NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate is on the lookout for new concepts for its Vision for Space Exploration -- the White House-backed Moon, Mars and beyond agenda. And on November 16th, NASA selected a concept from Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation for inflatable thin-film ballutes for return from the Moon. Not only Moon-to-Earth traffic could benefit by using the ballute/aerocapture technique. So too could missions to Mars, as well as future probes to Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, and other distant destinations.

The U.S. Government has given payload approval to Bigelow Aerospace permitting the entrepreneurial firm to launch its inflatable space module technology. Bigelow Aerospace of North Las Vegas, Nevada has blueprinted a step-by-step program to explore the use of inflatable Earth orbiting modules. Those modules would not only support made-in-microgravity product development, but serve as the technology foundation for eventual space tourist housing and use of similar structures on the Moon and Mars.

While a team of aerospace engineers takes aim this week on the $10 million Ansari X Prize competition for privately developed suborbital spaceflight, a Nevada millionaire is planning an even loftier contest. Robert Bigelow, chief of Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace, is apparently setting higher goals for private spaceflight endeavors with America's Space Prize, a $50 million race to build an orbital vehicle capable of carrying up to seven astronauts to an orbital outpost by the end of the decade, according to Aviation Week and Space Technology. Bigelow told Aviation Week that not only would Space Prize winners secure the $50 million purse, half of which he's putting up himself, but also snag options to service inflatable space habitats under development by Bigelow Aerospace.

The Bigelow Aerospace project to privately develop inflatable Earth-orbit space modules is beginning to integrate diverse U.S. and European technologies into subscale and full-scale inflatable test modules and subsystems at the company's heavily guarded facilities here. While much public attention is focused on the massive International Space Station (ISS), Bigelow has quietly become a mini-Skunk Works for the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC). Ongoing technical assistance to Bigelow from JSC is focused on helping the company spawn development of orbiting commercial inflatable modules by the end of the decade, with the possibility of JSC later using the Bigelow technology for inflatable modules on the Moon or Mars.

A new research station at the bottom of the world may give future Antarctica researchers some special treats, like the ability to live above ground and look out a window. German scientists are adapting a habitat designed by the European Space Agency (ESA) to replace the shifting, disappearing and aging Neumayer II Research Station, a pair of metal tubes buried amongst the snow of the Ekstrom Ice Shelf in Antarctica's Atka Bay. The Antarctic version of ESA's space house is only the beginning, especially for an agency with loftier goals. "We dream to go to Mars," SpaceHouse designer Fritz Gampe said. "To do that we need very lightweight housing." It might be inflatable or use rocket cylinders or the present shell-shaped structure.

An inflatable lifeboat could one day ferry stranded astronauts back to Earth, if a prototype's test flights are successful next month. The re-entry vehicle weighs just 130 kilograms and is being developed to carry cargo back from the International Space Station (ISS). But its inventors believe that it could also let astronauts bail out of the space station, or deliver robots to the surface of Mars.

Budget Suites of America owner Robert Bigelow made his fortune by offering weary business travelers a fully furnished home away from home, complete with on-site laundry. He now wants to bring the same feeling of comfort and convenience to a new frontier in leisure: outer space. Through his latest business venture, Bigelow Aerospace, the hotel mogul, who caught the space bug as a boy in the 1950s, has been quietly building the world's first commercial space station.

For this desert gambling town it could become an odds-on favorite: Inflatable space modules. With company facilities spread out across some 50 acres here in North Las Vegas, Bigelow Aerospace is bankrolling big-time the private development of large space habitats. Extensive work is underway in designing and building partial and full-scale inflatable modules, fabricated to serve a range of users, from bio-tech firms and educational institutions to other groups wanting to churn out made-in-microgravity products.

A mere five years ago, Bigelow, owner of the Budget Suites of America hotel chain, announced his intention to get into the space race. Not many people paid attention, or gave him much of a chance. But 16 months from now, Bigelow's first creation is scheduled for blast-off into a low orbit above the earth. If it works as planned, the development of space will never be the same.

If Robert Bigelow, the owner of the Budget Suites of America hotel chain, feels strongly about something, he goes for it. When the reclusive multimillionaire decided that he didn’t care much for increased business taxes in his home city of Las Vegas, he forked out for full-page advertisements in local newspapers to say so. Now he’s predicting that space tourism and commerce will take off, and is backing his hunch with cash.

Making "space available" is at the heart of the global travel, tourist and lodging industry. That business axiom is no stranger to Robert Bigelow, owner of the Budget Suites of America Hotel Chain. But now the North Las Vegas, Nevada-based Bigelow is putting his money down on inflatable Earth orbiting modules. He’s intent on attracting not only high-flying sightseers, but those hungering to crank out made-in-space products and evaluate microgravity processes. Bigelow’s plan is to establish a habitable commercial space station for research, manufacturing, entertainment and other uses.

Bigelow Aerospace, an American company developing inflatable orbital habitats, has signed a contract for six launches on a Russian Dnepr booster, Russian news services reported this week. According to the RIA Novosti news agency, Bigelow and Kosmotras, the company that markets the Dnepr, signed a contract at the Berlin Air Show this week for six Dnepr launches carrying what the report described only as "civilian satellites."

Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) announced this week the first sale of its medium-lift Falcon 5 launch vehicle. Company founder and CEO Elon Musk said that SpaceX has sold the first Falcon 5 launch to Bigelow Aerospace, a company developing inflatable structures that could be used as commercial orbital habitats. The payload, identified in a SPACE.com report as Genesis Pathfinder, is designed to test inflatable modules based on technology developed for NASA's TransHab, a project the agency supported for several years before canceling. The launch is currently scheduled for November 2005 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Another client is Bigelow Aerospace, a Nevada-based company that has an office here in Bethesda that I share space with. It was founded by Robert Bigelow, a very wealthy man, who made his money in the real estate construction business in Las Vegas. He also had the space bug early in life ... in his case, he was much smarter than I was. He decided to make a lot of money before he pursued his dream. In the latter part of the '90s he did due diligence on a number of satellite and rocket companies. Ultimately he became enamored with a program at Johnson Space Center called Trans Hab that involved developing inflatable or expandable space modules. It means literally using fabric that could be expanded in space to build very low cost, high-integrity modules for housing research laboratories, space hotels, habitats on other planetary surfaces.

An artist’s rendering of an inflatable habitat derived from the Autonomous Cargo Vehicle for use in space, lunar or other planetary surface applications. Its inflatable section is pressurized once at its destination to enhance crew habitability and operations. Since NASA was established more than 40 years ago, The Boeing Company has played a unique role in pioneering mankind’s forward march into space. From the Apollo moon triumph, through the technological wonders of the Space Shuttle and the Space Station, Boeing has been NASA’s leading contractor on virtually every human space flight system. With the President’s bold space vision, we are again looking outward toward the moon and beyond to Mars.

As the space industry continues to cut costs by using lightweight materials and alternative types of energy, it is opening up the possibility that you and I may one day have the opportunity to live in space. The idea of a colony on the moon or Mars might be made possible with new spacecraft technologies being developed today. Inflatable space telescopes will be much lighter than their glass and metal predecessors, making them cheaper to put into orbit. (NASA) One of the remaining barriers to affordable space travel or even placing spacecraft in orbit is still the high price of launching these spacecraft. At today's prices, it would cost $12,500 just to launch an object as light as an inflated basketball (1.25 pounds) into space. The heavier the spacecraft, the more rocket fuel is needed to get the vehicle off the ground. NASA and other space agencies are working on constructing a new breed of inflatable spacecraft made of lightweight materials.

It may be seen as the commercial parallel to Neil Armstrong's "one small step". Still others view it as breaking the NASA monopoly on human spaceflight.

NASA's Johnson Space Center will offer the public a behind-the-scenes look at its human-exploration activities on Saturday, including activities to build and operate the new international space station.

Last December TransHab was inflated for the first time. In a control room overlooking a giant vacuum chamber at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, a dozen engineers sat patiently, trading jokes and sci-fi movie trivia, while NASA technicians meticulously adjusted temperature and pressure valves, and the three-story, $200 million house designed for the first Mars colonists slowly took shape.

After Apollo, (which, let's face it, was really a case of international missile envy) NASA's relevance seemed in question: After a worldwide triumph on the moon, was it destined to launch robot probes for the rest of the century?