Inside Bigelows space station

[Dr Mordrid]

Given the success of Bigelow Aerospace's "Genesis I" inflatable space habitat testbed I thought you guys might be interested in seeing pics of their ultimate goal: the Nautilus space station module. This thing is huge; 330 cubic meters, which is 2.7 times as big as any module of the ISS.

For the skeptics: He's a billionaire hotel chain/aerospace company owner who is self-financing his own space program. Bigelow is working not only with NASA but several of the private space companies here and the Chinese, Indian and Russian space agencies. In fact Genesis was launched on a Russian rocket.

Outside



Inside






Station Mockup (minus vertical modules)



Ultimate Goal: a Space Hotel with ~2x the volume of the ISS (1980 vs. 1000 cu/meters)



The way the hub is designed several of these could be connected in a 'stack'.

Dunno about you guys, but I'm officially impressed.

[Elie]

what's going to generate Oxygen?
What about artificial gravity?
And let's not forget the sonic showers... a must of you ask me!!

Anyway I am impressed as well

[Dr Mordrid]

Pressurized volume comparisons:

Apollo: 6.2 cu/meters
Soyuz: 9 cu/meters
CEV/Orion: 18.6 cu/meters
Kliper (proposed): 20 cu/meters
Space Shuttle: 71.5 cu/meters

TransHab (NASA cancelled): 25 x 27 feet (7.6 x 8.2 meters); central core water blankets for emergency radiation shielding only.

Bigelow Nautilus: 45 x 22 feet (13.7 x 6.7 meters); 50,000 pounds (22,675 kg); 11,650 cu/ft (330 cu/meters); outer wall water blankets 2.5 inches (6.35 cm) thick for full time radiation shielding.

ISS: When assembly is complete the ISS will have a pressurized volume of ~1,000 cu/meters and a mass of ~400,000 kilograms. 3 Nautilus modules would have a pressurized volume of 990 cu/meters and a mass of just 68,025 kg + hub

Bigelow Space Hotel: up to 6 Nautilus modules providing a pressurized volume of 1,980 cu/meters and weighing 136,050 kg, only 1/3 the mass of the ISS.

[rylan]

Seems pretty interesting, as long as it can provide some resistance to space junk or micro particles floating around... would suck to have it pop

[lecter]

This looks great, I certainly hope I'll be able to (and afford to) spend a few hours in one of these in my lifetime...

[Dr Mordrid]

It has heavy layers of Vectran (even stronger than Kevlar) plus hardened foam micrometeroroid shields.

The uppance is that Bigelows Nautilus module can stop balls shot from NASA's hypersonic test gun with the equivalence of 5 inches of ISS-grade aluminum alloy.

In addition to this the inner walls have 2.5" thick water based (gel) radiation shield blankets.

[Gurm]

Looks kinda... angular and hurty inside.

[Dr Mordrid]

So does a house before they put up the drywall, not that they'd use it on a space station outside of a movie set.

[Gurm]

So does a house before they put up the drywall, not that they'd use it on a space station outside of a movie set.

I was being sarcastic, I just forgot the rolleyes smiley.