More on Inflatable Space Hotels

StJefferson writes "It's anything but a traditional Budget Suites room, with a price tag projected to be somewhere in the range of US$50,000-100,000 per night. But Bob Bigelow's inflatable space habs will get their first trial next November, and are expected to go into production in 2008. There's even speculation that Bigelow is in talks with Burt Rutan regarding the small problem of getting customers to the door of his high-flying outposts. And the best part? Bigelow's doing this all on his own, as a private entrepreneurial venture. He's only answerable to his wife regarding the wisdom of this investment, and 'so far, she's on board.' Remind you Heinlein fans of anyone?" We've mentioned this guy before.

Comments

He seems serious

[erick99]

"Bigelow has long shunned any kind of publicity for himself, and since he is investing up to $500 million of his personal fortune into the aerospace company, he's reluctant to give away too much information to potential competitors. "p That's not chump change though it's not a huge amount for space related activities. Still, he seems like he should be taken seriously.

Cheers,

Erick

Why?

[the Luddite]

What is there to do in space? I would love to go into space but really, what the hell are you supposed to do there once you get bored with taking pictures out the tiny porthole?

Don't get me wrong, I am glad to see that private industry is getting into space since the government is doing it's typical job of constantly cutting funding for science and diverting it to better and more efficient ways to kill people. The question is really how many people can pay to go to space and what will they do there?

Re:Why?

[mrright]

There is plenty of stuff that can be done better in space once the transportation costs go down. You have unlimited quantities of hard vacuum, free energy from the sun 24h a day, access to very low temperatures with a simple radiator and perfect isolation from the earth biosphere.

So everything that could be harmful to the biosphere, requires lots of energy, hard vacuum or cryogenic temperatures will be more economical in space once the transportation problem is solved.

The first thing will probably be stuff like genetic engineering and bioweapons research. Then there will be solar power satellites. And once you get these in place most of the heavy industry will move to space (high earth orbit, to be precise).

Just think about the advantages: you can build a huge industrial complex without people suing you about the noise, the pollution etc.

Re:Why?

[ultranova]

Yeah, whatever. And transporting materials for heavy industry into a high orbit is going to cut costs.

Depends where you get those materials. If you attach a solar-powered mass-driver into one of the large (10 kilometers or so in diameter) metal asteroid and transfer it to Earth orbit, you have nearly endless supply of almost-pure ore.

And lets not forget that the heavy minerals in Earth have sunk to the core and are thus rare in the surface, whereas asteroids have them aplenty. This allows producing things that simply couldn't be mass-produced in Earth due to lack of raw materials.

And once you do finish emptying that 10-kilometer asteroid, are you out of luck ? No ! You send the mass-driver back to the asteroid belt to get you another, and sell the empty shell of the asteroid (you were a smart person and left the outermost kilometer or so untouched, only broken by a mine shaft to the interior) to serve as a hull for a space colony (or a really big spaceship).

Industry is happy because it has virtually unlimited resources and no concern for the environment; the enviromentalists are happy because the industry has moved its big dirty factories away; consumers are happy because they can get stuff cheap; and the geeks are happy because there is space colonies, factories and travel. Arabs won't be happy because we will most likely switch to using either hydrogen (because with sunpower satellites electricity will be practically free, and hydrogen can be easily mass-produced by electrolyzing water) or better batteries made with all these new materials and zero-g construction methods, but with dependence of oil gone, who cares ?-)

Oh, and you can deliver your goods anywhere on the world by packing them into re-entry capsules and dropping.

You're idea sounds a hell of a lot better and cheaper than decent acoustic insulation.

Acoustic insulation, and pollution filters, and electric bills, and transporting raw materials and finished goods...

Yes, it is starting to sound better.

Pardon the sarcasm above, but I'm just not buying it. Your idea seems too far-fetched even for sci-fi.

You did knew that one purpose of current and past space stations is to examine the possibilities of zero-g manufacturing ?

Sarcams will bite its wielder if uttered without caution :).

Re:Sky high prices

[RockClimbingFool]

Production costs are almost negligable compared to the amount for R&D, testing and more importantly, certification. Those valves cost that much problably because they were man rated. Man rating things is incredibly expensive. Time and time again, people just want to look at how much things cost to manufacture and try to base cost estimates off of that.

Re:This will be great

[bs_testability]

do you mean like the way that we all distanced ourselves from airplanes after the first fatalities? or automobiles?