Toward the First Private Space Station

Recently Robert Bigelow, the Los Vegas hotel tycoon who has been working on an orbiting “space hotel” made a couple of announcements that have shaken up the commercial aerospace world. Bigelow has reached an agreement with a major aerospace company to explore ways of making an existing launch vehicle a carrier for people and cargo to and from his “space hotel.” He has also proposed to build a version of his private space station beginning at the end of the decade, rather than in the middle of the next.

Bigelow Aerospace has signed an agreement with aerospace giant Lockheed Martin to study ways to make the Atlas V capable of taking people and cargo to and from the Bigelow space station. As currently designed, the Atlas V is meant to carry satellites into Earth orbit. It would have to undergo extensive modifications in order to turn the launch vehicle into a cargo and people carrier.

The agreement does not obligate Bigelow or Lockheed Martin to actually go through with the scheme. Presumably some new arrangement would have to be made if both companies find it to their mutual advantage.

This agreement has a number of potential implications. First, smaller start up companies, such as the winners of the Commercial Orbital Transport Systems competition, SpaceX and Rocket Plane/Kistler, had hoped to use the Bigelow space station as a market for their services. If Lockheed Martin, a corporate giant with access to billions of dollars and expertise in building space systems going back decades, moves into the commercial space transportation market, will there be room for the little guys?

Of course the question arises as to whether Lockheed Martin can make a man rated Atlas V cost competitive either with the SpaceX Falcon 9 or the Rp-K K-1 launch vehicles. Currently, the Atlas V heavy costs a customer upwards to a quarter of a million dollars a launch as of 2004. Presumably, with increased launch rates, the price of a launch on an Atlas V would decrease.