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Bigelow Aerospace is an American space technology startup company, based in North Las Vegas, Nevada that is pioneering work on expandable space station modules. Bigelow Aerospace was founded by Robert Bigelow in 1998 and is funded in large part by the fortune 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.〔〔 (Mr. B's Big Plan ), Geoffrey Little, ''Air & Space Magazine'', 2008-01-01, Retrieved February 18, 2010〕 Bigelow is pioneering a new market in a flexible and configurable set of space habitats.〔 Moreover, industry observers have noted that Bigelow is demonstrating audacity to pioneer such a market "in a capital-intensive, highly-regulated industry like spaceflight."〔(Bigelow still thinks big ), ''The Space Review'', 2010-11-01, Retrieved November 2, 2010.〕 ==History== Bigelow originally licensed the multi-layer, expandable space module technology from NASA 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.〔(NASA turned on by blow-up space stations ), Paul Marks, ''NewScientist'', 2010-03-03, Retrieved March 3, 2010.〕 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, Bigelow had invested US$180 million in the company,〔(The Americans may still go to the moon before the Chinese ), ''The Economist'', 2010-02-18, Retrieved March 4, 2010.〕 which by 2013 had grown to US$250 million of his personal fortune.〔 〕 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.〔〔 In early 2010, NASA came full circle to once again investigate "making inflatable space-station modules to make roomier, lighter, cheaper-to-launch spacecraft" by announcing plans in its budget proposal released February 22, 2010. NASA considered connecting a Bigelow expandable craft to the ISS for safety, life support, radiation shielding, thermal control and communications verification testing for the next three years,"〔 and in December 2012, signed a $17.8 million contract with Bigelow to develop the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM),〔 projected to fly in 2015.〔 Since early on, Bigelow has been intent on "pursuing markets for a variety of users including biotech and pharmaceutical companies and university research, entertainment applications and government military and civil users." The business model includes "'leasing out' small space stations or habitats made of one or more (330 ) inflatable modules to different research communities or corporations.".〔 Despite these broad plans for space commercialization, the ''space tourism destination'' and ''space hotel'' monikers were frequently used by many media outlets following the 2006/2007 launches of Genesis I and Genesis II. Robert Bigelow has been explicit that he is aiming to do business in space in a new way, with "low cost and rapid turnaround, contrary to traditional NASA ISS and Space Shuttle operations and bureaucracy."〔 In October 2010, Bigelow announced that it has agreements with six sovereign nations to utilize on-orbit facilities of the commercial space station: United Kingdom, Netherlands, Australia, Singapore, Japan and Sweden. In February 2011, Dubai of the United Arab Emirates became the seventh nation to have signed on. , Bigelow employs an in-house team of model makers, coming from the film and architecture industries, to make detailed models of their space habitats and space stations. Scale models have been sent to "potential customers, including governments and corporations, as a reminder of the possibilities." Due to delays in launch capability to transport humans to low Earth orbit, Bigelow dramatically reduced their staff in late September 2011, because crew transportation would become available "years after the first BA 330 could be ready."〔 In late March 2012 Bigelow began increasing staff levels once again. By April 2013, Bigelow was saying that they would have BA 330 modules ready to go to space by the time that commercial passenger spacecraft were available to ferry their customers to the dual-BA330 Alpha space station—expected in 2017—and that Bigelow is ready to enter into contracts with customers now.〔 〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bigelow Aerospace」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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