A story on his plans for orbital and lunar bases, starting three years from now, at CNBC.
17 thoughts on “Bigelow”
Unfortunately, until NASA stops monopolizing all of the available human orbital spaceflight capability with the great orbital commune, Bigelow Aerospace will be trapped in a holding pattern.
I think a smart company like SpaceX would have no trouble building enough Dragon capsules to meet the demand beyond NASA. Will NASA insist that all of the manned capsules be new for every flight like they do for the unmanned cargo flights? If so, SpaceX could sell rides in “used” capsules very easily and cheaply. NASA paid for the capsule to be built so SpaceX would only have to pay for the refurbishment costs. Boeing and Sierra Nevada would likely be able to do the same. In fact, NASA would likely represent a small market for passenger flights so all of the companies would benefit from expanding the market. NASA would also benefit.
They don’t insist that.. in fact, the last Dragon flight included all the internal equipment and many of the external components of the previous Dragon flight. Currently SpaceX is making new Dragons instead of refurbishing old ones because it thinks it is the best business decision, not because of some imagined NASA requirement.
NASA did not want there to be a 2nd destination. Remember when they explicitly forced the Russians to de-orbit Mir when a private company wanted to buy it? They allegedly told it was in order for the Russians no to be distracted from ISS construction and servicing. Other times they told it was because Mir was too hold and a hazard. Everyone in the construction business knows a house needs major intervention every 20 years. Mir would need that as well but if someone was willing to foot the bill what was the problem?
I hope they will be less stupid this time that an US company is going to build its own space station.
Bigelow gave NASA the reports under an unfunded SAA. Gate 1 and Gate 2.
“Bigelow writes in the Gate 1 report that cost reduction of rocket technology has never been addressed by NASA and that the commercial sector can help in this respect.
“Until recently, the commercial sector has been locked out. All of the usual cost per lb. calculations everyone uses are all based on the wrong production metrics,” Bigelow noted.
“They are government costs in partnership with parochial contractors with no connection to the real world. Under the right leadership, the costs of habitable systems and transportation can be drastically reduced from what has been the usual American experience.””
On the other hand, whenever SpaceX (or even Boeing, in theory) does come through with the taxi service, holy moly will Bigelow is rolling in the dough. Whatever the market is for space habitats, he’ll have 100% of it (the Chinese national space program excepted). That’s some serious blue ocean strategy.
And chances are decent that the Falcon 9 will be fully reusable at the same time, or only shortly after, the Dragon Rider becomes available. Cheaper launch only makes the market that much bigger, making his Olympus stations look fairly plausible and reasonable.
This quote stuck out, “the base would be made in low Earth orbit—say, near the ISS, and then pushed to lunar orbit and the Moon’s surface using tugs the company is also designing. ”
A space tug business could be as big or bigger than habitats. There are a lot of potential customers other than the ones who want to get to his habs especially if the tug was capable of interplanetary travel. A blue ocean strategy indeed.
This is the best and worst time to be a spaceflight enthusiast. Best because there is so much progress happening so rapidly. Worst because the most important aspect of progress (low cost access to space, especially through reusable launchers) has not come into full bloom yet. Intellectually it’s interesting to think that in as short a time as a year from now and likely no more than 5 years from now the landscape of spaceflight will be utterly changed from what it is today. Changes in costs and capabilities will lead to changes in demand, mission priorities, and technological possibilities.
Well put. If you assign 1x as the speed at which NASA and other legacy players such as Arianespace are moving, then SpaceX is moving at a minimum of 5x and quite possibly faster. At the end of your referenced five years, one will no longer be able to use the phrase “the space program” as shorthand for whatever NASA is doing. There will be a lot of space programs, most having little or nothing to do with NASA and U.S. government budget and appropriations politics.
The big names aren’t alone. There is a long tail of small space companies quietly plugging away worldwide. There are a lot of market niches opening up in space right now – a lot like the computer peripherals market in the early 80s.
Speed isn’t the right way to look at it. Indeed, in some regards NASA and Arianespace and others are capable of moving “faster” than SpaceX et al. But it’s the mechanism of motion that is different. NASA moves fitfully, and more or less linearly. They’ll do a tiny amount of research and then plan some new system that reaches beyond what they’ve researched then bring a flawed implementation to fruition through the traditional government procurement process and then perhaps they’ll learn some few lessons in the worst way and at great cost over a long period of time.
SpaceX has far fewer resources but they advance geometrically, exponentially. They iterate. They learn. They build on what they’ve done. And they stack advancement on top of advancement. Perhaps at each level they only learn a little, they only advance a small amount, but stacking even 5% improvements one atop the other pays remarkable dividends after only a few layers, and SpaceX is doing much better than that. Year over year they’ve spent much less in R&D than NASA, but they’ve spent it much better, and with much greater return. Where NASA has floundered in launch vehicle development with Ares 1 & 5 and then SLS, ploughing billions a year into infertile soil with long ranged plans of uncertain utility, SpaceX has invested much less but they’ve achieved far more. SpaceX began with a rocket that was almost a joke, the Falcon 1, but they built it not to build a rocket but to build a rocket company and the knowledge and experience of building rockets, and then they used that to build the Falcon 9 then the Falcon 9 v1.1 and so on. Where NASA designs rockets on paper SpaceX uses test flights. A decade ago SpaceX had never flown anything, today they’ve already tested a reusable stage in an operational orbital launch. And next month they’ll do it again, this time with landing legs on the stage. Think of how remarkable that is compared to the bureaucratic process that NASA uses. But also think of how recently acquired the expertise being made use of has been.
SpaceX has proven to be masters of risk mitigation and risk control, which enables them to be incredibly aggressive in testing and pushing the capabilities of their vehicles. The Falcon 9 v1.1 first stage is a reusable rocket right down to its toe-nails but it is designed to be able to serve as a conventional expendable stage as well. Which makes it possible for SpaceX to do reusability test flights from a full up configuration as add ons to commercial launches, reaping enormous returns for very modest costs and risks.
It’s that iterative/geometric growth which will enable them to pull off a Mars colonization program and make it look easy. Not to mention all of the other transformations to spaceflight which will occur. When hundreds of people can fly to orbit every year the nature of things changes. Similarly, when the cost of launching entire constellations of satellites becomes what it costs today to put up only one then everything changes. People start living and working in space, they start building spacecraft prototypes on orbit rather than on Earth (what better place to test the environment of space?), and so much more. Perhaps by 2050 Mars will already have as many satellites in orbit as Earth does today (GPS, weather sats, comsats, satellite phone service, etc.) The 21st century will finally see a true space age awaken, and from the perspective of the future it will seem so easy and natural they’ll wonder why it took us so long.
“NASA moves fitfully”
Actually, NASA moves how the congressional porkonauts fund it to move based on their self interests at the time. Congress doesn’t seem to have the least bit of interest past the next election. If they did they would have forced NASA to seek and encourage to the maximum extent possible the full commercial use of space.
“Worst because the most important aspect of progress (low cost access to space, especially through reusable launchers) has not come into full bloom yet.”
And for Bigelow timing is incredibly important. How long can he tread water while waiting for launchers? SpaceX is likely to keep working on Dragon Rider regardless of what congress does but delays from NASA will trigger delays with SpaceX and other companies and that isn’t good news for Bigelow. It would be heartbreaking to see Bigelow fold due to the unintended consequences of NASA and congress dragging their feet.
Do you really think its unintended by NASA and its Congressional porkers? Think about. Bigelow aerospace has the ability to provide the same quality of orbital facilities as the ISS at maybe 1-2 percent what it cost the NASA pork machine to provide them. Bigelow Aerospace would be able to build it in a fraction of the 15 years NASA spent building the great international commune in the sky and BA would be able to operate its stations at maybe 5 to 10 percent NASA is paying to operate the great international commune in the sky. And you won’t have to wait years and years to get an experiment, payload or researcher to one of the Bigelow stations.
Do you honestly think the American public wouldn’t take note of the cost difference? The members of Congress who don’t have NASA pork machines in their districts? If Mr. Bigelow gets his station up and running NASA will have to answer a lot of uncomfortable questions about how it does business, questions that will have answers very unfavorable to NASA. It would be game over for the great NASA pork machine, and probably NASA as well.
That is why NASA had to undercut Mr. Bigelow’s America Prize with its COTS program and CCP, why its doing everything possible to assimilate New Space firms like SpaceX into its pork machine, why its trying to buy Bigelow off by buying one of his habitats as a module to the great international commune. Its why its been spending money “supporting” new space conferences and groups so they will become part of the NASA pork machine instead of criticizing it. NASA knows if the public ever figures out the billions NASA wastes each year doing nothing of any importance in opening space for human settlement and development, that its human spaceflight program and even in its robotic missions only exist to generate eye candy for the science groupies to keep the pork flowing, its game over for the great NASA pork machine.
Not really. NASA has no issue with comsat launches now. THAT market was taken from them after the Challenger accident and was the real spark for commercial launch services emerging in the U.S. in the early 1990’s. Of course while they had the responsibility for comsat launches they did there very best to kill off all the American ELVs still in service. They would have probably succeeded if it wasn’t for the USAF insisting on dragging its feet on phasing out their use of ELVs.
But orbital human spaceflight is the NASA core and they will do everything to retain complete control of it. Especially when folks like Mr. Bigelow have the ability to expose how high is the cost of the pork and waste associated with it.
Unfortunately, until NASA stops monopolizing all of the available human orbital spaceflight capability with the great orbital commune, Bigelow Aerospace will be trapped in a holding pattern.
I think a smart company like SpaceX would have no trouble building enough Dragon capsules to meet the demand beyond NASA. Will NASA insist that all of the manned capsules be new for every flight like they do for the unmanned cargo flights? If so, SpaceX could sell rides in “used” capsules very easily and cheaply. NASA paid for the capsule to be built so SpaceX would only have to pay for the refurbishment costs. Boeing and Sierra Nevada would likely be able to do the same. In fact, NASA would likely represent a small market for passenger flights so all of the companies would benefit from expanding the market. NASA would also benefit.
They don’t insist that.. in fact, the last Dragon flight included all the internal equipment and many of the external components of the previous Dragon flight. Currently SpaceX is making new Dragons instead of refurbishing old ones because it thinks it is the best business decision, not because of some imagined NASA requirement.
NASA did not want there to be a 2nd destination. Remember when they explicitly forced the Russians to de-orbit Mir when a private company wanted to buy it? They allegedly told it was in order for the Russians no to be distracted from ISS construction and servicing. Other times they told it was because Mir was too hold and a hazard. Everyone in the construction business knows a house needs major intervention every 20 years. Mir would need that as well but if someone was willing to foot the bill what was the problem?
I hope they will be less stupid this time that an US company is going to build its own space station.
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2014/02/affordable-habitats-more-buck-rogers-less-money-bigelow/
Bigelow gave NASA the reports under an unfunded SAA. Gate 1 and Gate 2.
“Bigelow writes in the Gate 1 report that cost reduction of rocket technology has never been addressed by NASA and that the commercial sector can help in this respect.
“Until recently, the commercial sector has been locked out. All of the usual cost per lb. calculations everyone uses are all based on the wrong production metrics,” Bigelow noted.
“They are government costs in partnership with parochial contractors with no connection to the real world. Under the right leadership, the costs of habitable systems and transportation can be drastically reduced from what has been the usual American experience.””
On the other hand, whenever SpaceX (or even Boeing, in theory) does come through with the taxi service, holy moly will Bigelow is rolling in the dough. Whatever the market is for space habitats, he’ll have 100% of it (the Chinese national space program excepted). That’s some serious blue ocean strategy.
And chances are decent that the Falcon 9 will be fully reusable at the same time, or only shortly after, the Dragon Rider becomes available. Cheaper launch only makes the market that much bigger, making his Olympus stations look fairly plausible and reasonable.
This quote stuck out, “the base would be made in low Earth orbit—say, near the ISS, and then pushed to lunar orbit and the Moon’s surface using tugs the company is also designing. ”
A space tug business could be as big or bigger than habitats. There are a lot of potential customers other than the ones who want to get to his habs especially if the tug was capable of interplanetary travel. A blue ocean strategy indeed.
This is the best and worst time to be a spaceflight enthusiast. Best because there is so much progress happening so rapidly. Worst because the most important aspect of progress (low cost access to space, especially through reusable launchers) has not come into full bloom yet. Intellectually it’s interesting to think that in as short a time as a year from now and likely no more than 5 years from now the landscape of spaceflight will be utterly changed from what it is today. Changes in costs and capabilities will lead to changes in demand, mission priorities, and technological possibilities.
Well put. If you assign 1x as the speed at which NASA and other legacy players such as Arianespace are moving, then SpaceX is moving at a minimum of 5x and quite possibly faster. At the end of your referenced five years, one will no longer be able to use the phrase “the space program” as shorthand for whatever NASA is doing. There will be a lot of space programs, most having little or nothing to do with NASA and U.S. government budget and appropriations politics.
The big names aren’t alone. There is a long tail of small space companies quietly plugging away worldwide. There are a lot of market niches opening up in space right now – a lot like the computer peripherals market in the early 80s.
Speed isn’t the right way to look at it. Indeed, in some regards NASA and Arianespace and others are capable of moving “faster” than SpaceX et al. But it’s the mechanism of motion that is different. NASA moves fitfully, and more or less linearly. They’ll do a tiny amount of research and then plan some new system that reaches beyond what they’ve researched then bring a flawed implementation to fruition through the traditional government procurement process and then perhaps they’ll learn some few lessons in the worst way and at great cost over a long period of time.
SpaceX has far fewer resources but they advance geometrically, exponentially. They iterate. They learn. They build on what they’ve done. And they stack advancement on top of advancement. Perhaps at each level they only learn a little, they only advance a small amount, but stacking even 5% improvements one atop the other pays remarkable dividends after only a few layers, and SpaceX is doing much better than that. Year over year they’ve spent much less in R&D than NASA, but they’ve spent it much better, and with much greater return. Where NASA has floundered in launch vehicle development with Ares 1 & 5 and then SLS, ploughing billions a year into infertile soil with long ranged plans of uncertain utility, SpaceX has invested much less but they’ve achieved far more. SpaceX began with a rocket that was almost a joke, the Falcon 1, but they built it not to build a rocket but to build a rocket company and the knowledge and experience of building rockets, and then they used that to build the Falcon 9 then the Falcon 9 v1.1 and so on. Where NASA designs rockets on paper SpaceX uses test flights. A decade ago SpaceX had never flown anything, today they’ve already tested a reusable stage in an operational orbital launch. And next month they’ll do it again, this time with landing legs on the stage. Think of how remarkable that is compared to the bureaucratic process that NASA uses. But also think of how recently acquired the expertise being made use of has been.
SpaceX has proven to be masters of risk mitigation and risk control, which enables them to be incredibly aggressive in testing and pushing the capabilities of their vehicles. The Falcon 9 v1.1 first stage is a reusable rocket right down to its toe-nails but it is designed to be able to serve as a conventional expendable stage as well. Which makes it possible for SpaceX to do reusability test flights from a full up configuration as add ons to commercial launches, reaping enormous returns for very modest costs and risks.
It’s that iterative/geometric growth which will enable them to pull off a Mars colonization program and make it look easy. Not to mention all of the other transformations to spaceflight which will occur. When hundreds of people can fly to orbit every year the nature of things changes. Similarly, when the cost of launching entire constellations of satellites becomes what it costs today to put up only one then everything changes. People start living and working in space, they start building spacecraft prototypes on orbit rather than on Earth (what better place to test the environment of space?), and so much more. Perhaps by 2050 Mars will already have as many satellites in orbit as Earth does today (GPS, weather sats, comsats, satellite phone service, etc.) The 21st century will finally see a true space age awaken, and from the perspective of the future it will seem so easy and natural they’ll wonder why it took us so long.
“NASA moves fitfully”
Actually, NASA moves how the congressional porkonauts fund it to move based on their self interests at the time. Congress doesn’t seem to have the least bit of interest past the next election. If they did they would have forced NASA to seek and encourage to the maximum extent possible the full commercial use of space.
“Worst because the most important aspect of progress (low cost access to space, especially through reusable launchers) has not come into full bloom yet.”
And for Bigelow timing is incredibly important. How long can he tread water while waiting for launchers? SpaceX is likely to keep working on Dragon Rider regardless of what congress does but delays from NASA will trigger delays with SpaceX and other companies and that isn’t good news for Bigelow. It would be heartbreaking to see Bigelow fold due to the unintended consequences of NASA and congress dragging their feet.
Do you really think its unintended by NASA and its Congressional porkers? Think about. Bigelow aerospace has the ability to provide the same quality of orbital facilities as the ISS at maybe 1-2 percent what it cost the NASA pork machine to provide them. Bigelow Aerospace would be able to build it in a fraction of the 15 years NASA spent building the great international commune in the sky and BA would be able to operate its stations at maybe 5 to 10 percent NASA is paying to operate the great international commune in the sky. And you won’t have to wait years and years to get an experiment, payload or researcher to one of the Bigelow stations.
Do you honestly think the American public wouldn’t take note of the cost difference? The members of Congress who don’t have NASA pork machines in their districts? If Mr. Bigelow gets his station up and running NASA will have to answer a lot of uncomfortable questions about how it does business, questions that will have answers very unfavorable to NASA. It would be game over for the great NASA pork machine, and probably NASA as well.
That is why NASA had to undercut Mr. Bigelow’s America Prize with its COTS program and CCP, why its doing everything possible to assimilate New Space firms like SpaceX into its pork machine, why its trying to buy Bigelow off by buying one of his habitats as a module to the great international commune. Its why its been spending money “supporting” new space conferences and groups so they will become part of the NASA pork machine instead of criticizing it. NASA knows if the public ever figures out the billions NASA wastes each year doing nothing of any importance in opening space for human settlement and development, that its human spaceflight program and even in its robotic missions only exist to generate eye candy for the science groupies to keep the pork flowing, its game over for the great NASA pork machine.
Insightful point.
Bob Clark
Heh – SpaceX pulls a fast one:
http://www.spacenews.com/article/satellite-telecom/39558updated-ses-books-falcon-9-for-2016-launch
Not really. NASA has no issue with comsat launches now. THAT market was taken from them after the Challenger accident and was the real spark for commercial launch services emerging in the U.S. in the early 1990’s. Of course while they had the responsibility for comsat launches they did there very best to kill off all the American ELVs still in service. They would have probably succeeded if it wasn’t for the USAF insisting on dragging its feet on phasing out their use of ELVs.
But orbital human spaceflight is the NASA core and they will do everything to retain complete control of it. Especially when folks like Mr. Bigelow have the ability to expose how high is the cost of the pork and waste associated with it.