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| America's Space Prize |
| 2004-10-01 |
| While others yearn for the seventh century... Inflatables are attractive because they offer large volume with enormous launch weight savings. Bigelow Aerospace is also increasing the stakes that low-cost non-government transportation can be available to send astronaut crews to its inflatable space modules in Earth orbit by 2010. 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. 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. America's Space Prize will be patterned somewhat after the X Prize that will go to the first team to demonstrate back-to-back suborbital flights. |
| Posted by:The Caucasus Nerd |