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Orbital Resort to Launch by 2010
Neil Halelamien writes "Popular Science has a cover feature on self-made billionaire and space enthusiast Robert Bigelow (who's been mentioned before on Slashdot). The article has new info on Bigelow's plans to launch a 'CSS Skywalker' orbital resort by 2010 and sell space habitats to others, such as scientists, manufacturers, Hollywood producers, and countries. The habitats will be made of inflatable modules with multilayered kevlar-like walls. A prototype habitat will be launching on a SpaceX Falcon V next year. To help ensure cost-effective access to the station, Bigelow is also running the $50 million America's Space Prize. In the long run, he plans to use the modules as the basis for space yachts and moon cruisers."
Robert Bigelow gained his fortune from owning Budget Suites of America - a discount motel chain.
Only in America could someone go from renting rooms at 49 dollars a night to building a Space Resort.
Pretty Cool.
Am I the only one who would hesitate to be the first resident of an inflatable Vectran habitat in space? I'll wait 'till V2.0, thanks.
You know, the big problem with all these prizes in the past was that one heck of a lot of people got themselves killed attempting to win them. Culturally it wasn't such a big deal back then, in fact it was considered noble, courageous and daring.
But society has changed. Our values have changed. I can just imagine the great cry WHEN (not if) some of these spacecraft start failing, and people start dying. That's what happens when you rush to compete for a prize that other competitors also want - shortcuts get taken, like they did historically, and people get killed.
Now, way back when, it wasn't such a big deal if a plane dropped into the atlantic, or crashed on some farm somewhere. The density of our population has increased a bit since then and although our planet is still primarily ocean, there's a greater chance of having the remains of some failed launch or deorbit falling on a populated area than before. Or if a space station design fails to meet some contingency or other, causing all inhabitants to perish. Ooops we forgot about that...
Are we ready for this? Is it a risk that we are each willing to take in a personal sense - in order to fully open up travel to space? Or is everyone going to whine at the first accident, causing all this pioneering to get legislated and regulated to oblivion?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Most entrepreneurs fail, so I don't know how well this will turn out. Still, most innovators are a bit nuts, and crazy rich people built this world, so more power to them.
On the safety side, deaths from civilian spaceflight are inevitable. I doubt it will be much less safe statistically than NASA, though if successful on a large scale, civilian launches could easily surpass the number of humans put into space by governments (around 500 or so, I think).
Governments and insurance companies will want to regulate this business. Only time will tell how the public will react after a passenger shuttle blows up or burns up. Crashes haven't stopped the airline industry, though they have hurt its bottom line.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
actually... it depends on the country of launch.
See the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 which is international law.
Jurisdiction is the responsibility of the launching state, accordingly.
Obviously an object the size of a quarter traveling at tens of thousands of miles an hour may be a different story but maybe you can design these things so that they are strong enough to absorb the impact long enough to slow it down or 'push' you. Might be a bit bumpy in there but you might have a better chance of survival.
Like I said, i'm no engineer.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
Maybe because it won't work, or is incredibly dangerous, and they can't get any of their lawyers/insurance agencies to insure it.
It seems like a good idea when you read about it, but it's really got no structural rigidity, and almost everything we've built in space so far has been first and foremost a floating ROCK. Recently we've added more composite materials due to their strenght and relative weight reduction, but even these materials aren't seen very often.
There are also a lot of other considerations. For one, what about radiation? This is basically a shopping bag filled with air, floating in space; what's to stop the millions of rads coming from the sun from ripping what ever organism inhabits them to shreads? Next, what about micrometeor impact? One constant in our space voyages is that we've left more and more garbage in orbit, lots of which are nothing but small flecks of paint or a nut or a bolt that's came off of a bulkhead (or a shearing body, like in Apollo's shear-away stage bolts). What about the heat expansion/contraction from when the module's in front of the sun vs behind the Earth?
But it's not all negative. I love the idea of in-space inflation/construction, and I did read that they plan on using water for radiation shielding, and licensed some NASA patents to help out, and they have put some thought into micrometeorites and presurization, but the fact still remains that a system like this just hasn't been tested yet, and that generally with these kinds of hazards, one should over-design rather than under. I'm just a skeptic, and think that, while this is a novel idea, it won't lead to "Space Yachts" in our life time.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
I mean, a formative childhood of Buck Rogers / Star Trek / Battlestar Galactica aside, what's so great about space? The real thing is not like that.
It has an enormous impact on the body from the G force, gamma rays, muscle atrophy, and long term consequences. (Doesn't NASA advise astronauts to have children before going into space, due to the impact on reproductive DNA?)
And when you're up there, aren't you just going to see what going to an IMAX theatre could show you, just in rather less comfort?
I don't know, maybe I'm being unadventurous. Pioneering is cool and I wholeheartedly support the professionals going up there, but "space tourism," I'm just not sure I get it.
I'm quite happy for the Neils and Buzzes of our time to do it for me.
I'm not a rich person, and I don't really plan on ever being one, but for a chance for a multi-day trip into space, I'd cough up thousands. For a trip to the moon, tens of thousands. This is even if there's a 5% chance of catastrophic failure. Who cares if my retirement evaporates? I'd die a happier man.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Good chance to slip in a plug for heavy lift rockets powered by Gas Core Nuclear Reactor engines. Here is a really interesting design for a fully reusable, non-polluting nuclear rocket based on the Saturn-V form factor, which could lift 1000 tons of cargo into Earth orbit (for comparison, the Space Shuttle can carry 30 tons) and return to a soft landing. It's a fully reusable spaceship that could haul up entire resort hotels (not just "inflatable modules") in a single trip.
Another great use for GCNR rockets would be interplanetary trips such as a Mars mission. Their cargo capacity would allow for a tremendous amount of supplies and equipment. Transit time would be half that of a conventional ship, reducing the effects of prolonged zero-gee and cosmic radiation exposure, and a host of other problems. The ability to make a powered landing on Mars would eliminate the need for an aerobraking system, Apollo-style lander/return combination or other engineering. The crew could fly there, land, take off and return home in a single vehicle, just like in all those old black and white space movies.
I don't understand why people want to go to space?
For the same reasons Europeans colonized the Americas:
1. Economic. Asteroids contain tons of minerals. The Moon's surface contains large quantities of He3 (although an efficient method of mining it as yet to be invented), and its low (relative to Earth) gravity well and lack of atmosphere makes it easier to get things into space. (The first Space Elevator may be built from the Moon to (actually, through) the Earth-Moon Lagrange point (L1, I think) out of material mined from asteroids.
2. Political. It used to be that one could get away from government interference by moving to a place on the Earth where there was no government. There is no place on Earth where that is the case any more. Once space travel becomes more commonplace, humans will be able to move to the asteroid belt, then to the Kipur Belt, to avoid governmental interference, or to set up their own governments without interference from more established governments. (My guess is that planets and moons will be brought under the control of large governments, and will thus be unsuited for colonization by freedom-loving peoples.)
and, probably most important, from a human spirit point of view,
3. Because it's there.
According to this link http://www.solcomhouse.com/poverty.htm
The top 3 richest people in the world have wealth greater than the combined Gross Domestic Product (the value of all goods and services) of the world's 48 poorest nations.
And that the world's richest 225 people have combined assets equal to the combined annual income of the world's 2.5 billion poorest people.
This tells me that something is out of whack. This guy could probably singlehandedly wipe out hunger in the world instead he wants to spend all that money trying to build a hotel in space.
To each his own I guess.
evil is as evil does
When thinking Moon, think Antarctica, not America. Hypothetic Moon colony may make significant savings in space works for Earth, but it will never get to an breakeven point or become completely self-sustainable.
Countries investing in building of Moon colony will not willfuly grant political independence to it and "the people of Moon" have everything to lose by isolating themself from "Mother Earth". Unlike Americans, they will not have enemy of their enemy to support them with contraband (as French did against English...ooups, there... I said it!).
The history teaches us that there is no lastingly powerful nation without strong production of food (in the case of space souvereignities, this principle expands to all life-support nescecities: oxygen, water, food).
We still don't posses technology to produce anything out there using only energy supply (which is logical choice of first problem to be solved) and whatever material there is.
Even if that problems worked out, there is no way to support surface structures in the long run, not without atmospheric protection from small space objects hammering them. That means you cannot make greenhouses needed to recycle (complement) animal (human) life byproducts (CO2 and... whatever), because they will not last under frequent meteor hits. Burrying them to safe depth cuts off natural light supply, putting additional burden on power budget of the colony.
The problem with singlehandedly wiping out hunger is that the governments in charge of the world's most hungry people won't cooperate. So, to actually do it you'd have to finance a private army and conquer half the world, killing hundreds of thousands in the process. That would probably piss off the global police, and nobody's as rich as the US government. I think this guy's better off blowing his money in space than starting wars.
On the other hand, I do agree that something is out of whack.
I like Bigelow as well. Some have compared him to Delos D. Harriman from the Robert Heinlein classic THE MAN WHO SOLD THE MOON.
According to the Popular Science article, Bigelow wanted to develop space from the time he was a young man. He studied business in college with the specific goal of earning enough money to fund space expansion.
For a similar vision of a viable business plane for space, read The Rocket Company