Blue Origin is considering getting into the game.
[Mid-morning update]
A commenter suggests that BO could pick up some of the people that Bigelow laid off. Maybe, but in thinking about it, I think that Bigelow’s “expandable” concepts have possibly missed the train, in the coming age of cheap launch, the large fairing of Spaceship, and orbital assembly.
Could be that they see SpaceX has a large lead on LEO transport. If that market niche is filled, have to find another one, and space stations would be a good one. If I was Jeff, I’d also look into OTV and proper spaceships, both of which become important if you have cheap access to orbit.
He could likely scoop up a bunch of laid-off Bigelow engineers on the cheap.
I think SNC May have already scooped a bunch up. Them seem to be making a move toward inflatables.
I don’t understand why Bigelow would not be his go-to choice for habitat technology. Bob gave me a personal guided tour of his facility a few years ago, and his technology is highly advanced. Plus, it is in space both as a free-flyer and an appendage to the ISS. Why start over?
Considering getting in the game?
They have to get in the “launch to orbit” game, first.
There honestly weren’t very many Bigelow engineers at it’s peak, let alone in the end. We scattered, but I know Bigelow alumni are at Axiom, Paragon, Lockheed. The SNC inflatables are a bit different, not sure there is much connection aside from the Transhab program showing it was possible.
IMO, inflatables still have some use case, but the way Bigelow imagined it has been deprecated. Using them, the same fairing can still make a bigger volume or shape. If a torus is ideal for active magnetic radiation shielding, which it is, then an inflatable made to fit in a Starship or New Armstrong fairing could give us a very nice, large torus.
Torus, torus, torus…
Uh oh. They’re bombing Pearl again…
Sorry about that.