Bigelow Aerospace Shows Off Its Vision for Expandable Space Stations

The International Space Station's next module looks like a hot tub wrapped up in bulletproof fabric, sitting on the floor of a Las Vegas warehouse — but when the module goes into orbit later this year, NASA plans to unfold it into the outer-space equivalent of a rec room. "This could be a very nice module potentially for the crews to go hang out in. ... It may become a very popular place," Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations, told journalists who gathered Thursday at Bigelow Aerospace's Las Vegas headquarters for the module's unveiling. But that's just the start. If the experimental module works out the way NASA and Bigelow Aerospace hope it does, we could be seeing even bigger and better expandable spacecraft, including monster space blimps that have twice as much volume as the International Space Station. More

(Source: NBC News - Mar 14)