Cislunar-1000 and Bigelow Aerospace - Space Pod 04/20/16

Hello everybody, welcome to Tomorrow. Coming up we're going to be discussing Bigelow Aerospace, their new partnership with United Launch Alliance, and what it means for an ambitious plan to create a self-sustaining space economy. This is your SpacePod for April 20th, 2016. If you missed our live show this past Saturday, we briefly talked about Bigelow Aerospace and their BEAM module, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, which has been attached to the International Space Station as of Saturday, April 16th. They will be expanding the module later on in May, and it will be tested over a period of two years to study the possibilities of expandable habitats for more ambitious uses. So Bigelow Aerospace has also partnered with United Launch Alliance recently to launch their B330 modules into low Earth orbit by 2020. And although no rocket launches have been purchased yet, Bigelow has made a launch reservation. This has been confirmed. And considering that the BEAM module is planned to be decommissioned in 2018, I'm assuming it's planned to be decommissioned anyway, I don't know if it's going to be deorbited. NASA has plans for the port that it is currently attached to, and it could possibly be moved somewhere else. That would be awesome. I hope it's not deorbited and destroyed. But in any case, whatever happens to it, all the data that they would collect from the BEAM module, by 2020 they should be able to have enough adjustments to have the first B330 module flight ready. Very interestingly, in the press release announcing this partnership, Robert Bigelow, the founder and CEO of Bigelow Aerospace, said that we are exploring options for the location of the initial B330, including discussions with NASA on the possibility of attaching it to the International Space Station. In that configuration, the B330 would enlarge the station's volume by 30%, and function as a multi-purpose testbed in support of NASA's exploration goals, as well as provide significant commercial opportunities. The working name for this module is X-BASE, or Expandable Bigelow Advanced Station Enhancement. This is a big deal, because Bigelow Aerospace's expandable modules are a keystone in an ambitious United Launch Alliance plan called Cislunar-1000, and they're also part of an ongoing NASA study to have the best possible habitats for humans during a long-duration flight to Mars. But not only that, they're also looking at possibly using them for surface habitats, not just on Mars, but also on the Moon and possibly even large asteroids. And of course, there's the whole space tourism aspect once these modules are flying. So, in United Launch Alliance's plan, the 1000 in Cislunar-1000 stands for 1,000 people living and working in space within the next 30 years. And they would utilize B330 modules, rocket reusability, propellant depots, and space manufacturing to create a self-sustaining space economy. And this whole idea in and of itself is awesome, and if this doesn't get you inspired about space, I don't know what will. But here's the plan in detail. Part 1 is the work currently ongoing today, which includes a population of 6 people working at the International Space Station in low-Earth orbit. And then there's all of the communications, research, and imaging satellites in multiple orbits around Earth and throughout the solar system, all of which are delivered by expendable rockets. And the amount of money that all of this contributes to our overall economy is $330 billion every year. United Launch Alliance believes that many new technologies are on the verge of creating new markets and new opportunities in the coming years. The first opportunities now would be demonstration flights and proof-of-concept missions to prove these technologies work and get these new markets going. Part 2 of this plan would see the population grow to 20 people in space in the next 5 years, due largely to commercial space stations, where commercial research could be conducted as well as in-space manufacturing. The plan gets interesting with the advent of prospecting the Moon and near-Earth asteroids for the purpose of mining the materials needed for space manufacturing. And the first targets could be spent rocket stages and spacecraft that are in orbit until larger mining operations are possible and are taking place. The way that United Launch Alliance plans to enable all of this would be with their Vulcan rocket and their ACES upper stage, which would be able to fire its engines multiple times on long-duration missions and will be the way that United Launch Alliance truly wants to pursue rocket reusability, not necessarily with landing rocket first stages back on Earth, but with rocket upper stages already in space that will stay in space, if they can refuel them. All of this hopefully would raise the gross space product to $500 billion annually in the next 5 years. United Launch Alliance hopes that for Part 3 of their plan, there will be hundreds of people living and working in space, with a healthy space tourist market as well, and that the infrastructure for multiple commercial habitats is already set up. That way they will focus on setting up propellant depots in Earth orbit to enable the refueling of ACES upper stages, and also distributing the lift requirements, like sending the parts for advanced missions for lunar landings to Earth orbit with multiple launches, and then reuse the in-space transportation capabilities with all of these refueling operations. The plan incorporates Masten Space Systems' Zeus lander for operations on the Moon, delivering the equipment where mining of the lunar ice could occur to create all of the propellant for these refueling depots and reusable upper stages and landers. And then maintenance and operations of all of this propellant creation would be managed from a station between the Earth and the Moon, like the Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 1, or some other stable lunar orbit that they could do all of this from. Again, the hope is that all of this will create a space economy worth $900 billion annually. The idea is that all of this available propellant would reduce the cost of space transportation by a factor of a thousand, and enable their highly ambitious and enthusiastic goal of having a thousand people working and living in space, a self-sustaining space economy worth $2.7 trillion annually, and large-scale manufacturing set up, where they could be building new parts and spacecraft for materials mined from the Moons and near-Earth asteroids, and delivered to their destination with ACES. They would love also to see solar power satellites built and used to create low-cost and clean energy. So this is a very enthusiastic plan, and maybe even a little bit naive, but we need more ideas like this. This is a great idea, and there's a whole bunch of private and public entities working on all of the little aspects of this plan, and we could see a version of this in reality, hopefully within the next 30 years. A lot depends, though, on what NASA and other government space agencies do, as they would be the anchor customers to get this type of infrastructure going. I think that once it's started, I think they would have no problem being able to get space tourism going and make all of this sustainable. But only once it's started. That's where there's a lot of maybes and what-ifs, and could see delays or even the cancellation of ideas like this. So what do you think? Do you think that this future could be possible within 30 years? Do you think it could take less time, more time, or never happen at all? Please leave us a comment and let us know what you think about this. And also subscribe to our YouTube channel if you haven't already. That helps us to grow, and that way we can help spread even more excitement for space. We're also all over the Internet, and we would invite you to connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and of course our website, Tomorrow.TV, where you can join in the conversation and connect with us and fellow space enthusiasts. This is a crowd-funded show through Patreon, and I would like to give a huge shout-out to all of our founders of Tomorrow, who are contributing $50 or more every month so that we can create this show. But I would also like to thank our architects, engineers, ambassadors, and dreamers of Tomorrow, whose continued support allows us to continue making these Space Pods. Thank you so much to all of you. And if you would like to learn more about supporting us, then please visit patreon.com slash spacepod. Thank you very much for watching this video. My name is Michael Clark, and hopefully you know just a little bit more today than you did yesterday thanks to Tomorrow. Keep moving onwards and upwards, everybody, and I'll see you in the future.