Efforts to create the world's first private space station took a huge leap forward Thursday morning when a Las Vegas aerospace company sent a home-town spacecraft into orbit. The launch took place in Russia, but mission control is located in the valley at the Bigelow Aerospace plant.
A mere 11 months ago, this same mission control team was on pins and needles for the launch of the first spacecraft built at the Bigelow Aerospace plant in North Las Vegas. The launch and deployment were flawless.
Despite that success, the minutes leading up to the second launch were even more tense, both here and 11 time zones away at the Yesny launch facility where company founder Bob Bigelow and 21 staffers have been preparing the big moment.
"The last time was a learning curve. This time, there's a lot of anticipation," said Eric Haakonstad, Bigelow Aerospace Project Director.
The second time was also the charm. Just after 8 a.m. Las Vegas time, a huge Russian rocket blasted off from Yesny, carrying the Genesis 2 spacecraft. Genesis 2 is a one third scale inflatable space habitat. If all goes well, its solar panels will kick-start an expansion of the craft in orbit.
Eventually, a larger version of the craft will be hooked up to form the world's first private space station, open for business to governments, corporations, and even space tourists.
There are astronauts on this flight -- critters including ants, scorpions and Madagascar cockroaches, sent up to help test life support systems that will keep humans alive on future flights. Engineers also added a Las Vegas touch -- a robot-controlled space bingo game, as well as a program called Fly Your Stuff, items sent up by regular folks who paid for the tiny space.
"All sorts of things. Photographs of family members, tokens, medals, different little artifacts and art forms people have made," said Haakonstad.
This second mission, a success so far, proves that private entities don't have to rely on NASA to get into space; that it's not a far-fetched futuristic dream. Engineers are already hard at work on the next step: Bigelow's Galaxy Craft, scheduled for launch next year.
"It will be a substantial technological jump over Genesis," shared Jay Ingham, a Bigelow Engineer. "Size wise, it's 50% larger volume. A lot more power and avionics. More advanced life support. We deal with short time horizons here, and it's always a push to get them done."
Bigelow seems to have NASA's full attention these days. Earlier this week, NASA announced that, for the first time, it hopes to open up the International Space Station to private enterprise sometime in the future. The local folks are pretty sure they're the ones who gave NASA the nudge.
"Absolutely. We want to be the catalyst for commercial ventures in space," said Haakonstad.
A prospect that no longer seems that far off. Just before 4 p.m., Bigelow made contact with Genesis 2 at their ground station. Everything is working according to plan, and the systems are performing flawlessly.
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Genesis 1 launched last summer and has been such an unqualified success that Bigelow has stepped up his timetable and thinks he could have his first habitable space craft in orbit by 2010.
Robert Bigelow, Bigelow Aerospace founder.
An animation was released of what the rocket lift-off would look like.
