FYI,

"The Five-Billion-Star Hotel - Need to get away from it all? Popular
Science presents an exclusive tour of CSS Skywalker, an orbital
resort that's a lot closer to reality than you might think"
Popular Science
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/aviation/article/0,20967,1027551,00.html

: For his next hotel enterprise, Bigelow is looking beyond the bright
: lights of Las Vegas—beyond Earth's atmosphere, in fact. He is
: actively engaged in an effort to build the planet's first orbiting
: space hotel. Bargain-basement room rate: $1 million a night. For
: its water show, this hotel will have all of Earth's blue oceans
: flying past its windows at 17,500 miles an hour. Guests on board
: the 330-cubic-meter station (about the size of a three-bedroom
: house) will learn weightless acrobatics, marvel at the ever-
: changing face of the home planet, and, for half of every 90-minute
: orbit, gaze deep into a galaxy ablaze with stars.

: The public has seen this vision for decades—another hopeless
: dreamer's space fantasy. But here there's a difference: Bigelow is
: betting $500 million of his personal fortune that he can make it
: come true. He has hired veteran space-travel engineers to perfect
: the technology, he has produced nearly launch-ready hardware for
: testing, and he's floating a $50-million prize to entice other
: companies to create a safe, reliable orbital space vehicle to
: transport guests to the front door—or rather, the airlock. Even
: five years ago, this plot would have seemed utterly implausible.
: But with Burt Rutan's recent Ansari X Prize triumph—his company,
: Scaled Composites, won a $10-million competition for the
: successful, repeated launch of a manned suborbital space vehicle
: — and the subsequent creation of Virgin Galactic to capitalize on
: Rutan's technology for tourist spaceflights, Bigelow's project
: provides an intriguing new twist in the development of a commercial
: spaceflight industry.

: He shepherds visitors through his 50-acre, three-building,
: 56-employee R&D facility, Bigelow Aerospace, on the outskirts of
: Las Vegas with the quiet confidence of a man who knows exactly what
: he is doing. "It's a gamble," he says of his project, the world's
: first private space station. "It's a huge gamble." He smiles
: faintly as he says it, as though he enjoys the sheer outrageousness
: of his own project.

: Bigelow was just 15 years old when he vowed to devote his life to
: helping establish a permanent human presence in space. It would
: take money, he knew—lots of it. And so he began to build a very
: practical foundation for his fantastic idea: He followed his father
: into real estate, studying that and banking at Arizona State
: University. After graduating in 1967, he launched his career first
: as a broker, and soon began buying small rental properties. His
: first construction project, in 1970, was a 40-unit apartment house.
: Throughout the 1970s and '80s he built dozens of apartment
: buildings and motels in and around Las Vegas, and in 1988 he
: founded Budget Suites of America.

: The ideal moment arrived in 1999 when Bigelow, now sitting on a
: fortune, got wind of a NASA program for a radical new space
: station.

: Bigelow — who generally shuns media attention and rarely grants
: interviews — kept his spacefaring efforts largely under wraps for
: five years after founding Bigelow Aerospace. But he began showing
: his work last fall, after announcing his $50-million orbital-
: vehicle prize amid the positive press surrounding Rutan's
: SpaceShipOne. The top-secret, Skunk Works–style aura persists, and
: visitors are only slowly being admitted to Building B, the
: semipublic face of Bigelow Aerospace. Built last year, the
: windowless, 80,000-square-foot facility houses full-scale mock-ups
: of Bigelow's baby: the Nautilus space-station module. Two
: 45-foot-long, 22-foot-diameter modules, brilliant white and draped
: with the American flag, loom out of the darkness at the back of the
: building. A stairway invites visitors to climb on board to see for
: themselves what it might be like to live in the biggest space-
: station modules ever built. Their large volume is the result of an
: unusual design feature—they are inflatable.

: Developed at NASA as part of a project called TransHab, inflatable
: space-station modules have some important advantages over their tin-
: can counterparts. They weigh significantly less, and they launch in
: a compressed state, with their fabric hulls wrapped tightly around
: their rigid cores like a roll of paper towels. This allows them to
: use less-powerful launch vehicles and makes for roomier space
: stations. After a rocket fires a Nautilus into space, explosive
: bolts will release the girdle securing the compressed hull, and
: then the station's life support system, housed in the core, will
: inflate the structure with breathable air, expanding it from
: 15 feet in diameter to 22 feet. Power comes from solar panels that
: unfold from the rigid bulkheads at each end of the module. Each
: bulkhead also houses an airlock and a docking adaptor. Astronauts
: arriving later enter a shirtsleeve environment in which they can go
: to work unpacking removable panels, equipment and supplies from the
: core to create three levels of living and working space. A docked
: rocket engine called a multi-directional propulsion bus (MDPB) will
: eventually allow the station—the first one is tentatively called
: CSS [Commercial Space Station] Skywalker—to maneuver within Earth's
: orbit or even leave it, for, say, a trip to the moon.

: This basic architecture was created by NASA senior engineer William
: Schneider, in an effort that began in 1997. The design won numerous
: converts at NASA, with then- administrator Daniel Goldin calling it
: a major breakthrough. For a while, it was seriously considered as
: an alternative to the International Space Station (ISS) Habitation
: Module under development at the time by Boeing. But TransHab was
: cancelled without explanation in 2000, before it could produce
: flight-ready hardware. Its demise is an example of what Bigelow
: sees as NASA's monumental inefficiency. Here was a perfectly good
: program to develop a technology that was less expensive and tougher
: than conventional designs, but, as far as Bigelow could tell, it
: got axed for purely political reasons.

: Bigelow thinks he can do better with a traditional business model.
: "I've put together many, many projects involving a lot of money and
: a lot of people," he says, and unlike NASA, "I'm used to doing
: things pretty darn well on budget and pretty darn well on time."
: Although he's circumspect about just how he will spend his
: $500-million commitment, it is clear that he budgets carefully. His
: expenditures so far run only into the tens of millions, mostly for
: building the Bigelow Aerospace physical plant, for patents obtained
: from NASA, and for building and testing prototypes of space station
: modules. His biggest outlays, for building and launching the actual
: modules into space, have yet to be made. But here again, he plans
: to spend carefully, hiring rides on relatively low-cost commercial
: SpaceX and Russian Dneper launch vehicles, and sourcing
: off-the-shelf components from reasonably priced vendors whenever
: possible. It's this careful approach to spending, honed on
: countless construction projects, that Bigelow feels sets him apart
: from NASA, which relies on high-priced defense contractors.

: After TransHab was cancelled, Bigelow bought the exclusive
: development rights from NASA and entered into a Space Act Agreement
: with the agency to allow him to work with former TransHab engineers
: still employed there. And he tracked down Schneider, by then
: retired from NASA and teaching at Texas A&M University. Schneider
: was surprised when he got the call, but he agreed to see for
: himself what Bigelow was up to. The modules Bigelow has on display,
: though empty except for floors and structural elements, had their
: intended effect on Schneider. "And god," he recalls now, "when I
: walked in here, boom! It was mind-boggling, because this is the
: vision that I really wanted. Here's these things, all sitting
: there, and of course some of them are mock-ups, but the rest were
: inflatable, and I said, `Man, he's serious. He's not playing
: around.' " These days Schneider and his former TransHab colleagues
: visit the plant every few weeks to provide guidance to Bigelow's
: engineers. For Schneider, it's a chance to follow through on some
: unfinished business. "It's kind of like you want to see your child
: grow up to maturity," he says, "not be stopped in its adolescence."

: The real work at Bigelow Aerospace goes on in Building A, with its
: expansive shop floor. Here machinists and technicians turn out
: aluminum parts on state-of-the art computer-driven milling machines
: and assemble them into test modules. On a recent day, a welding
: torch flared in the darkness of a full-scale mock-up being
: converted into a vacuum chamber for testing the inflation of
: modules under reduced atmospheric pressure.

: Bigelow patrols the shop floor, wearing his customary colorful
: shirt and spotless white sneakers. Even to many of his longtime
: employees he is known as Mr. Bigelow, yet he's often greeted with
: smiles and good-natured ribbing. He's involved in every aspect of
: the operation, keeping a close eye on the work of the machinists
: and signing off on all of his engineers' designs. He has to feel
: with his own hands the heft of each precision part, to hear the
: satisfying click of them fitting together.

: Last summer, rather than endure abstract discussion in a meeting on
: whether to use the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,
: California, for vibration tests, he abruptly took the entire
: meeting to the airport and put the flabbergasted team on his
: private jet. They flew to Pasadena to evaluate the facility
: firsthand, had lunch, and flew back to North Las Vegas to continue
: the meeting.

: As Franklin E. Gibbs, Bigelow's patent attorney, recalled later:
: "We've got a room full of engineers, and everybody is worried about
: figuring it to the nth degree, and Robert just says, `Wait. Build
: it. Let's see what it does.' " Bigelow called the manufacturing
: manager up from the shop floor and told him to get to work: "Build
: both of them. I want a dozen of these ready after lunch." By the
: time the meeting reconvened, a dozen shiny rollers of each type
: awaited evaluation. The verdict? Go with the safer 3/16-inchers.

: Schneider's crew's original TransHab design had more stopping power
: than did aluminum three inches thick. Ground-testing of Bigelow's
: MMOD has shown that it can stop impacts by 5/8-inch-diameter
: aluminum pellets fired at it at 6.4 kilometers a second, several
: times as fast as a rifle bullet. No rigid spacecraft design can
: match this performance, and it's one of the reasons Nautilus has an
: expected life span of at least 15 years. But getting the MMOD to
: fold properly for launch is a major engineering headache. "It's
: challenging because it is such a robust and thick material,"
: Lardizabal says.

: Lardizabal admits that he and his colleagues may not be able to
: overcome these and other formidable obstacles that will arise
: before Bigelow's $500-million commitment runs out in 2015. He puts
: the project's chances for success at 60 percent. "This will be the
: first time," he explains. "That's the problem. You can't foresee
: everything. Just like when we rolled out the 747 the first time."
: Schneider, though, has no doubt that Nautilus will be in orbit by
: 2010, as planned—in large part because Bigelow is in charge. He
: compares Bigelow with another wildly successful Las Vegas real-
: estate mogul who had aerospace interests: "Bob is like Howard
: Hughes reincarnated. He's not just a financial person; he's in the
: middle of everything that we do."

: It could be argued that Bigelow's space station is on the way to
: becoming his own [Spruce Goose], the monumentally ambitious Hughes
: aircraft that could barely get airborne. But whereas the
: freewheeling Hughes inherited a fortune with which to make a bigger
: fortune, Bigelow is a self-made man, and therein lies a key
: difference. Beginning with his first apartment house, Bigelow has
: developed a clear-headed and methodical approach to all his
: projects: Hire the best engineers and tradespeople, source the best
: materials, and stay on time and on budget. "They're taking a very
: down-to-earth approach to what they're doing in terms of building
: and testing," Taber MacCallum says of Bigelow Aerospace.

: "They're very much along the same philosophical lines as Burt Rutan
: and his SpaceShipOne," he says, "and we all know how successful
: that's been." Bigelow's approach, he adds, is aggressive, but "he's
: very safety- conscious, much like Rutan."

: Before [Columbia] was lost in 2003 and the remaining space shuttles
: grounded, Bigelow was in talks with the Russians to supply his
: stations with three-person Soyuz capsules. After the [Columbia]
: accident, though, Bigelow found himself in competition with NASA
: for rides on the Soyuz—a distinctly untenable position.

: The success of the X Prize pointed the way toward a potential
: solution: Bigelow decided to launch his own competition. America's
: Space Prize will award $50 million for the first privately funded
: spacecraft that can send five people into orbit and dock with a
: Bigelow Aerospace habitat. The deadline is January 10, 2010, the
: date Bigelow wants his hotel to open.

: At $7.9 million, Bigelow's tickets will be a relative bargain. At
: that price, says Eric Anderson, whose company, Space Adventures,
: brokered the $20-million flights, Bigelow could see 20 to
: 30 customers a year. But Bigelow says he'll offer his station to
: any commercial enterprise that's interested. He hopes to find a
: market among drug companies and other manufacturers who want to
: take advantage of the increased efficiencies afforded by
: microgravity, as well as researchers and Hollywood producers eager
: to shoot movies, TV shows and commercials in space.

: Still, Bigelow says he stands a better-than-even chance of losing a
: big chunk of his fortune on this $500-million gamble. "But you
: know," he says, "the faint of heart never won a fair maiden, never
: won wars." Besides, "I think what we're doing has some national
: value, win or lose." That notion is a powerful motivation for
: Bigelow, says Gibbs, his patent attorney: "He feels like the United
: States should be taking the lead in this and that we really need to
: get more private industry involved if we're going to jump forward
: with any real spectacular moves."

: "Where's the inspiration in America?" Bigelow asks.

Mark Reiff