Bigelow Marketing Inflatable Space Stations

LAS VEGAS — Bigelow Aerospace is kicking off a marketing campaign to attract national space agencies and corporations to its privately funded inflatable space station.

Space entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, 65, who made his fortune in Las Vegas real estate development, already has invested $180 million in the company and says he will commit up to $500 million to realize his dream of building commercial space habitats. “This year is our coming out year, so to speak,” he says.

Bigelow founded the company in 1999, and in 2004 acquired the license for the TransHab inflatable habitat technology from NASA. Bigelow’s first test craft, Genesis 1, was launched in 2006 aboard a converted Dnepr SS-18. Two test vehicles are now in orbit.

Two habitats

Bigelow is developing two commercial habitats: the 180-cubic-meter Sundancer and the larger BA 330. The company intends to launch a Sundancer in 2014 to test its capabilities. Provided the testing phase goes well, a second Sundancer and a docking node bus will be deployed by 2015, followed by a 330, says Michael Gold, the company’s chief counsel and head of its Washington operations.

Bigelow sees his customers coming from two large buckets: the 50-60 nations that do not have the wherewithal to support an indigenous space program, and corporations. “A lot of countries have astronauts, but what they don’t have is much opportunity for those astronauts to fly,” he says.

Bigelow envisions governments and corporations making up the bulk of his company’s customers. Prices will range from $200 million-$400 million, depending on the number of “seats” that are purchased. He is pitching Bigelow Aerospace’s space station as an “affordable alternative” to the International Space Station, which “is controlled by the Russians and the U.S., with another 14 or so countries along for the ride.”

Bigelow also sees an untapped market in companies that would use a space platform to perform materials work, undertake pharmaceutical research or conduct experiments in microgravity. “We think the corporate community is fairly substantial,” he says. Bigelow Aerospace is talking with several pharmaceutical companies and is also approaching agricultural business companies interested in developing new strains of seeds in microgravity. Bigelow also sees potential in companies that need microgravity to develop nanotube structures.

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