Genesis I was launched on 12 Jul 06…

http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/genesis_I/

…and Genesis II was launched 28 Jun 07…

http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/genesis_II/

Bigelow’s full-up space station is on-hold waiting for a crew vehicle to service it. Hence their interest in the Boeing capsule:

http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/news/

The ARRA CCDev contract mentioned there requires at least a match of funds from non-NASA sources, so Boeing / Bigelow are putting at least $18 million of their own money into it.

Mike

This is actually totally false. Space is defined by altitude or height not velocity. You could orbit at 50 km yet not be in Space, or you could go suborbital at 110 km and be in Space. Get your facts straight it’ll help make your case.

Oh well…

Maybe you should check your facts but Space is not defined as orbital vs. suborbital. “The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale has established the Kármán line at an altitude of 100 kilometres (62 mi) as a working definition for the boundary between aeronautics and astronautics. This is used because above an altitude of roughly 100 km, as Theodore von Kármán calculated, a vehicle would have to travel faster than orbital velocity in order to derive sufficient aerodynamic lift from the atmosphere to support itself.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_space)

What Bigelow station? Where is it and when was it launched?

“Man-rating” is a silly notion. If a rocket/launcher is good enough for highly expensive unmanned payloads it’s good enough for a manned one.

So you say.

Yet Virgin Galactic has hundreds of paid deposits for flight slots on their SpaceShip 2. They also have built White Knight 2 and SpaceShip 2 and are ready to start flight testing.

Bigelow has already orbited two prototype modules for his private space station.

Boeing is developing a manned capsule to support the Bigelow space station.

ULA is man-rating the Atlas V and Delta IV launch vehicles.

Manned spaceflight is attracting millions of dollars of private money. I wonder why that unsettles so many people.

Mike

Simply not true. Using private funds, eight individuals have purchased Soyuz rides through Space Adventures at prices of $20-35 million each. That’s a market with about $240 million in revenue to date.

Space Adventures also has an Orbital Mission Explorers Circle where an unknown (at least to me) number of individuals have made $5 million reservations to have priority on future flights. This indicates that the market has some amount of unmet demand.

No doubt, the future size and sustainability of private human space flight markets are TBD. But it’s false to claim that there is no market today.

FWIW…

There is no “private industry” as related to HSF. No private market.

Kiss the whole notion off.

It’s a bunch of contractors like SpaceX fighting for NASA’s funds.

I agree with you, Fred. But there are those on here and out there that feel that private industry is somehow entirely incapable of making it happen. So if they’re really going to raise an issue over it, all I’m saying is let’s see the alternative. I’m up for a better gov’t run option for LEO access if there’s one to be had. But so far none is in the offing. At least none that won’t underperform while at the same time completely devouring our exploration budget.

I can see it working rather like the last two, Shuttle and Ares.