Bigelow launch vehicle mistake

The inflated habitats Bigelow are developing are coming in at around
twenty ton and necessarily require large expendable launchers. Bigelow
has put up a $50 million prize for a five person reusable space
transport. This is necessary for carrying people and equipment to and
from the inflated habitats they are developing. Hence the Bigelow system
is currently necessitating two separate launch vehicles.

Presumably such a small high flight rate reusable space transport, as
dictated by the prize, will quickly lead to per kilogram launch costs
much lower than large twenty ton expendable launch vehicles. One would
also presume that there would be a long period of time between the
development of small low cost space transports and the development of
twenty ton low cost space transports. A period of time for which Bigelow
would have to seriously over pay for the larger launch services.

There is no significant technical reason why Bigelow can not design
their inflated habitats with the capacity to go up on the smaller
reusable space transports, and more, economics will force them to make
this switch anyway once the small low cost space transports they require
for habitat servicing are developed. So why design the inflatable
habitats so that they can only be launched in twenty ton lots to begin
with?

If they switch now to designing their inflatable habitats for launch on
smaller space transports then they will not only save greatly on
ultimate launch costs, but they will avoid a lot of dead end development
work. Perhaps the greatest benefit though is that they will create a
substantial up front market for small low cost space transports. This
would have a far greater beneficial effect on the market than the fifty
million dollar prize and it costs them nothing as it is something they
will have to do anyway. Such a design change alone should quickly lead
to the development of the small reusable space transports that they
require for servicing the habitat modules.

In making substantial future plans on launching payloads to LEO, one
should be assuming a payload size that will fit with what the first
generations of low cost space transports will be able to carry. Bigelow
is not doing this.

Pete.