Bigelow Aerospace Unveils B330 Inflatable Module Mock-Up
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Bigelow Aerospace Unveils B330 Inflatable Module Mock-Up
Hotel mogul Robert Bigelow wants to take his idea to build inflatable space habitats and run with it - apparently, all the way to the moon and Mars.
On Thursday, the billionaire publicly unveiled Bigelow Aerospace's latest model of an expandable space station prototype, called the "Bigelow Mars Transporter Testing Unit." The mock-up has the volume of four 40-foot-long cargo containers and was built in part for NASA astronauts and engineers to try it out.
Bigelow's immediate goal is to convince NASA - which is testing prototypes made by four other companies- to fund a space-worthy unit, called the B330 (so named because it would have 330 cubic meters of volume). The work is in support of the space agency's $20-30 billion moon-landing program, called Artemis.
The 330 cubic meters of pressurized volume of the B330 compares favorably to the 351.6 m3 of Skylab (the US' first space station) and the 931.57 m3 of the ISS (International Space Station).
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