NASA FISO Presentation by Mike Gold, Bigelow Aerospace
NASA FISO Presentation: Bigelow Aerospace’s Past Accomplishments, Present Activities, and Future Plans, SpaceRef
“Now available is the July 1, 2015 NASA Future In-Space Operations (FISO) telecon material. The speaker was Mike Gold (Bigelow Aerospace) who discussed “Bigelow Aerospace’s Past Accomplishments, Present Activities, and Future Plans“.
Nothing new in the download package, unfortunately; it’s a recitation of Bigelow’s impressive work to date. I had visions of some sort of grand scheme but I think that everybody realizes Bigelow’s gear is the way of the future.
These guys surely deserve some sort of forbearance award.
I’ve not yet listened to the included mp3 however.
Not sure what you mean by “forbearance award”, unless you mean giving them credit for continuing to dump their own money into it after the infamous Congressional directive prohibiting NASA from further development work? Or, if you are referring to credit for invention of the technology, keep in mind that it came from NASA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
As for your other point, no, “everybody” does not “realize Bigelow’s gear is the way of the future”. While it may presently be a popular axiom among the armchair ‘experts’ on this forum, it is far from being a resolved issue that transhab technology is of net benefit versus conventional pressure vessel technologies. It may or may not have advantages in certain applications, but it is most certainly not a panacea solution.
Keep in mind that the technology was originally conceived in an era when it was assumed that payload launch volumes would be restricted by the shuttle payload bay for the foreseeable future yet it was desired to gain back the capability of launching pressure vessels with diameters normally requiring Saturn V class payloads. Now that the possibility of directly launching such sized payloads appears to be likely again in the near future, the advantages of transhab technology are not as obvious. It may yet prove sufficiently beneficial in some applications to warrant a place in the future of spaceflight, but that can not at present be considered a certain thing.
What he was referring to is that they are waiting for the space taxis to get online so they can fly their space stations. They are out of the “maybe” business. They are ready to to begin actual flyable BA330 modules.
All they want is the Falcon Heavy to lift it and a flyable taxi to carry people up and down.
They don’t give a horse’s patootie what other tech may or may not be better or worse. Or what kind of future lifters may or may not arise.
They are DOING IT.
No more, no less.
Here is the price list if you want to reserve some space:
http://bigelowaerospace.com…
BTW – here is what NASA is saying:
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
They are the living embodiment of “All dressed up, and nowhere to go”.