New Scientist expands upon the company that just sent an inflatable room to the ISS… and what they’d like to do next:
Bigelow Aerospace, which just sent an inflatable room to the International Space Station (ISS), wants to do it again in 2020 – on a much larger scale.
Last night the firm announced a partnership with rocket supplier United Launch Alliance (ULA) to launch two of its B330 expanding habitats into orbit in 2020.
One of these may follow in the footsteps of the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), which arrived at the ISS this week.
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The B330 is 20 times larger than BEAM, and would boost the internal volume of the ISS by 30 per cent. At a press conference last night, Bigelow stated that he would like the XBASE to increase commercial traffic to the ISS, allowing researchers to visit and use the facility on a “timeshare” basis with NASA.
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“We would love to see Disney have a Disney space station,” [company founder Robert Bigelow] said last night. “Wouldn’t that be cool?”