How Many Space Stations Does This Planet Need?

At one end of Bigelow Aerospace’s factory is a mock-up of a gargantuan home for future astronauts. With a unique design — it could be packed into a rocket, then unfurled in space — it would comfortably house a dozen people as a voluminous space station or serve as a building block of a moon base. “It’ll be a monster spacecraft by any current standards,” said Robert T. Bigelow, the company’s namesake founder, at a news conference in February. This is Olympus, named after the mythological home of the Greek gods and a measure of Mr. Bigelow’s ambitions for building settlements in space. More

(Source: New York Times - Oct 23)