Bigelow Aerospace has plans for various inflatable structures suitable for use in space

A few days ago, ANN reported that Robert Bigelow, owner of Budget Suites of America, has set up the Bigelow Orbital Space Prize -- $50 million to the first team to fly two missions of two orbits each with the equivalent of a five-passenger payload, all within a span of 60 days.

Bigelow Aerospace, another of Bigelow's enterprises, with offices in Las Vegas (NV), has won FAA payload approval for a technology based on NASA's Transhab project that may well revolutionize the construction of structures in space that can support human life.

We all know that one of the biggest obstacles to building structures in space is the fact that the materials, tools and manpower to construct them must be hauled into orbit before they structures can be built. It turns out that Bigelow Aerospace has been working on a better mousetrap to accomplish the same goal: inflatable modules.

Now the company has won the approval of the FAA, through the Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (FAA-AST) to launch its inflatable space module technology. The company has developed a program to explore the use of the inflatable modules in orbit. The company claims that the modules can be used for such varied purposes as microgravity manufacturing and space tourism. The modules may even be suitable for the construction of structures on our moon, and possibly even the planet Mars.

The FAA approval is actually for a demonstration of the product using a scale model of a full module. "Obtaining the FAA-AST payload approval for Genesis is a first of its kind," explained Mike Gold, corporate counsel for Bigelow Aerospace in Washington (DC) to Space.Com. "This will go a long way to establishing a good precedent for the inflatables," he said.

"This is a first step...but an important first step along the road that Bigelow Aerospace is traveling," Gold added. To obtain the "favorable payload determination" by the FAA-AST, a review process took place over roughly an eight-month period, he said.

The approval from the FAA will allow Bigelow to contract with a payload delivery company to place the demonstrator unit into orbit for testing. The company plans to launch the Genesis payload on a Falcon V booster, currently under development by Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) in El Segundo (CA), and scheduled for first flight in November 2005.

FMI: www.bigelowaerospace.com