Main Engine Cut OffBigelow Space Operations
Jeff Foust, for SpaceNews, on Bigelow Aerospace’s new subsidiary:
The first task for the new company, Bigelow said in a conference call with reporters, is to perform a detailed market study for the company’s B330 expandable modules, and future larger variants, to determine what demand exists and whether it’s worthwhile to proceed with the launch of the first two B330 modules in the early 2020s.
Shouldn’t this have been a part of what Bigelow has been doing all these years? It’s way more important to the future of Bigelow than whether or not expandable modules work in space. They could always pivot and build their modules with proven technology, but the business case has to exist either way.
I get the timing of this announcement with the National Space Council meeting today, but it’s literally an announcement of a new organization to do exactly what we’ve all assumed they were doing within Bigelow Aerospace already.