Bob Bigelow Has His Eyes Set Upon Commercial Space Stations
Robert Bigelow made two interesting announcements today. One announcement was the introduction of Bigelow Space Operations (BSO) a space company that was actually formed a year ago that is going to be a “sales, operational and customer service company that manages and operates space stations developed by Bigelow Aerospace”.
The other announcement was that Bigelow Space Operations and Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) have formed a partnership. According to a press release Bigelow Space Operations “intends to contract with other payload integrating companies where we not only can help those companies to develop their dynamic futures for themselves and their successful clients extending beyond ISS operations, but to also offer ourselves as a customer and understand how to help CASIS.”
In a briefing with news media today Bigelow said that he had concerns with the apparent intent of the White House to simply halt funding of the International Space Station after 2025. Bigelow says that he has not seen any plans as to how this is supposed to happen. Bigelow said that he thinks the best way to move the ISS toward more commercial operations is to do so in parallel with current NASA-funded operations and not in a “zero sum” fashion where the government funding simply stops.
