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Swampcat
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SpaceRef.com: Bigelow's Gamble<br /><br />...or...<br /><br />SpaceflightNow.com: Bigelow's Gamble<br /><br />...or...<br /><br />AW&ST: BIGELOW'S GAMBLE<br /><br /><blockquote><p align="left"><font color="orange">It's a high-stakes game to develop commercial inflatable space modules while proposing a $50-million prize for a new piloted spacecraft to service them.<br /><br />CRAIG COVAULT/LAS VEGAS<br /><br />The Bigelow Aerospace project to privately develop inflatable Earth-orbit space modules is beginning to integrate diverse U.S. and European technologies into subscale and full-scale inflatable test modules and subsystems at the company's heavily guarded facilities here.<br /><br />Company founder and millionaire Robert T. Bigelow told Aviation Week & Space Technology that he will announce as early as this week a new $50-million space launch contest called America's Space Prize.<br /><br />The objective is to spur development of a low-cost commercial manned orbital vehicle capable of launching 5-7 astronauts at a time to Bigelow inflatable modules by the end of the decade. </font></p></blockquote> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font size="3" color="#ff9900"><p><font size="1" color="#993300"><strong><em>------------------------------------------------------------------- </em></strong></font></p><p><font size="1" color="#993300"><strong><em>"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government."</em></strong></font></p><p><font size="1" color="#993300"><strong>Thomas Jefferson</strong></font></p></font> </div>