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Lockheed and Bigelow to Build Space Hotel
simonbp writes "Lockheed Martin and Bigelow Aerospace have entered into a deal to move towards the use of the Atlas V for private manned space flight ... A formal agreement between the two companies to study Atlas V feasibility for space tourism — including up to 16 launches a year — will be announced shortly. The initiative could radically transform both the 'New Space' and traditional launch marketplace... Bigelow Aerospace plans to build an orbiting hotel from inflatable modules for space tourists. The company is interested in Lockheed Martin's Atlas V to provide human and cargo transportation to their planned space station."
(I've connected some analysis by various people in the space blogosphere, many of whom are current or former aerospace engineers)
Clark Lindsay's RLV News, an (excellent) site for private spaceflight news, has some pretty good analysis of the deal. From his latest post:
http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid =2397
* Even though it initially only involves a study into the possibility of Atlas V transport to the Bigelow station, just the fact that one of the largest aerospace companies is taking seriously the prospect of commercial manned spaceflight independent of NASA is going to have a big impact on attitudes towards it by NASA and other mainstream companies.
* The high launch rates depend to some extent on space tourism but Bigelow is currently focusing on plans to convince a lot of the countries that currently do not have manned space capabilities to create their own astronaut programs and to center these programs around utilization of the Bigelow facility. The Lockheed deal should make it easier for Bigelow to convince such countries that the opportunities for space access to the facility are for real.
* NASASpaceflight.com notes the potential impact on the COTS winners - SpaceX and Rocketplane-Kistler. However, if those companies succeed in their development plans, their reusable vehicles should be considerably cheaper to operate than the Atlas V. Also, I doubt that Bigelow would want to be dependent on just one vehicle and would most likely contract with at least one other transport company.
* If this plan goes forward and Lockheed-Martin begins developing a manned version of the Atlas V, it's difficult to believe that NASA could continue with the Ares I/Orion program as currently configured. Arguing that the Orion couldn't possibly be made lighter is not going to be sufficient reason to justify a multi-billion dollar duplication of a launch capability that's available at a much lower price.
From Selenian Boondocks:
http://selenianboondocks.blogspot.com/2006/09/lock heedbigelow-space-tourism-deal.html
* Lockheed has the contract for the Orion capsule, which means that they can probably piggy-back a lot of their space tourism capsule work off of what they're doing for Orion. Also, if they happen to be able to field their Atlas V tourism vehicle before Orion, they might be able to make out like total bandits--netting billions in development funds for something that they can turn around and say "look, we have a cheaper, and better alternative that's already on the market, --go with us, and you could save lots of money". The upshot being even more flights on their Atlas V. I think this is potentially win-win-win for Lockheed.
* As LM has pointed out elsewhere a lot of the price hikes for Atlas V stem from the fact that they're only launching 2-4 of these per year. They have to cover all of their payroll costs, factory maintenance and upkeep costs, pad ops costs, etc but spread out over much fewer launches. At 2-4 flights per year, they're looking at $140M for their barebones Atlas V, while at 6-8 flights per year they were offering it initially for about $70M. At 20 flights per year, maybe they could cut the price down into the $35-50M range. At that point, the costs per person would be in the $5-10M range.
* Bigelow has stated time and again that he's not in the orbital hotel business. He expects to make most of his money off of building space stations for research, manufacturing, providing low-cost space programs to countries not traditionally thought of as having space programs, as well as orbital tourism. A lot of those other markets aren't as sensitive to cost per ticket as they are to reliability of access. 16 flights per year means that you have a ride
IIRC, the first of the inflatables were going to put the drinking / cleaning water in the walls of the station. Water, I think, does a pretty good job of blocking radiation, and the walls are a fine place to store it.
My wife doesn't listen to me either...
They are inflated with air. http://bigelowaerospace.com/out_there/view_photos. php