We Thought We'd Be Living in Space (or Under Giant Domes) By Now
The International Space Station is known for a distinct lack of personal space, with crews packed into phone booth-sized beds and assaulted by continuous light, sound and surveillance. But if things go right during an upcoming SpaceX resupply mission, currently scheduled for March 2016, the station could soon be a bit roomier and more relaxing.
After the Dragon capsule reaches the station, the ISS’s robot arm will pull out a device called the Bigelow Aerospace Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM—and the future of housing might just change forever.
The 13-foot-long module is being referred to by Bigelow Aerospace and NASA as an “expandable habitat,” but to the average viewer it will look more like a big white balloon. Think of it as a kind of spare room—one that cost NASA a cool $17.8 million. BEAM will arrive uninflated, but once it’s attached to one of the station’s nodes it will blow up, creating a new—if not entirely expansive—section of the ISS.
“I jokingly refer to it as a largish New York apartment,” says Mike Gold, director of D.C. operations and business growth for Bigelow Aerospace. BEAM isn’t intended to be used as living quarters, he notes. Rather, it will serve as a proof of concept for expandable habitats.
Gold sees another benefit to the module: a bit of peace and quiet. “Acoustically, it’s going to be the quietest location aboard the International Space Station,” he says. Will astronauts use it as a respite from the always-on environment of the bigger station? Right now, it’s unclear. In a release, NASA says only that the station will be measured and tested over time. But Gold thinks the module has the potential as a place for science experiments, stowage and other activities. After all, the concept has been tested before: In 2006 and 2007, the company launched the Genesis I and II missions, when expandable habitats headed into orbit via converted Russian ICBMs.
The limited plans for the habitat are a far cry from the “space hotel” label that has long been associated with the company. Bigelow Aerospace is owned by hotelier and real estate mogul Robert Bigelow, whose plans to take his empire to space have been the source of speculation and sometimes mockery since he launched the company in 1998.
That moniker irritates Gold, who calls it a “pernicious misconception.” He says that tourism is just a portion of the company’s long-term plan. The term has been in use since the module that inspired Bigelow Aerospace’s current projects, a NASA-designed inflatable crew quarters project known as TransHab.
TransHab turned out to be just a pipe dream—the project’s funding was cut in 2000 and it literally never left the ground. Bigelow snatched up NASA’s patent rights and used them to develop the technology.
If BEAM isn’t a space hotel, the company’s next project sure seems like one. Now that BEAM is ready to deploy, the company is perfecting the B330, an even larger expandable habitat that could be used for housing, research and development or astronaut training.
Unlike BEAM, the B330, named for its 330 cubic meters of internal space, is a completely independent module—it doesn’t need to hook up to the International Space Station, and it can support a crew of up to six. B330s can even be hooked up to one another to form free-floating commercial stations like Alpha Station, a proposed space station that Bigelow Aerospace claims could help nations develop their astronaut corps, perfect space travel and conduct research.
On its website, the company says it will offer things like one-off astronaut flights ($26.75 to $36.75 million per seat), leased space station space ($25 million for exclusive use of a schoolbus-sized space over a two-month period) and naming rights to Alpha Station ($25 million a year). Gold downplays the idea of space tourism, but doesn't discount it entirely. Perhaps it will be more lucrative—and realistic—once the company’s ambitious Olympus project, named for its godly 2,100 cubic meters of space, is complete.
There’s just one problem: Currently, there’s no way for units like the B330, Alpha Station or Olympus to get into space. That hitch is a big one. Right now, the company relies on commercial resupply missions to the space station launched by companies like SpaceX. But commercial rockets are small, without enough power to launch the 20-ton B330 into orbit. In order to get its more ambitious habitats off the ground, Bigelow Aerospace would need a rocket like NASA’s Space Launch System, or SLS, which will have an eventual lift capacity of 143 tons.
Are expandable space stations (hotels or otherwise) the buildings of the future? Perhaps. Some people may ditch the idea of space tourism and become full-time space residents in structures like Bigelow's Olympus. Some may flee Earth due to overpopulation (there's an 80 percent probability that the world's population will grow to around 11 billion by the end of this century, and there are no signs of slowing).
And then there's the cool factor—some people may find that they simply prefer to live in microgravity surrounded by spectacular views of planets and stars all the time.
But commercial space projects are susceptible to funding issues, delays and development traffic jams, all of which could send the most optimistic predictions for the future of travel and housing tumbling back to Earth. And for every futuristic habitat success, there are scores of failures. Here are a few of the other places we thought we’d be living by now:
In a Frank Lloyd Wright-Designed Utopia
image: http://thumbs.media.smithsonianmag.com//filer/fc/70/fc705ea3-bdf8-4c3d-bf64-3fd084fbc6bb/5825005_2.jpg__420x240_q85_crop_upscale.jpg
The architect Frank Lloyd Wright envisioned Broadacre City as a sprawling, Utopian suburbia. Residents would take futuristic helicopters as public transportation and live in giant skyscrapers, as seen here.
The architect Frank Lloyd Wright envisioned Broadacre City as a sprawling, Utopian suburbia. Residents would take futuristic helicopters as public transportation and live in giant skyscrapers, as seen here. (Copyright © Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, AZ. All rights reserved. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University))
Frank Lloyd Wright didn’t just design gorgeous houses and museums—in the 1930s, he conceived of Broadacre City, a utopian alternative to the hustle and bustle of the typical metropolis. Wright was so enchanted by his idea of giving one acre to each family and ensconcing them in a sprawling suburbia without social problems or skyscrapers that he promoted it until his death in the late 1950s.
Beneath Lots and Lots of Glass
image: http://thumbs.media.smithsonianmag.com//filer/e0/50/e0503ede-28f4-43c2-a402-40e603bf515c/sewardssuccess-popularsciencemarch1970.png__420x240_q85_crop_upscale.jpg
Seward's Success, a proposed city in Alaska, was to be a no-cars-allowed city under glass where everyone rode trams and monorails.
Seward's Success, a proposed city in Alaska, was to be a no-cars-allowed city under glass where everyone rode trams and monorails. (Courtesy Popular Mechanics, March 1970 issue)
Does the thought of a trapped city full of monorails and monoliths make you think of Logan’s Run? The movie could well have been inspired by Seward’s Success, a metropolis planned in Anchorage, Alaska during the 1960s. The glass-covered city was designed for 40,000 residents complete with monorails and aerial trams—no cars allowed. Alas, Seward’s Success was never to be: The project was delayed and eventually canceled.
In Walt Disney World
Walt Disney wasn’t content as a groundbreaking animator and amusement park impresario—he wanted to change the face of U.S. cities, too. In the 1960s, Disney hatched an idea called “Project X” and began acquiring hundreds of thousands of acres of land in Orlando, Florida. The city would feature homes of the future designed by American corporations along a gigantic urban corridor. Eventually, the project was renamed E.P.C.O.T.—Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow—but it was downgraded to a section of Disney World after Disney’s death in the late 1960s.
In a Domed City in Minnesota
Few future cities came as close to fruition as the Minnesota Experimental City, or MXC. In 1969, Minnesota’s state legislature approved the formation of a steering committee to figure out new ways to solve problems of urban sprawl and quality of life. A 75,000-acre site was chosen and plans made to develop the community of Swatara into an environmentally friendly, car-free city with a gigantic geodesic dome. But legislators balked in the 1970s, and today Swatara is more ghost town than modern metropolis.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/we-thought-wed-be-living-space-or-giant-domes-now-180958072/#xPFaEKyZBeURYXfb.99
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After the Dragon capsule reaches the station, the ISS’s robot arm will pull out a device called the Bigelow Aerospace Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM—and the future of housing might just change forever.
The 13-foot-long module is being referred to by Bigelow Aerospace and NASA as an “expandable habitat,” but to the average viewer it will look more like a big white balloon. Think of it as a kind of spare room—one that cost NASA a cool $17.8 million. BEAM will arrive uninflated, but once it’s attached to one of the station’s nodes it will blow up, creating a new—if not entirely expansive—section of the ISS.
“I jokingly refer to it as a largish New York apartment,” says Mike Gold, director of D.C. operations and business growth for Bigelow Aerospace. BEAM isn’t intended to be used as living quarters, he notes. Rather, it will serve as a proof of concept for expandable habitats.
Gold sees another benefit to the module: a bit of peace and quiet. “Acoustically, it’s going to be the quietest location aboard the International Space Station,” he says. Will astronauts use it as a respite from the always-on environment of the bigger station? Right now, it’s unclear. In a release, NASA says only that the station will be measured and tested over time. But Gold thinks the module has the potential as a place for science experiments, stowage and other activities. After all, the concept has been tested before: In 2006 and 2007, the company launched the Genesis I and II missions, when expandable habitats headed into orbit via converted Russian ICBMs.
The limited plans for the habitat are a far cry from the “space hotel” label that has long been associated with the company. Bigelow Aerospace is owned by hotelier and real estate mogul Robert Bigelow, whose plans to take his empire to space have been the source of speculation and sometimes mockery since he launched the company in 1998.
That moniker irritates Gold, who calls it a “pernicious misconception.” He says that tourism is just a portion of the company’s long-term plan. The term has been in use since the module that inspired Bigelow Aerospace’s current projects, a NASA-designed inflatable crew quarters project known as TransHab.
TransHab turned out to be just a pipe dream—the project’s funding was cut in 2000 and it literally never left the ground. Bigelow snatched up NASA’s patent rights and used them to develop the technology.
If BEAM isn’t a space hotel, the company’s next project sure seems like one. Now that BEAM is ready to deploy, the company is perfecting the B330, an even larger expandable habitat that could be used for housing, research and development or astronaut training.
Unlike BEAM, the B330, named for its 330 cubic meters of internal space, is a completely independent module—it doesn’t need to hook up to the International Space Station, and it can support a crew of up to six. B330s can even be hooked up to one another to form free-floating commercial stations like Alpha Station, a proposed space station that Bigelow Aerospace claims could help nations develop their astronaut corps, perfect space travel and conduct research.
On its website, the company says it will offer things like one-off astronaut flights ($26.75 to $36.75 million per seat), leased space station space ($25 million for exclusive use of a schoolbus-sized space over a two-month period) and naming rights to Alpha Station ($25 million a year). Gold downplays the idea of space tourism, but doesn't discount it entirely. Perhaps it will be more lucrative—and realistic—once the company’s ambitious Olympus project, named for its godly 2,100 cubic meters of space, is complete.
There’s just one problem: Currently, there’s no way for units like the B330, Alpha Station or Olympus to get into space. That hitch is a big one. Right now, the company relies on commercial resupply missions to the space station launched by companies like SpaceX. But commercial rockets are small, without enough power to launch the 20-ton B330 into orbit. In order to get its more ambitious habitats off the ground, Bigelow Aerospace would need a rocket like NASA’s Space Launch System, or SLS, which will have an eventual lift capacity of 143 tons.
Are expandable space stations (hotels or otherwise) the buildings of the future? Perhaps. Some people may ditch the idea of space tourism and become full-time space residents in structures like Bigelow's Olympus. Some may flee Earth due to overpopulation (there's an 80 percent probability that the world's population will grow to around 11 billion by the end of this century, and there are no signs of slowing).
And then there's the cool factor—some people may find that they simply prefer to live in microgravity surrounded by spectacular views of planets and stars all the time.
But commercial space projects are susceptible to funding issues, delays and development traffic jams, all of which could send the most optimistic predictions for the future of travel and housing tumbling back to Earth. And for every futuristic habitat success, there are scores of failures. Here are a few of the other places we thought we’d be living by now:
In a Frank Lloyd Wright-Designed Utopia
image: http://thumbs.media.smithsonianmag.com//filer/fc/70/fc705ea3-bdf8-4c3d-bf64-3fd084fbc6bb/5825005_2.jpg__420x240_q85_crop_upscale.jpg
The architect Frank Lloyd Wright envisioned Broadacre City as a sprawling, Utopian suburbia. Residents would take futuristic helicopters as public transportation and live in giant skyscrapers, as seen here.
The architect Frank Lloyd Wright envisioned Broadacre City as a sprawling, Utopian suburbia. Residents would take futuristic helicopters as public transportation and live in giant skyscrapers, as seen here. (Copyright © Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, AZ. All rights reserved. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University))
Frank Lloyd Wright didn’t just design gorgeous houses and museums—in the 1930s, he conceived of Broadacre City, a utopian alternative to the hustle and bustle of the typical metropolis. Wright was so enchanted by his idea of giving one acre to each family and ensconcing them in a sprawling suburbia without social problems or skyscrapers that he promoted it until his death in the late 1950s.
Beneath Lots and Lots of Glass
image: http://thumbs.media.smithsonianmag.com//filer/e0/50/e0503ede-28f4-43c2-a402-40e603bf515c/sewardssuccess-popularsciencemarch1970.png__420x240_q85_crop_upscale.jpg
Seward's Success, a proposed city in Alaska, was to be a no-cars-allowed city under glass where everyone rode trams and monorails.
Seward's Success, a proposed city in Alaska, was to be a no-cars-allowed city under glass where everyone rode trams and monorails. (Courtesy Popular Mechanics, March 1970 issue)
Does the thought of a trapped city full of monorails and monoliths make you think of Logan’s Run? The movie could well have been inspired by Seward’s Success, a metropolis planned in Anchorage, Alaska during the 1960s. The glass-covered city was designed for 40,000 residents complete with monorails and aerial trams—no cars allowed. Alas, Seward’s Success was never to be: The project was delayed and eventually canceled.
In Walt Disney World
Walt Disney wasn’t content as a groundbreaking animator and amusement park impresario—he wanted to change the face of U.S. cities, too. In the 1960s, Disney hatched an idea called “Project X” and began acquiring hundreds of thousands of acres of land in Orlando, Florida. The city would feature homes of the future designed by American corporations along a gigantic urban corridor. Eventually, the project was renamed E.P.C.O.T.—Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow—but it was downgraded to a section of Disney World after Disney’s death in the late 1960s.
In a Domed City in Minnesota
Few future cities came as close to fruition as the Minnesota Experimental City, or MXC. In 1969, Minnesota’s state legislature approved the formation of a steering committee to figure out new ways to solve problems of urban sprawl and quality of life. A 75,000-acre site was chosen and plans made to develop the community of Swatara into an environmentally friendly, car-free city with a gigantic geodesic dome. But legislators balked in the 1970s, and today Swatara is more ghost town than modern metropolis.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/we-thought-wed-be-living-space-or-giant-domes-now-180958072/#xPFaEKyZBeURYXfb.99
Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
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I remember seeing a proposed orbiting space city in Popular Mechanics magazine in the mid 1970's as a teen and I was sure then that by the time I was my present age that there would be at least a dozen such cities as well as a permanent moon base. Of course in 1975, I thought we'd have had a manned mission to Mars before Y2k.
I'm not particularly comfortable with heights. When I was a kid I went to the top of the tallest building in my city - the 18th floor, where the windows went from the floor to the ceiling. When I went to the window, i got so scared I got down on my hands and knees. That was repeated about 4 decades later when I went up to the observation deck of the CN Tower in Toronto = at the time the highest man-made unsupported (by cables) structure in the world, and then went up to the very narrow circular walkway many feet higher where once again the windows started at the floor and extended outward to the ceiling - and again I got down on my hands and knees. Somehow I like to have my feet on the ground.