Alan Boyle has scored a long and interesting interview with Bob Bigelow (yeah, I know it’s old news–I’ve been busy for the last few days), in which, among many other things, he discusses the prospects for American commercial launch providers for his needs:

Looking ahead, Bigelow plans two launches per year, moving up from the third-scale Genesis to a roughly half-scale prototype, and finally launching the full-scale, 330-cubic-meter Nautilus spacecraft by 2012. The time line targets 2015 for an honest-to-goodness space station, capable of hosting tourists or researchers, performers or athletes.

Bigelow hopes that the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will be ready to go in time for the Nautilus launches. If SpaceX founder Elon Musk is successful, “we are probably a multiple-flight customer for him,” Bigelow said.

But read the whole thing.

And I hope that I’ll get some of Mr. Bigelow’s thoughts myself, next week, in Vegas.