Everything You Wanted to Know About BEAM but Were Afraid to Ask

Humanity’s first human-habitable inflatable spaceship, (or as those in the industry prefer to call it, “expandable” spacecraft), is soon to launch off-world. Tucked inside a Dragon cargo transport‘s “trunk” and perched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, this momentous departure targets the International Space Station (ISS) and is slated to occur today. The precious expandable […]

Leaving Bigelow Aerospace

While I can’t speak too explicitly about the circumstances surrounding my departure, it’s time for me to update these chronicles to report that I’ve left my position as lead human factors analyst and radiation modeler/instrument designer at Bigelow Aerospace. I expect that this news may perplex many readers who know how long I’ve been working […]

At the Right Place at the Right Time…

Finally. On top of all of the other trouble I’ve been habitually getting myself into during the last several months, a series of unlikely and highly serendipitous events recently culminated in a sudden career shift. -One that, I might add, I’ve been pressing for and gambling on for some time. –And for longtime readers, it’s […]

Boeing, Bigelow conduct CST-100 drop test over Nevada desert

Aerospace giant Boeing and commercial space-station manufacturer Bigelow Aerospace, in cooperation with the Bureau of Land Management Ely District’s Caliente Field Office, conducted a relatively quiet spacecraft parachute drop test of Boeing’s Apollo-styled Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 spacecraft this past April 3rd. The event, attended by local media and several bystanders, occurred over a remote playa in […]

Congress strikes back: The REAL Space Act

U.S. Congressman Bill Posey is at it again, this time indirectly taking aim at President Obama’s new commercial space initiative. With a cohort of cosponsors, Posey has introduced a new bill, (H.R. 1641,) entitled, “REasserting American Leadership in Space Act,” a.k.a., the “REAL Space Act.” It’s aim? To send us back to the moon in a decade – this time to […]

Excalibur back in British Isles!

…commercial spacecraft manufacturer/provider Excalibur Almaz (EA), that is. And they ferried two partially-constructed commercial space stations with them. A primary competitor to Bigelow Aerospace on the commercial space station frontier, EA has leveraged 20th-Century Russian military space technology in a bid to accelerate a fully-functioning private spaceflight program to orbit. Because it is based on […]

Bigelow Aerospace preps new digs

It appears, in the interest of furnishing the new space digs (read: inflatable orbital space modules) they’re poised to launch, Bigelow Aerospace has secured a partially exclusive license from NASA. The license is for the cryptically entitled, “Apparatus For Integrating A Rigid Structure Into A Flexible Wall Of An Inflatable Structure,” – or as I […]

Bigelow Aerospace accelerates station plans

Recently, two companies have arisen to challenge Bigelow Aerospace’s domination of the commercial space station market. Now, quietly, Bigelow has fired back where it hurts most: Timeframe. It seems that the first to get a station to orbit will be in a position to pluck the ripest government and corporate space station user contracts. In […]

NewSpace Station-Race begins

This week has been pretty big for private space, (including astronomy / exoplanetology and development of space-related commercial products – more to come in future posts). In something of a surprise announcement, Russian NewSpace startup Orbital Technologies announced a volley of corporate agreements and a proposed private, commercial space station to launch by the year 2015. With […]

New Boeing spacecraft announced!

Boeing has jumped into the lineup of new spacecraft vying to fill the Space Shuttle retirement gap with the recent announcement of the Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 spacecraft. Similar in design to SpaceX‘s Dragon spacecraft, larger than NASA‘s Apollo Command Module spacecraft, but smaller than NASA’s canceled Orion spacecraft, (which may or may not end […]