Astronauts at the International Space Station (ISS) will finally be getting a new room next week after the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) astronaut habitat is folded up and taken to the station April 8. After reaching the station, it will be inflated and connected to the ISS' Node 3, a process that will take place at the end of May or beginning of June.
Although the BEAM won't be a permanent addition to the ISS and astronauts will not be inside it often, if successful, it will open up doors to creating expandable space habitats that orbit the Earth as "space hotels" and allow scientists and tourists to visit them.
Expandable spacecraft isn't new - back in the 1960s, NASA launched a series of expandable communication probes that inflated in space and were tasked with bouncing signals from one region of the Earth to another. After this success, numerous private companies - such as BEAM creator Bigelow Aerospace - have embarked on the journey to creating an expandable spacecraft, although an astronaut habitat has only recently become within reach.
In 1991, NASA began to toy with the idea of the TransHab, an expandable module that could connect to the ISS. Although it never came to fruition, the inspiration from the project didn't go unnoticed.
"At that point, material science had matured," said Mike Gold, the director of operations and business growth at Bigelow Aerospace. "Basically, these were materials that were sufficiently robust to provide superior protection in the space environment, yet could be folded and manipulated."
Bigelow Aerospace ended up purchasing the rights to the TransHab and has been working on expandable astronaut habitats since then.
The BEAM shows lots of promise for the field, but Bigelow Aerospace isn't stopping there. The company plans to create commercial space hotels in the future. The company's next project, the B330, hopes to bring them closer to this goal, which is an inflatable habitat that will have 12,000 cubic feet and operate in lower Earth orbit.
When will space hotels become a reality? Before this happens, a few things need to happen, including a method of transportation to these stations, which could be rockets from companies such as SpaceX or Blue Origin. Furthermore, there needs to be a return on investment, which could be accomplished by Bigelow Aerospace renting out the habitats to scientists conducting research or wealthy space tourists.
"The utility of a module is not just based on total volume," said Jim Muncy, an independent space policy consultant at the Space Frontier Foundation. "It's based on what you can do with it."
Bigelow's expandable astronaut habitats will also need life support systems to ensure that they can safely support passengers, an idea that is going to be tested with the B330 project.
Although space hotels might be a ways off, the current advancements in the industry are occurring at a rapid pace, meaning interstellar tourism might be closer than we think.
