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| Space entrepreneur Robert Bigelow (left) discusses layout plans of the company's lunar base with Eric Haakonstad, one of the Bigelow Aerospace lead engineers. Bigelow Aerospace |
Bigelow Aerospace factory here, the full-size space station mockups sitting on the warehouse floor look somewhat like puffy white watermelons. The interiors offer a hint of what spacious living in space might look like.
“Every astronaut we have come in here just says, ‘Wow,’ ” said Robert T. Bigelow, the company founder. “They can’t believe the size of this thing.”
Four years from now, the company plans for real modules to be launched and assembled into the solar system’s first private space station. Paying customers — primarily nations that do not have the money or expertise to build a space program from scratch — would arrive a year later. In 2016, a second, larger station would follow. The two Bigelow stations would then be home to 36 people at a time — six times as many as currently live on the International Space Station.
It's been nearly 40 years since people last set foot on the moon, but momentum is building for a return to Earth's nearest neighbor — and for the establishment of a permanent manned presence on lunar soil.
The moon harbors large amounts of water ice, along with lots of other potentially useful compounds. These resources could theoretically support manned lunar bases, which could serve as staging grounds for further exploration of the solar system, and as proving grounds for outposts on Mars. Space.com
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