Scale models were sent to 'potential customers, including governments and corporations, as a reminder of the possibilities'. In 2011, Bigelow employed an in-house team of model makers, coming from the film and architecture industries, to make detailed models of their space habitats and space stations. In February 2011, Dubai of the United Arab Emirates became the seventh nation to have signed on. In October 2010, Bigelow announced that it had agreements with six sovereign nations to utilize on-orbit facilities of the commercial space station: UK Astronomy Technology Centre ( United Kingdom), Netherlands Space Office ( Netherlands), Defence South Australia ( Australia), Singapore Government Technology Development Agency ( Singapore), Japan Manned Space Systems Corporation, chairman is a previous director of JAXA ( Japan) and Swedish National Space Board (Sweden). Robert Bigelow has been explicit that he is aiming to do business in space in a new way, with 'low cost and rapid turnaround, contrary to traditional NASA ISS and Space Shuttle operations and bureaucracy'. Despite these broad plans for space commercialization, the space tourism destination and space hotel monikers were frequently used by many media outlets following the 2006/2007 launches of Genesis I and Genesis II. The business model includes ''leasing out' small space stations or habitats made of one or more inflatable modules to different research communities or corporations'. Since early on, Bigelow has been intent on 'pursuing markets for a variety of users including biotech and pharmaceutical companies and university research, entertainment applications and government military and civil users'. As of June 2022 it remains at the station.

The module was berthed to the International Space Station on 16 April 2016, and was inflated on.

NASA considered connecting a Bigelow expandable craft to the ISS for safety, life support, radiation shielding, thermal control and communications verification testing for the next three years', and in December 2012, signed a US$17.8 million contract with Bigelow to develop the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), then projected to fly in 2015. In early 2010, NASA came full circle to once again investigate 'making inflatable space-station modules to make roomier, lighter, cheaper-to-launch spacecraft' by announcing plans in its budget proposal released 22 February 2010. Bigelow stated on multiple occasions that he was prepared to fund Bigelow Aerospace with up to about US$500 million through 2015 in order to achieve launch of full-scale hardware. īy 2010, Robert Bigelow had invested US$180 million in the company, which by 2013 had grown to US$250 million of his personal fortune.

Bigelow invested US$75 million in proprietary extensions to the NASA technology by mid-2006, and US$180 million into the technology by 2010. īigelow continued to develop the technology for a decade, redesigning the module fabric layers – including adding proprietary extensions of Vectran shield fabric, 'a double-strength variant of Kevlar' – and developing a family of uncrewed and crewed expandable spacecraft in a variety of sizes. īigelow has three Space Act agreements whereby Bigelow Aerospace is the sole commercializer of several of NASA's key expandable module technologies. History NASA's design for the now-canceled TransHab moduleīigelow originally licensed the multi-layer, expandable space module technology from NASA in 2000 after Congress canceled the International Space Station (ISS) TransHab project following delays and budget constraints in the late 1990s. As of January 2024 the company remains dormant and is currently considered defunct. In March 2020, the company laid off all 88 of its employees due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Bigelow stated on a number of occasions that he was prepared to fund Bigelow Aerospace with about US$500 million through 2015 in order to achieve launch of full-scale hardware. By 2013, Bigelow had invested US$250 million in the company. Bigelow Aerospace announced in 2010 that they intended to create a modular set of space habitats for creating or expanding space stations. The company built two unmanned free-flying prototypes that flew in 20 and a module attached to the International Space Station. It was funded in large part by the profit Bigelow gained through his ownership of the hotel chain, Budget Suites of America. Bigelow Aerospace was founded by Robert Bigelow in 1998, and was based in North Las Vegas, Nevada. It was an aeronautics and outer space technology company which manufactured and developed expandable space station modules. Bigelow Aerospace was an American space design and manufacturing company which closed its doors in 2020.

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