Wow, that will certainly cover transportation to his inflatable space stations. Go commercial investment in space! [Link]The main questions people ask about Vegas property billionaire Robert Bigelow and his huge-inflatable-satellite-habitat plans are: can the man really be serious? Sure, fire a couple of test space-balloons into orbit on (relatively) cheap Russian rockets, he's done that. But will he really put up full-size inhabitable models? And will he ever really get people up there?
The answers appear to be in. Yes, Bigelow is serious; yes, he really does reckon to put working balloon space stations into service; and yes he will get the people up there by simply spending an immense amount of money, buying ordinary rockets from the people who supply NASA and the Pentagon.
Flight International reports that Bigelow has been in negotiations with US aerospace colossus Lockheed for months now, and is close to realising a deal. Lockheed is also building the "Orion" spacecraft for NASA, which will be the space agency's new option for manned flights to the proposed US Moon base (and then maybe Mars) when the shuttle fleet stands down.
It is now understood that Bigelow has firm plans to buy a total of 50 Atlas V rockets from Lockheed over the next seven years.
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