loose track of all such paperwork, including all of
whatever R&D documentation, so what's the difference?
- Brad Guth -

In article ,
"Jeff Findley" wrote:

The contract or purchase agreement would be worth $760 million in
total for eight launches. To show that Bigelow Aerospace is serious,
it will deposit $100 million in an escrow bank account up front if
the plan goes forward.

Wow! I bet he and Elon are having tea even as we speak.

Seriously though, Bigelow has just taken the chicken-and-egg problem
we've all been squawking about for years, and smacked it with a large
hammer. The launch market is undeniably there now, for whomever can
step up and perform.

I'm not sure it'll matter all that much to SpaceX's development plans,
as they're pretty much fully funded already -- though it should make
their financial planning easier and more fun. But it might make a big
difference to smaller would-be players, like Xcor for example, where
finding investment (which requires convincing investors that there's a
viable market) is a serious constraint.

--
"Polywell" fusion -- an approach to nuclear fusion that might actually work.
Learn more and discuss via: http://www.strout.net/info/science/polywell/

In article ,
Craig Fink wrote:

Looks like a bargain for only $750 Million for a Space Station, I imagine
the price will only go up after the first one. Kind of like the price on a
Soyuz is heading up, is $25 Million now, or is it $30 Million.

As I understand it, the Soyuz prices were artificially surpressed, and
are simply now catching up to their true cost.

Here, we're starting out with something close to the true cost to begin
with -- no government subsidies involved -- and with experience and
recovery of development costs, I would expect future costs (in relation
to performance) to go down, as in pretty much any other industry. (And
no, this principle doesn't apply only to information technologies; look
at cars for a concrete hardware example.)

--
"Polywell" fusion -- an approach to nuclear fusion that might actually work.
Learn more and discuss via: http://www.strout.net/info/science/polywell/

"Joe Strout" schreef in bericht
...
In article ,
Craig Fink wrote:

Looks like a bargain for only $750 Million for a Space Station, I imagine
the price will only go up after the first one. Kind of like the price on
a
Soyuz is heading up, is $25 Million now, or is it $30 Million.

As I understand it, the Soyuz prices were artificially surpressed, and
are simply now catching up to their true cost.


No, it's because the U.S. dollar isn't worth **** anymore. If the economic
situation in the U.S. deteriorates we'll probably see the dollar heading
towards 50 euro cents. In Euro's the oil price hasn't really changed, it's
merely because the dollar is falling that the oil price is increasing.



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

"Jeff Findley" schreef in bericht
...
http://space.newscientist.com/articl...spaceship.html


$760 million for 8 launches of what tonnage? My guess is they want at least
several manned vehicles for that price which is very optimistic. I reckon
SpaceX could do it IF their Falcon9 ever flies, but I doubt it will be in
operation before 2010 and even so, the US Air Force has al their flight
booked for at least a decade.



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...
http://space.newscientist.com/articl...spaceship.html

Here are the interesting bits:

The company plans to break ground in less than a year on a factory
to mass-produce its inflatable space stations, but they are worried
that without an affordable commercial crew launch vehicle, none of
its potential customers will be able to pay to get to these space
stations, Bigelow said.

So, let me get this straight, they're going to build a factory for a product
they're not even sure anyone will be able to use?

Wow. That's just incredible.
"When transportation is cheap, frequent, reliable, and flexible,
everything else becomes easier."
- Jon Goff

Wonder how he's doing these days.







--
Greg Moore
SQL Server DBA Consulting Remote and Onsite available!
Email: sql (at) greenms.com http://www.greenms.com/sqlserver.html