April 9

[Dr Mordrid]

Bigelow, of inflatable space habitat fame, has been working closely with Lockheed the last few months on man-rating the Atlas booster, presumably with the intent of using it to launch his space stations and the passengers to them.

Details have been held close as to the spaceship to be used, progress on the man-rated modules (rumored to be far ahead of schedule) & boosters etc., but it looks like the fog will be lifting in a few weeks;

http://bigelowaerospace.com/multiverse/news.php#update

Bigelow Aerospace Plans
Important Announcement

February 12, 2007 - 4:48 p.m. PDT

Founder Robert T. Bigelow to Reveal New Information at National Space Symposium

Las Vegas, NV 02/12/07– We will be making a very important and exciting announcement at the National Space Symposium on the week of April 9 in Colorado Springs, and we hope you will plan to be in attendance.

For the first time, we will be presenting our business plans that we have kept to ourselves until now. This information that we plan to announce on April 10 at the Ball Aerospace Exhibit Center should help support the private space movement.

We look forward to seeing you there.

- Robert T. Bigelow

[Dr Mordrid]

UPDATE:

Bigelow's announcement has been moved to April 10th.

When asked to characterize the news he commented it will "make everyone sit up and spit out their coffee."

Other news is that an internal structure has been leaked that uses a central truss with the walls largely exposed for easy repair, which is a major advantage over the ISS.

One rumor is that he may announce a module much larger than the 45 ft (13.7 m) 11,653 cu/ft - (330 cu/m) Nautilus, perhaps as large as 100 feet (30.48 m).

Another is that they nay hedge their spaceship bets on SpaceX's Dragon by also teaming with t/Space (Rutan involved here) or with Lockheed for an "Orion Lite".