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."

Comments

atlas vs ares

[Keebler71]

Before someone asks... The reason NASA chose to develop a new vehicle instead od using an EELV was because it was deemed practically impossible to modify the exisiting designs to accomodate humans. Specifically, these vehicles fly an extreme loft trajectory. In the event of an abort... the re-entry loads would likely not be survivable. By comparison, human-rated vehicle fly much 'flatter' trajectories.

and yes...IAARS.

Not what I heard...

[everphilski]

The reason for the NASA ESAS man-rating concerns was due to the 25mT CEV mass requirement, which ESAS maintained could not safely even be met by the massive Atlas V Heavy variant. According to a Lockheed Martin paper unveiled this week at the Space 2006 conference, the basic Atlas V 401 can meet FAA and NASA man-rating requirements with little modification with a much smaller capsule mass of 20,000 lbs.

At 20,000 lbs, there is enough margin in the Atlas V 401's flight envelope to allow the crew to safely abort at any time during launch, closing all unsafe 'black-zones'. Also, at 20,000 lbs structural loads on the vehicle are decreased enough so that a detailed Lockheed analysis indicates that all primary structures meet NASA 1.4 Factor of Safety margins.

It had more to do with the payload than the man-ratability. The design is "perfectly man-ratable" and has been discussed for **years**. Check out this article (which is what I cited) which states that with the reduction in mass full aborts from launch to orbit are attainable: here.

By the way let me be the first to say this is freaking cool. Between the quater billion LM has on the COTS and the design of the CEV they have the potential to drastically reduce the cost of space flight for tourists and eventually private research. The reason the Atlas is so darn expensive is there are only a few launches a year. The bigleow deal increases that five-fold. Increasing launches decreases cost due to limited manufacturing runs. And repeated reliability is a Good Thing for the new emerging commercial space market.

(IAARS)