Prototype Hotel 1 In Orbit
Successfully put into the heavens at an altitude of 550 kilometers by a converted Russian Intercontinental Ballistic Missile in recent days, a prototype for Bigelow Aerospace’s proposed ’space hotel’ has inflated and operating nominally with a diameter of roughly 3 meters and internal temperature of 26 degrees Celsius.
In case you think it’s a hoax of some sort, the U.S. Space Command has catalogued the object, Genesis-1 and giving it an International Designation Code. You can track it here if you’re curious. Yep, the dawn of space tourism is coming steadily along. Here is the first thumbnail picture released a few hours ago.
Image taken from livescience.com Blogs
Being a module that essentially inflated (uh, think of it like an airbag) to reach its final configuration, there are obvious concerns of hull integrity. So far, it’s holding out, which means that the design is relatively sound for now. This is to be the first in a series of prototypes designed to test the model’s capability to survive in near Earth orbit. Micrometeorites are also a major concern here. Hey, it’s like a huge balloon so what do you think? One big prick, and you get a nice and big BANG that you can’t hear! Just exaggerating. 
The other concerns are mostly operational related as was originally a NASA design, so the only problem left now is to see if it works. If all goes well, Robert Bigelow should be able to officiate the first privately sponsored space hotel ever by the end of this decade.
That is, if he could find transportation to his hotel.
Oh, there’s the ‘tiny’ problem of getting there. See, shuttles are going to be retired around 2010 (plus NASA don’t take too kindly to piggybacking hitchhiking space tourists, being a government agency) and the Russian space modules are too costly and take too long to build. Heck, the SpaceShipTwo in construction by Rutan Composites (successor to the shuttlecock looking contraption that won the Ansari X-Prize just a few years ago?) won’t be able to reach the altitude the hotel will be in. Bigelow knows about the problem, but he’s lazy to spend money to actually build his own spaceship to reach his hotel. So what did he do? Copy the Ansari X-Prize and come up with the America Space Prize! $50 million to whoever that can fly to his hotel twice within 60 days. Once you snag the prize, there’s a contract for you to sign for sole flying rights to Bigelow Space Hotel. If you want to win the prize, it expires in 2010 so you’d better hurry up. Another catch is you’ll have to be an American company to get the contract. That’s because the paranoid State Department wants to keep a tight lid on ‘technology transfer’. While you ponder where to base your company, you’ll have to think about your spaceship model too. That’s all there is to it folks. Piece of cake, isn’t it?
When somebody gets that right too, the One Mile High Club would be superseded by the One Hundred Mile Club. To be fair, the former will still be the ‘most exclusive club’ on Earth, unless somebody comes up with a One Mile Deep Club. Not catchy and cheap enough I suppose. Until you’re a millionaire with enough cash to burn as rocket fuel, you’re still stuck with an Earthly honeymoon plan. In case you’re wondering what it’s like trying to make out in zero gravity, it’s going to be harder than you imagine. Nah, I didn’t do the Gedankenexperiment, some space entrepreneurs did it and I read their book. If you’re not enterprising enough to build a spaceship, then perhaps you could be enterprising enough to make ‘toys’ specially catered for 0G. A whacky thought? Welcome to the budding world of space entrepreneurship.
There’s one more thing. The vacation is gonna be ‘at your own risk’, so you won’t be able to sue them if anything goes horribly wrong. Best to keep your space vacation plans under wraps for 20 more years at least, IMO.
