Slashdot Mirror
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 didn't realize there's so much money in Tea!
and yes...IAARS.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Where are the space prostitutes!?!
Now there will be an explosive market!
Where can I invest?
It only has had 8 launches so far - are they that confident that it'll have around 100% reliability? Its a big difference when you lose an insured cargo to a launch failure, and a paying millionaire/billionaire with a team of lawyers and rich relatives...
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)
It doesn't take much to get the pertinent information, seeing as how they publish it on their website.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
It's just like cruise ships, the discount rooms have "curtains" that cover the wall.
With my luck, I get to sleep near the rotational center of the craft (no view) where the lack of gravity gives me space sickness for the trip.
*_# TZ_
(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...
Aww why did you have to go and put expectations on the poor vending machine makers, now they'll have to make a machine that sounds right without gravity.
Oh well, maybe there'll be some fun stuff to read about some sucker who opens a can of Coke in that enviroment.
> I wonder how they plan to shield inflatable modules
/. Please go away.
> from radiation outside the atmosphere. "Inflatable"
> conjures up images of centimeter-thin latex in my
> mind, like a giant beach ball.
1. If you had bothered to read http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/ you would have found that this is an 11" thick kevlar structure. Think of 11 inches of bullet proof vest material.
2. Some say that it is impractical, but there is a module flying. Anyone who doesn't know that is not a nerd, and does not need to be on
3. The radiation shielding is done with a trash compactor. You drop your trash into a bag, it's compacted, and that's placed in either bags or delapidated modules, which are placed on the sun side of the module. NASA considered this on the ISS, but decided that the knowledge from failed equipment would be extremely valuable, early on. They were right, at first. They learned amazing things about what fails and why. Now, 99% of equipment failures are predictable, and they just bring home the trash as a matter of habit - a stupid habit. They use the shuttle to bring home 3,000 pounds of trash, then add 3,000 pounds of shielding to modules - unbelievably stupid.
Andy Out!
They are inflated with air. http://bigelowaerospace.com/out_there/view_photos. php