Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Welcome to the Hotel Bigelow

Well, the guest rooms aren't ready for checking in yet, but Bigelow Aerospace has launched its first inflatable test vehicle riding a converted Russian ICBM into orbit. The company reports that the vehicle, Genesis-1 has been successfully expanded and its solar arrays are deployed.
Bigelow Aerospace has received confirmation from the Genesis I spacecraft that it has successfully expanded.

We have also confirmed that all of the solar arrays have been deployed.

This is the first of a series of test flights using technology from a NASA program called TransHab (cancelled in the late nineties before any test vehicles could be flown). The goal is to commercially develop space modules for use as laboratories, manufacturing sites and, yes, hotels in the next ten years.

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