[FPSPACE] Bigelow Aerospace flight delayed

[Jim Oberg]

Test flight for space hotel delayed

Russian launch of Bigelow's inflatable module now set for July

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13171475/

By James Oberg, NBC News space analyst

Special to MSNBC

   The much-anticipated first orbital test of technology that could lead to 
a "space hotel" will be delayed, Bigelow Aerospace announced Tuesday. The 
blastoff, widely believed to have been planned for June 16, will now not 
take place before early July.

   "We have just been informed that there will be a three- to four-week 
delay of our first launch," Chris Reed, publicist for the Las Vegas-based 
company, said in an e-mail advisory. "We are told that if there are no other 
delays, our new launch time frame will be between July 4th and July 14th."

   The Genesis 1 payload will be a one-third-scale model of an inflatable 
habitation module that could form the backbone of an orbital facility for 
space tourists and commercial space researchers sometime in the next decade. 
NASA experimented with the concept early in the international space station 
program, but budget cuts forced them to terminate research. Bigelow 
Aerospace has picked up that approach and has perfected the technology, 
observers say.

   The test flight is expected to subject the flexible exterior wall 
material to space conditions for an extended period of time, while interior 
instrumentation will monitor pressure and temperature. In theory, a flexible 
wall should be even more resistant than a metal wall to penetration by 
micrometeorites and space debris.

   In addition to the space hotel angle, the mission is of high interest 
because it would be the first commercial satellite launch from an active 
Russian military missile base, where dozens of SS-18 Satan intercontinental 
ballistic missiles remain aimed at the United States, each with 10 
thermonuclear warheads.

   The launch vehicle, a commercialized version of the SS-18 called the 
Dnepr, has already made several successful satellite launches from the 
Russian main spaceport at Baikonur in Kazakhstan. Commercialized by the 
Kosmotras Corp., it can carry up to 3 tons of cargo into orbit.

   Two years of preparation -- For the past two years, officials of the 
Russian Defense Ministry have been

preparing to launch the same commercial configuration directly from this 
military base. In that way, the operational budget will go to the Strategic 
Rocket Forces, the agency that runs the base at Dombarovsky, rather than the 
Military Space Forces, which until recently ran most of the Baikonur 
operations.

   Genesis 1 will be only the first of a long series of commercial satellite 
launches that it is hoped will be made from Dombarovsky, a missile base just 
east of Orsk in the southwest corner of Siberia.

   According to Reed, the reasons for the Genesis 1 delay are "due to 
special preparations that the launch provider is continuing to make for our 
flight." Bigelow Aerospace only last week unveiled new pages on its Web site 
dealing with hitherto-undisclosed features of the payload, involving views 
that will be transmitted to Earth.

   "This flight contains our Genesis 1 spacecraft with a total of 13 cameras 
inside and outside the spacecraft," Reed explained. External cameras will 
show scenes of Earth. The interior cameras will show floating personal items 
placed aboard the spacecraft by the firm's employees.

   Fees for flying mementos -- Bigelow Aerospace is now seeking private 
customers willing to pay modest fees to place their own personal items on 
the next payload. "The Genesis 2 spacecraft scheduled to fly this coming 
fall will be our first commercial effort," Reed continued, "and it is for 
that flight that we are currently taking only reservations.

   "If the Genesis 1 spacecraft functions as anticipated," he said, "we 
shall then proceed to contact all of the parties who have made Genesis 2 
reservations and complete the transactions to 'Fly Your Stuff.'"

   Reservations are still being taken, he added.

   "Only after we have launched our first spacecraft and obtained 
satisfactory results from a variety of information sources onboard the 
spacecraft will we then actually convert reservations to purchases," he 
explained.

   Photo: Eventually, Bigelow Aerospace hopes to dock inflatable space 
modules together in orbit to construct a hotel, as shown in this artist's 
conception.