Bigelow Aerospace, A new Genesis in space Options

[dvandorn]

Let's face up to it -- the days in which a lone inventor could cobble together innovative uses of materials, electricity or applications of basic Newtonian physics, without far more capitalization than an individual is generally capable of generating, are pretty much over. We've simply plumbed the depths of technologies available to those who cannot apply truly expensive technologies in their assistance.

Until and unless a vast paradigm shift makes possible the creation of spacecraft and motive forces capable of delivering them into space using only those odds and ends found around the home, we are limited in terms of new technologies and innovations to what can be created by well-funded corporations and governments.

Well-funded corporations and governments have a remarkably strong antipathy towards innovation.

-the other Doug

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

I think for plant irrigation and dairy farming, I would have to give credit to the ancient Sumerians. And let us not forget that thanks to NASA, my CorningWare casserole could probably survive atmospheric reentry. You can argue about the causal relationships here, but I would argue that consumer electronics drove technology far more than NASA contracts.

Certainly the military drives the market, but the R&D gets done by corporations like Electric Boat Company or Boeing or Hugues or Lockheed. Very little gets done in the style of the Manhatten Project, with direct government control. France invented the modern airplane? When?

I grew up in the rural midwest, and the electrification was a co-op enterprise owned by the farmers. The technololgy of power distribution was largely made by Westinghouse and General Electric.

The original internet was developed under a DARPA grant, but at that time, there were extensive private computer networks owned and built by IBM and Control Data. I used the CDC PLATO system during the late 1970s, and it was damn impressive technology. The internet as it exsists today, with 100,000,000 sites is made possible by drastic redesign of routing and link-level protocols by Cisco and many others. And it has always run on top of privately built lines like AT&T's photonic trunk lines.

Government plays a role, but without professional commerical engineering and market incentive, these big projects would not exist.

So getting back to space exploration, I still believe that the current programs by NASA and ESA are short sighted and in a steady state. Commercial and military satellites create the market and technology now.

[The Messenger]

Fair assessment, Don.

I am anticipating new, fundamental breakthroughs, that are the result of planetary probes and deep space imaging. So I don't see a lot of value-added in launching a new generation of space bouncy room and sight- seeing craft, like the shuttle.

That said, if Bigalow is willing to fund high risk technologies and fringe science...where do I sign up:)

[edstrick]

There are fundamentally different types of breakthroughs: scientific, engineering, and economic. The NASA and ESA of today are capable of the first, fumble the second increasingly badly with time (Aerospace plane, X-33, etc.. Hermes...), and are transcendentally incapable of the third.

We can have a space "program" with more of the same only better, but we can also have a "breakout" program that will give true access to space, and the ability to make a space-based industrial civilization a real possiblity. Elon Mus, Bigelow, Paul Allen, Jef Bezos and the space activists like Rick Tumlinson, Peter Diamandis, and the Ansaris the names our descendents will learn the way they learn of Heinrik Hudson, Vasco da Gama, Francis Drake and James Cook.

[crabbsaline]

New images up for 7/17/06:

Genesis 1 Images from Bigelow Site

[djellison]

Reminds me of the emails I get from Uni of Tokyo's Cubesats
http://www.space.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/cubesat/index-e.html

Doug

[Jim from NSF.com]

There are fundamentally different types of breakthroughs: scientific, engineering, and economic. The NASA and ESA of today are capable of the first, fumble the second increasingly badly with time (Aerospace plane, X-33, etc.. Hermes...), and are transcendentally incapable of the third.

The Aerospace Plane was DOD not NASA

[Jim from NSF.com]

Heinrik Hudson, Vasco da Gama, Francis Drake and James Cook.

Those are explorers. We are ready have them: Shepard, Armstrong. The new people are not the others ones you listed.

They will be the "exploiters" and will run companies like the Dutch East Indies Company. Who learned who ran that company?

[lyford]

short videos up at

http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/out_there/video.php

i can see how they need to fix that circulation issue before they start charging 300 bucks a picture to go whizzing by....

[AndyG]

short videos up at

http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/out_there/video.php

i can see how they need to fix that circulation issue before they start charging 300 bucks a picture to go whizzing by....

...presumably "mission end" is when all the pictures flock to one spot on the wall and disappear one-by-one?

Andy G

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

"Where American entrepreneurs go, European bureaucrats are sure to follow..." A typically irreverent but interesting article today in the The Register.

The Register

[lyford]

...presumably "mission end" is when all the pictures flock to one spot on the wall and disappear one-by-one?

Now that would be a video feed I would pay to see... rocket cam on the way back down!

[hal_9000]

more pics

http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/out_there/index.php

[dvandorn]

Hmm -- in all three of the interior shots they have up, many, many details in the interior (which appear to be signs for businesses and things) are intentionally blurred out. Must be eight or ten places where the image has been rather crudely blurred. In all three images.

Anyone have a clue as to why?

-the other Doug

[um3k]

Other Doug, http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/out_there/pixilation.php