Bigelow Aerospace Shows Off Expandable Space Station

NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. The International Space Station's next module looks like a hot tub wrapped up in bulletproof fabric, sitting on the floor of a Las Vegas warehouse but when the module goes into orbit later this year, NASA plans to unfold it into the outer-space equivalent of a rec room.

"This could be a very nice module potentially for the crews to go hang out in. ... It may become a very popular place," Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations, told journalists who gathered Thursday at Bigelow Aerospace's Las Vegas headquarters for the module's unveiling.

But that's just the start. If the experimental module works out the way NASA and Bigelow Aerospace hope it does, we could be seeing even bigger and better expandable spacecraft, including monster space blimps that have twice as much volume as the International Space Station.

"Expandable systems are the spacecraft of the future," said Robert Bigelow, the billionaire founder of Bigelow Aerospace.

Thursday's event marked the public debut of the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, which Bigelow Aerospace built under the terms of a $17.8 million contract with NASA.

Within the next few months, the BEAM module is due to be trucked east to Florida for processing. It'll be launched as early as September from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, aboard a robotic SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule.

The Dragon will deliver BEAM to the space station in its folded-up, 5-by-7-foot (1.5-by-2-meter) configuration. Astronauts will use the station's robotic arm to attach the module to a docking port on the U.S.-built Tranquility node and then they'll fill it up with air.

As it's inflated, the module is designed to expand like an air mattress but with a many-layered, high-tech, bulletproof skin that Bigelow compares to the steel belts in a radial tire. When fully deployed, BEAM will provide as much volume as a 10-by-12-foot (3-by-4-meter) room.

This module - known as the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM - will serve as an extra room on the International Space Station and also a demonstration project for future Mars transport habitats. BEAM is about 5 feet high and 7 feet wide in its folded-up configuration, but can expand to provide as much volume as a 10-by-13-foot room in orbit.

NASA will conduct two years' worth of tests to determine how well the module holds pressure, how much protection it provides from space radiation and how resilient it is to impacts with tiny bits of orbital debris.

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Bigelow Aerospace Shows Off Expandable Space Station