Score another milestone on the way to a private/commercial spaceflight industry:Inflatable Satellite Launches in Russia
A converted missile blasted off Wednesday carrying an experimental inflatable spacecraft for an American entrepreneur who dreams of some day building a commercial space station, officials said.The Genesis I spacecraft lifted off from Russia’s southern Ural Mountains at 6:53 p.m. Moscow time aboard a Dnepr rocket converted from a Cold War ballistic missile, according to the Russian Strategic Missile Forces…
The launch was a first for Bigelow Aerospace, founded by Las Vegas real estate mogul Robert Bigelow, who owns the Budget Suites of America hotel chain.
Bigelow envisions building a private orbiting space complex by 2015 that would be made up of several expandable Genesis-like modules linked together and could be used as a hotel, or perhaps a science lab or college. He has committed $500 million toward the project.
Excellent.
Just imagine — if one of the manned startups makes it to orbit, in a decade (or sooner) we could have private manned spacecraft servicing private space stations for an investment of less than a billion dollars. At least if you go by the amount various entrepreneurs claim to be willing to commit — it’s doubtful that there wouldn’t be unanticipated costs between here and there, but on the bright side, how bad can it be when compared to NASA’s record for such things? If startups end up spending $3-5 billion to get to that point, they’ll still have spent less than NASA has on RTF alone.
