-VMS EVE carries VSS Enterprise on her first manned flight. Photo by Mark Greenberg-
It has been a while since my last post, and since then I noticed a lot of cool things happening with various NewSpace companies that I wanted to highlight. If you are a fan of NewSpace news, none of this news might be of any shock to you. However, I'll try to provide some reasons why I thought they were significant enough to write about.
(Timestamps for video highlights below)
Robert Bigelow
Owner of Bigelow Aerospace, is an entrepreneur with a great vision, and money to burn. He has had great success with his chain of hotels called Budget Suites of America, and now is bringing his business acumen to space.
So what is he doing for space?
With all of his own money, he has been building the future of space stations as we know it. NASA originally came up with the idea of building inflatable habitats, but for whatever reason had to abandon the program. Mr. Bigelow saw that NASA could not do it, so he decided he would do it. On July 12, 2006, Bigelow Aerospace launched Genesis 1 , a sub-scale model of their inflatable habitat aboard a rocket in Russia. He would be the first to test whether or not the inflatable space station idea could work. IT DID! He launched another similar habitat on June 28, 2007 he called Genesis 2, which although identical, had a lot more cameras, sensors, and some other fun stuff. These space stations are still in space right now! Everyday they collect more data that proves they can be successful building a full scale version of their space station, which would easily rival the International Space Station.
What is the coolest part of this whole story?
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