BIGELOW AEROSPACE

Space Florida teamed up with Bigelow Aerospace, LCC to explore establishing and contributing to the Florida Space Transportation Initiative. Structured as an investment fund of both public and private financing, conceptually, the Florida Space Transportation Initiative would support the development of a new, orbital space transportation system located at the Kennedy Space Center.

Project Details

The Florida Space Transportation Initiative fund would potentially help finance development and domestic production of commercially built orbital transportation systems for moving crew and cargo to and from Low Earth Orbit (“LEO”) in an affordable, reliable and safe fashion. Bigelow Aerospace has already publicly announced that it is prepared to commit up to $100 million in initial support for potential crew-carrying LEO transportation initiatives.

Impacts

Bigelow Aerospace, whose goal is to revolutionize space commerce via the development of next-generation habitat systems, has already fabricated, launched, and deployed two pathfinder spacecraft, Genesis I and Genesis II, launched from Russia in 2006 and 2007 respectively. Due to the success of these two technology demonstrators (which are substantial spacecraft and weigh in at roughly 3,000 lbs. each), BA recently made the decision to expedite the construction of the ‘Sundancer’ the company’s first spacecraft capable of supporting a human crew. However, no commercial, domestic option exists to support Bigelow Aerospace’s program, thus driving the need for an orbital transportation system to carry crew and cargo to and from LEO. To address this concern, Space Florida and Bigelow Aerospace have signed a letter of intent that commits both parties to further exploring collaboration on establishing a public-private fund to help promote new space transportation projects. Such an effort would potentially compliment NASA’s own Commercial Orbital Transportation Initiative (“COTS”).