NASA has launched a summer contest for students to design the best inflatable loft for life in space or on another world. A cash reward and a field test of the winning design are up for grabs. Three awards of up to $48,000 each will be granted to the university student teams that produce the best loft-like inflatable space habitats that can be attached to a hard-shell NASA structure. The winner of a head-to-head competition of the modules' performance in the Arizona desert will earn another $10,000, NASA officials said in an announcement. The X-Hab contest, short for "eXploration Habitat," follows in the tradition of NASA's Lunabotics program and the space-related X Prize awards offered by the non-profit X Prize Foundation to spur interest in aerospace fields.

NASA is planning to investigate making inflatable space-station modules to make roomier, lighter, cheaper-to-launch spacecraft, it reveals in its budget proposal released on 22 February. The agency is considering connecting a Bigelow expandable craft to the ISS to verify their safety by testing life support, radiation shielding, thermal control and communications capabilities.

By next fall, NASA plans to launch its biggest Red Planet rover yet, the $1.8-billion, SUV-size Mars Research Laboratory. Even though the MRL will be able to haul five times as much equipment as the Spirit and Opportunity rovers that are already on Mars, a group of Swedish researchers say that they could accomplish far more if accompanied by a squad of helper ’bots. Fredrik Bruhn, the CEO of Ångström Aerospace Corporation, and his colleagues have designed the small inflatable scouts to assist bigger, less mobile rovers in their hunt for signs of microbial life on Mars. Each foot-wide, 11-pound ball can roll up to 62 miles, snap photos at any angle, and take soil samples, drawing its power from the solar panels on its shell. Unlike wheeled rovers, the rounded scouts have fewer motors to repair, never flip over, and are easier to seal from dust. Plus, they rarely get stuck. “The beauty of the system is it needs very little energy to go around rocks, so unless you’re landing on a surface that looks like a bed of nails, it should be fine,” Bruhn says.

A prototype module for a private space station has passed an orbital milestone after completing its 10,000th trip around the Earth. Genesis 1, an inflatable module built by the Las Vegas, Nev.-based firm Bigelow Aerospace, passed the 10,000-orbit mark as it nears the beginning of its third year of unmanned operations, its builders announced late Thursday. Bigelow Aerospace launched Genesis 1 atop a converted intercontinental ballistic missile on July 12, 2006 to test its ability to self-inflate and operate in Earth orbit. Led by businessman Robert Bigelow, owner of the Budget Suites of America hotel chain and other enterprises, Bigelow Aerospace followed Genesis 1 with a successor, Genesis 2, in June 2007. That module also continues to function as designed.

An inflatable habitat designed for explorers on the moon or Mars is headed for an Antarctic test run, NASA said Wednesday. The habitat – built by ILC Dover and resembling an inflatable backyard bounce for children – will make its South Pole debut early next year. NASA demonstrated the inflatable prototype on Wednesday at ILC Dover's Frederica, Del., facility. "We deflated [and inflated] it in about ten minutes," said Larry Toups, habitat lead for NASA's Constellation Program Lunar Surface Systems Office, in an interview.

XP Vehicles™ announced on Thursday that it's Whisper™ electric car is being developed for online direct ship distribution at sub $5000.00 price-points. A baffled pressure tube system (think Zodiac™ rubber boat) provides the actual supporting and protective structure of the vehicle. How safe is it? Recall that NASA recently threw tens of millions of dollars of ultra-sensitive electronics onto the surface of Mars from nearly a mile up and then bounced that same delicate gear for over a mile over boulders and everything worked flawlessly. This was due to the instruments being shrouded in an already expanded inflatable housing that has served as the model for the Whisper™ body structure.

Even as Bigelow Aerospace gears up for launching its second prototype space station into orbit, the company has set its sights on something much, much bigger: a project to assemble full-blown space villages at a work site between Earth and the moon, then drop them to the lunar surface, ready for immediate move-in. In an exclusive interview, Las Vegas billionaire Robert Bigelow confirmed that his company has been talking about the concept with NASA – and that the first earthly tests of the techniques involved would take place later this year. The scenario he sketched out would essentially make Bigelow a general contractor for the final frontier.

The orbiting of the privately-bankrolled Genesis-1 expandable spacecraft by Bigelow Aerospace is a step forward in the company’s vision to provide a low-cost, low Earth orbit human-rated space complex that is accessible to the commercial sector. The general concept for "inflatable" space habitats was initially developed by NASA for use in a proposed mission to Mars, hence the name, "Transit Habitat" or "TransHab" as it was commonly referred to. That work was curtailed in 2000, falling victim to NASA budget cuts. Since that time, Bigelow Aerospace took the basic concept, redefined it, moved the technology generations ahead and in many different directions, and ultimately brought the idea to fruition in the form of the Genesis-1 Pathfinder vessel.

A test of an inflatable Earth orbiting module is slated for liftoff early next year, bankrolled by a go-it-alone, do-it-yourself entrepreneur keen on providing commercial space habitats for research and manufacturing, among other duties. Bigelow Aerospace of North Las Vegas, Nevada is readying a test prototype of the firm�s expandable habitat design and looking to launch the hardware in the first quarter of 2006. Providing the financial fuel for the project is businessman, Robert Bigelow, owner of the Budget Suites of America Hotel Chain among other enterprises, and head of Bigelow Aerospace.

Space entrepreneur Robert Bigelow has been making quiet inroads into the development of Earth orbiting inflatable modules. The privately built and financed habitable structures would be available for research, manufacturing, and other uses, including lodging for future space tourists. Bigelow Aerospace of North Las Vegas, Nevada is eying launch early next year of Genesis Pathfinder spacecraft � a shakeout of systems to be used on a full-scale inflatable space structure dubbed the Nautilus, and now referred to as the BA-330.

Robert Bigelow is a trim 60 years old with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair and a matching mustache. He shepherds visitors through his 50-acre, three-building, 56-employee R&D facility, Bigelow Aerospace, on the outskirts of Las Vegas with the quiet confidence of a man who knows exactly what he is doing. �It�s a gamble,� he says of his project, the world�s first private space station. �It�s a huge gamble.� He smiles faintly as he says it, as though he enjoys the sheer outrageousness of his own project. Then, too, he�s no stranger to high-stakes gambling; he was raised in Las Vegas, after all, surrounded by the city�s kitschy, instant-gratification, money-fixated culture.

The test flight of a potentially revolutionary transportation system for future space missions has been delayed several months for more preflight testing, project officials announced Tuesday. Originally planned for the second half of December, the flight of the Demonstrator-3 inflatable space vehicle will now occur sometime in the spring of 2005. Sometimes referred to as a �ballute,� or �balloon parachute,� the technology has for decades been recognized as a potential breakthrough, but sufficiently strong materials had never been available. �Technically, inflatables are feasible,� said retired NASA futurist Joe Loftus, who once headed the advanced planning office at Johnson Space Center in Houston. �The question is: What is it that will make them desirable?�

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.