One of the
major aspects of the debate about President Obama’s new proposal for NASA to turn to commercial
providers for launching astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) is
whether there would be additional markets for such companies. Today at the International
Space Development Conference in Chicago one
potential customer stepped forward and made it clear that not only are they interested in commercial launchers,
but that their business plan depended on it.
An artist’s conception of Bigelow Aerospace’s Sundancer modules. Credit: Bigelow Aerospace
Las
Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace is
developing a series of “inflatable” modules, so named because they expand into
larger volumes once in orbit. Bigelow launched two demonstration modules,
Genesis I and II, in 2006 and 2007, and the company is actively developing
Sundancer, which will have a volume of 180 cubic meters and be able to support a
three-person crew. However, the company will hold off on launching Sundancer
until there’s a commercial crew capability Bigelow can use.
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“The long
pole in the tent for our operations is that while we could have Sundancer ready
very quickly, we don’t have a way to get people back and forth,” said Michael
Gold, Director of Washington DC Operations for Bigelow Aerospace, during a
speech at ISDC. The
company’s decade-long development effort, which Gold said cost $180 million,
“will be for naught if we don’t have affordable, reliable transportation.”
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Bigelow has
often been portrayed as a provider of space hotels, perhaps because of the
background of founder Robert Bigelow, who developed the Budget Suites of
America chain of hotels. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” Gold said.
Instead, Bigelow is looking at microgravity research and so-called “sovereign
clients”, countries without their own human spaceflight capabilities who may be
interested in leasing a Bigelow module for their own projects.
Gold
dismissed one frequent argument against commercial crew, that such flights
would be less safe than government-run missions. “There’s this misperception
that commercial doesn’t care about safety. We care more about safety,” he said. While a government agency like NASA can
survive an accident, he argued, a commercial venture would be facing hundreds
of millions of dollars of losses and perhaps even its bankruptcy. “We’re more
incentivized to be safe than a government agency because we have a lot riding
on it.”
Commercial crew,
Gold concluded, can benefit not just Bigelow Aerospace and the rest of the
commercial space sector but NASA as well. “We see the Obama space policy as
rescuing human spaceflight, allowing the private sector to take over low Earth
orbit and allow NASA to go push the envelope, and do what NASA does best.”
