By Leonard David

Special correspondent

updated 9:00 p.m. ET Sept. 28, 2007

GOLDEN, Colo. - Two privately built prototype modules are circling Earth, as a technological prelude to seeding space with far larger orbital housing that will support human occupants.

Lofting all that living space into Earth orbit is on the business agenda for Bigelow Aerospace of North Las Vegas — but the company faces significant challenges in attaining their sky-high goals.

The privately backed Bigelow Aerospace Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 expandable subscale space modules were shot into orbit — on July 12, 2006, and June 28, 2007, respectively — on Dnepr boosters from the ISC Kosmotras Yasny Cosmodrome, located in the Orenburg region of Russia.

Both modules remain in excellent shape, providing valuable data on the use of expandable space structures for crews, not only in low Earth orbit, but on the moon and Mars, said Michael Gold, corporate counsel for Bigelow Aerospace in Chevy Chase, Md.

"We're ahead of schedule," Gold told Space.com, thanks to the success of Genesis craft that are proving out the fundamentals of the Bigelow Aerospace module design.

Expedited schedule
In an Aug. 13 message, Robert Bigelow, president of the entrepreneurial space firm, underscored the fact that global launch costs were escalating.

Slide show   Space shots Click through the highlights from September’s outer-space imagery, including glittering galaxies as well as Earth’s hurricanes viewed from on high. more photos

"These price hikes have been most acute in Russia due to a number of factors including inflation, previously artificially low launch costs and the falling value of the U.S. dollar. What this now means for Bigelow Aerospace is that to conduct another subscale demonstrator mission would cost two to three times what it has in the past," Bigelow explained.

That being the case, Bigelow announced an expedited schedule — one that would skip an in-orbit flight of a module dubbed Galaxy, and fast-forward directly to the much larger Sundancer, an expandable habitat capable of being boarded by humans.

"We still intend to construct and test the Galaxy spacecraft and/or various parts of it in order to gain familiarity and experience with critical subsystems. However, by eliminating the launch of Galaxy, we believe that Bigelow Aerospace can move more expeditiously to our next step by focusing exclusively on the challenging and exciting task presented by the Sundancer program," Bigelow reported.

Business case
Although Sundancer is already taking shape — with 2010 eyed as the target time period for launch — the schedule change also brings about some bad news, Gold said. "Our schedule is so aggressive and our progress has been so good, it is creating some significant concerns in terms of transportation," he added.

Gold urged launch companies to recognize the fact that the international space station is not the only destination target out there. "It is very disconcerting where the launch industry is today," he noted.

There are rockets, both domestic and foreign, that can loft the large and heavier Sundancer module, but affordable, reliable and safe transportation of crews to the private outpost is missing right now, Gold said.

Why not utilize the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to send crews to Sundancer? From a simple financial perspective, Gold responded, "we don't know if it can support the business case" of Bigelow Aerospace. "It's probably not a financially viable choice for us."

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