Bigelow Aerospace
 |
|
| Private | |
| Industry | Aerospace |
| Founded | 1999 |
| Founder | Robert Bigelow (Founder and President) |
| Headquarters | North Las Vegas, Nevada, United States |
| Products | Orbital facilities, commercial space stations |
|
Number of employees
|
130 (May 2014) |
| Website | BigelowAerospace.com |
Bigelow Aerospace is an American space technology startup company, based in North Las Vegas, Nevada that manufactures and develops expandable space station modules. Bigelow Aerospace was founded by Robert Bigelow in 1998 and is funded in large part by the profit Bigelow gained through his ownership of the hotel chain Budget Suites of America. By 2013, Bigelow had invested US$250 million in the company. Bigelow has stated on multiple occasions that he is prepared to fund Bigelow Aerospace with about US$500 million through 2015 in order to achieve launch of full-scale hardware.
Bigelow Aerospace has stated they intend to create a modular set of space habitats for creating or expanding space stations. Many journalists have commented that Bigelow is taking risks by trying to compete "in a capital-intensive, highly-regulated industry like spaceflight."
Bigelow 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. Bigelow has three Space Act agreements whereby Bigelow Aerospace is the sole commercializer of several of NASA's key expandable module technologies.
Bigelow 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. Bigelow invested US$75 million in proprietary extensions to the NASA technology by mid-2006, and $180 million into the technology by 2010.
By 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 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.
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Wikipedia