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Affordable Commercial Space Tourism Infrastructure

Thomas C. Taylor,1 Art Overman, Alex Gimarc and Bruce Pittman GLOBAL OUTPOST, Inc., Las Cruces, NM, 88011, USA

John Spencer2 Space Tourism Society, Los Angeles, CA,90066, USA

and Gene Meyers3

Space Island Group, West Covina, CA 91793, USA

Space tourists are preparing to fly to the edge of space after Burt Rutan’s successful win of the X-Prize. Virgin Galactic made headlines around the world with plans to start the process of capturing space tourism transportation markets. Suddenly almost anyone can obtain astronaut status with money. Habitation facilities will be available in orbit and priced for a broader customer base. How do hotel operators make the leap to orbital operations given the business model uncertainties? NASA does not have a program for Space Tourism, but has developed many useful components and subsystems over time that can be combine into various commercial solutions in low earth orbit. What could these accommodations look like and how will the public enjoy the experience? Tourists can enjoy the view from orbit and weightless gymnastics, but the changes in gravity will affect humans differently with about half feeling some discomfort. Interior designs will look and be different. Ladders become handholds and traffic ways. Trampolines at both ends of a 100’ playground let tourists behave like Olympic gymnasts. Swimming pools become spherical, where one is concerned about increasing the surface tension of the water. Fashion and carry-on luggage have new meaning and create exciting earth based markets with eye-catching commercials. A testbed can be all that and more, but the early focus is getting the cost of accommodations down to a realistic levels, so the hotel operators can take the first conceptual leap off the planet and solve their problems of logistics, plumbing, staff, cost of operations, cruise director training on how to use a telescope and taking care of incidentals like air, water and nice weather, which they are use to getting for almost free. The NASA and ISS accommodation hardware cost is approximately $200k/CF. The testbed cost goal is $2,000/CF. Combining innovation with the pioneering work by NASA and others can bring down the testbed cost and permit the testbed to evolve into orbital hotels for the rest of us. Space tourism is here at the edge of space. Space tourists are preparing to fly to the edge of kilometers or 62 miles. This paper explores early commercial habitation testbed hardware options with space after Burt Rutan’s successful win of the X-Prize. Going to orbit is different than the trip to 100 kilometers above the earth. Space vehicles operate more like airplanes and space tourists need accommodations, because they don’t live on the airplanes. Orbital facilities around celestial bodies are proposed as the way we will explore and settle our solar system. Getting there and allowing society to enjoy the trip requires orbital habitation of a commercial nature and a method of deriving more private funds combining with government space budgets. The paper proposes the Commercial Transition Strategy and SDV innovation of a commercial nature as methods of accomplishing our nation’s space goals.

Nomenclature AR&D = Automated Rendezvous and Docking ECLSS = Environmental Control Life Support Systems EELV = Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle ET = External Tank ETO = Earth to Orbit SDV = Shuttle Derived Vehicle

41st AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference & Exhibit10 - 13 July 2005, Tucson, Arizona

AIAA 2005-3621

Copyright © 2005 by Thomas C. Taylor. Published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc., with permission.

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I. � Introduction Space tourism is here at the edge of space. Space tourists are preparing to pay $200k to fly to the edge of space after

Burt Rutan’s successful win of the X-Prize. Going to orbit is different than the trip to 100 kilometers or 62 miles. This paper explores the next logical step of an early commercial habitation testbed designed with hardware options to reduce costs and solve conceptual requirements, utility and logistics concepts, business requirements, proposed interior designs and a glimpse from the space tourist’s perspective.

Most of the general public probably believe

space hotels in orbit will rotate to provide the gravity we are use to on earth and have a curved floor like the Space Hotel (Ref. 1) in Stanley Kuprick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey shown in Figure 1. In 1964, when the film was released people believed space would evolve into a commercial environment, where the hotel operators would just progress into orbit as we have moved into other areas on earth. Later Hilton Hotels expressed some interest in supporting a hotel, if the cost to orbit and other costs where within reason.

The goal of the Habitation Testbed is to reduce

the cost of accomplishing the hotel business in orbit to a point that a hotel operator can become interested both financially and from an operational perspective. Experts don’t agree on the amount of cost reduction required for a space hotel to be financially feasible in today’s commercial world of hotel operators, but the author’s have set a goal of two orders of magnitude below the current Space Station, which are believed to cost in the range of $200,000 per cubic foot of habitation volume. Other factors related to hotels in orbit are sufficiently different than the surface hotel operations that solutions must also be apparent and acceptable to the future hotel operators. These barrier like issues include logistics, gravity and the lack of it initially, plus air and water, etc., are relatively easy on earth and take on new challenges and proportions in orbit. The space hotel market is almost as limitless as the rest of the universe. Under the right conditions, the government may become a small portion of the anticipated market, but NASA has never really had habitation as a program, but has developed a variety of supporting hardware.

The habitation testbed can be a part of the transition to the “Heavy Lift” vehicle required for Lunar and Mars

exploration programs and several ideas are suggested in the Appendixes, but commercial entrepreneurs are expected to develop these hotels and the race has already started.2,3,4 A variety of transportation related services are anticipated in low earth orbit including inflatable habitation (Ref. 5). Commercial organizations have waited for the opportunity to participate in the space industry from the outset of a program, instead of working up thru the program after the fact. The exploration related commercial services possible on an orbital transportation facility include commercial propellant supply, habitation, logistics transfer and storage, vehicle assembly, transportation vehicle servicing and mooring. When one thinks about it and understands transportation node theory, nodes on the trade routes of earth are where the commerce has emerged in the past.

Figure 1. The Stanley Kuprick Space Hotel for the Science Fiction Movie: 2001, A Space Odyssey with curved floors, full gravity and comfort.

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In 2001, society expected to see, and use, the torus shaped, one gravity hotel in the movie “2001, A Space Odyssey.” America, as a nation, could eventually achieve something approaching the space dream of the “2001” movie, but it will not be the first commercial facility. The habitation technologies already develop and the capability of financing new commercial innovation could stimulate a new commercial habitation industry based on the aerospace technology already developed. Figure 1 depicts the 2001 Hotel in orbit.

The 2001 Hotel didn’t happen. The commercial habitation in orbit depicted in the movie has not emerged, but

may emerge in the future, if the habitation development and transportation costs are reduced and a space tourist industry is stimulated. How could development, competition, cost reduction, market creation, international space projects serving global markets and commercial entrepreneurs and private money be stimulated to create such a wild idea born in science fiction? This sustainable market perception, business capture, commercial market development, cost reduction and private investment can come from the commercial sectors of our economy. Commercial transportation and habitation in orbit are not NASA Programs and probably never could be a NASA Programs, but NASA does habitation for the space station and NASA does transportation to and from the space station. NASA wins the race in technology, but America industry does not always capture the global commercial markets after the American taxpayer makes the investment in technology. America has invested significantly in aerospace technology ever since the V-2 rockets came to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico from Germany after World War II.

Opportunities for commercial development have existed for

a long time. Examples of potential commercial opportunities could have included the V-2’s, Apollo, Skylab, the space shuttle and space station, but each program seemed to exclude any sort of commercial transition plan. A Commercial Transition plan is define in the Appendix A of this paper and is a method of thinking ahead to commercial uses of hardware programs after the government is ready to throw the hardware on the scrap heap. Many people talk about getting private capital into the space environment and cutting the burden government has shouldered to date, but few people have concrete suggestions. It starts at the beginning of a hardware program, not as an after thought.

II. � Cost Reduction on the Habitation Shell The external tank of the space shuttle is transported to orbit

on every mission and each mission invests about $500m or more in transportation cost in the 58,250 pound aluminum structure after it is used for approximately 8 minutes. (Ref. 6,7,8) Figure 2 depicts a space shuttle external tank (ET) as it rolls out of the Michoud Assembly Plant near New Orleans, LA. The (ET) capable of being salvaged as a structure in orbit (Ref. 9,10) and used as a shell modified to serve as an early habitation testbed and evolve into an early hotel with current cost advantages. Figure 2 depicts a 154’ long external tank in the ground transport device. The Hydrogen Tank is currently the biggest tested space volume able to resist the extreme conditions of outer space and, at the same time, it offers the largest pressurized volume able to host habitable containers. Comparison with the other available or possible space modules shows its 1500 cubic meters volume capability against the 342 cubic meters of the TransHab Module and the small 42.5 cubic meters of the standard aluminum module (i.e. U.S. Lab Module).

The size of the space tourist market depends on the cost of the experience. Several $20m week vacations appear

possible, but may not enough tourists on which to base a sustainable space tourist industry. How many people would, for example, make the trip, if the cost were reduced to $6m for experience? Will the adventure tourist spend 10, 100, 600 or 1,000 times the current $20,000 adventure tour of today to go to orbit for an “out of this world” experience? The size of the market at each of these costs varies significantly. Getting the cost down increases the

Figure 2. The External Tank (ET) of the NASA Space Shuttle and Likely a Shuttle Derived Vehicle (SDV) Component of an Emerging Fleet of “Heavy Lift” Launch Vehicles for America’s Exploration beyond Earth Orbit, because the Michoud Assembly Plant near New Orleans, LA, the tooling, the Trained Workforce and the Billion Dollars of Flight Testing Already Exists .

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potential space tourist market size and the opportunity for private investors to make a profit and show a return to investors.

Creating partial gravity in the microgravity of earth orbit is expensive and one or more steps beyond the early

low gravity facilities anticipate in the near future. A rotational facility from the movie like torus design may emerge later, but early facilities must address cost, the Space Adaptation Sickness and other problems. Another problem, besides cost, is bridging the gap between technical hardware orbital requirements, the hotel industry needs, and society’s expectations for a space tourist experience. A commercial transition plan for space station might have anticipated the commercial needs and permitted commercial organizations to solve those problems and transition the space station to commercial operations in a profitable manner.

This huge availability

of confined and safe free space allows us to dream and to conceive of space habitats for humans in orbit, as we have never had before now. A series of ET’s in orbit can evolve from an initial Habitation Testbed Facility into a torus shaped as shown in Figure 3. The torus requires 12 ET’s in orbit and a number of years to build.4

An early commercial habitation testbed hardware option with conceptual requirements is suggested and expanded.11,12 A cooperative proposal (Ref. 13) and program capable of using the government developed technology in a commercial mode and capable of transitioning aerospace hardware suppliers from “government only” operations into supplying commercial operations.

The habitation interior won’t be the curved floor of the torus in the “2001, A Space Odyssey,” but it must

provide something enjoyable, entertaining and safe with transportation included. What does one do for seven days in orbit? Well requirements for eating, sleeping, utilities and separate bath are standard in the surface industries, but orbit has much more to offer. The key may be to use the surface tourist techniques plus the extras in orbit including microgravity, viewing earth, a microgravity gym, a 3D hot tub, a “playing with Microgravity” science volume and others.

100' w/ Hatches 120'

335'25' by 20' Long Modules

97' ETLiquid HydrogenTank TransportedFree to orbit

Hatches

Tourist BeltElevators in Spokes

35,000 CF ECLSS &Equipment Volumes

StructuralTies

ShuttleInterface

Remove IntertankSections in Orbit

Remove Aft Cargo Carrier (ACC) in Orbit & Assemble

Passenger Spokes

Warehouse53,000 CF

Free FlyTravelway w/ Tampolines

ShuttleBipod

Figure 3. The GLOBAL OUTPOST Torus Hotel from Eight Liquid Hydrogen Tanks Salvaged, Assembled, Outfitted and Supported in Orbit by Commercial Organizations as a Result of the Habitation Testbed Cooperation.

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An early commercial habitation testbed hardware options with conceptual requirements is suggested that could

lead to the torus shown in Figure 3. A cooperative program capable of using the government developed technology in a commercial mode and capable of transitioning aerospace hardware suppliers from government only operations to supplying commercial operations.

Suggesting two orders of magnitude in cost reduction to an existing

industry usually just irritates those who have worked in the industry for thirty years, but one order of magnitude cost reduction has been achieved. SPACEHAB, a pressurized commercial module in the space shuttle offering “Manned Tended Research” using the mid-deck locker approach did reduce the cost of research on the shuttle compared to the previous Spacelab Module System. This kind of reduction required a commercial company with innovative hardware, (Ref. 14) some reduction in capabilities and a decade of development to achieve. It takes a decade to move from inception to realization of the cost reduction, but in today’s fast moving commercial sectors, the market has also changed significantly over this decade of development. Two orders of magnitude in cost reduction takes more effort and creativity than one order of magnitude of reduction and requires government cooperation and assistance in financing to be fully realized. Maximizing the interior innovation and exploiting the full value of a salvaged ET can do it. The cost reduction by commercial ventures in the past reduced the project manpower required by a factor of ten, but two orders of magnitude requires a cultural change, new ways of doing things and must be strong enough to stimulate a truly commercial market to emerge. Two orders of magnitude require patent protection, private investment stimulation, tax incentives, additional innovation, government cooperation/assistance and a commercial non-government market that reacts to traditional business market forces. It also takes entrepreneurs experienced in working with government and with the patience to endure the long development cycle. It also takes the United States Congress to enact legislation like the “Invest in Space Now” Bill previously introduced by Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA). Congressman Calvert is now the Chairman of the Space & Aeronautics Subcommittee of the House Science Committee and can be encouraged to take action by a simple email to (www.house.gov/calvert) asking that the Bill be reintroduced. A testbed reduces that development cycle and the Bill reduces the risk to the investors and shortens the time to profit.

It looks like an “Ugly Ducking” in orbit, but may provide the two orders of

magnitude in cost reduction. The 154’ external tank has two 40 psi tested volumes covered with a Thermal Protection System (TPS) foam to protect it from the ascent heating, which chars the outer surface as shown in Figure 4. The ET is charred by the ascent heating, but the salvage by a commercial company exploits the invested transportation costs and the size of the ET, which cannot be put in orbit by any existing vehicle. The key to commercial success is forging beneficial cooperation between government and industry to open this new commercial space frontier to those who can finance it, profit from it and enjoy it. GLOBAL OUTPOST has placed a cash deposit with NASA for the transport of five external tanks to orbit per an existing signed NASA Enabling Agreement. (Ref. 9)

1. Why Salvage Such an “Ugly Duckling ET” in Orbit?

The external tank has an invested transportation value that would cost $ 10,000 per pound to place an equal mass in orbit. The ET could be worth $ 580m in orbit, if it can be effectively used to replace mass transported to orbit. The external tank sees ascent heating in the 8.3 minutes of ET propellant

Figure 4 The External Tank experiences Ascent heating on the 8 minutes trip to orbit and the ET is forced back into the atmosphere to burn up on re-entry. In addition to nose charring, the Aft Dome and the Intertank are charred for other reasons, but leaving the ET useful in orbit with the $500m of invested transportation value, if the ET can be used for a commercial purpose.

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use required to reach orbit and use most of the cryogenic Propellant. Figure 4 depicts the External Tank after the ET Jettison Maneuver from the space shuttle and visible from the orbiter for part of an orbit. The ET is placed in a trajectory pointing below the horizon and impacts the atmosphere and mostly burns up above a region north and west of the Hawaiian Islands. The charring is the nose ascent heating and aft dome heating from the Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) impinging on the aft dome surface. Charring is also evident from the small rockets used to move the spent SRB’s away from the ET after they burn out approximately 2 minutes after launch. None of the charring damages the ET’s ability to become effective pressure volumes for reuse as Habitation volumes in orbit. The pictures was taken from the orbiter seconds after the separation and the ET gradually assumes a natural gravity gradient stable position due to its 154’ length with the long axis of the ET pointing to the center of the earth as it orbits the earth. When the picture was taken, this stabilizing process had not completed as yet as the long axis is not perpendicular to the curved light atmosphere around earth visible in the Figure 4 picture.

The purpose of this project is a space hotel fitted inside the single hydrogen tank able to host vacation and

accommodation activities in microgravity for 12 to 16 people. Such a facility in orbit could also grow to accommodate ten times as many space tourists with some modification. This growth capability provides several advantages:

First, early the salvaged ET volume provides large

internal volumes for habitation testing and guests an exciting stay during vacations in orbit. Figure 5 shows the 27’ diameter of the barrel section of the external tank and appears to be capable of three floors in the horizontal direction and a large diameter in the vertical.

Second, the chance to enjoy several space hotel

accommodation volumes arranged for comfort in the new design environment called microgravity, equipped with the services not like space station, but comfort they are used to having in a luxury five star hotel on Earth, plus the new enjoyable space activities available only in weightlessness.

Third, the technological choice of the design used to

configure the habitation modules and the easiest and proven inflatable systems to arrange the luxury interiors. Figure 6 depicts the possible combinations of exterior and interior inflatables and hard shell modules possible with the external tank as an anchor point in orbit. At 300 n. miles in orbit, the external tank will assume a gravity gradient stable attitude and the long axis of the structure will always point toward the center of the earth. The cross sectional area of the 154’ long by 27.6’ diameter ET will cause the structure to degrade to re-entry in 11 years assuming a 3 sigma solar environment in orbit. This means the orbiting structure will require some reboost capability either on board or from propulsion vehicles or both.

Fourth, the previously invested transportation cost provides the concept with some value on which a foundation of

private capital and a market can be created. Burt Rutan’s success signals commercial forces at the start of a space program, not at the end as has been the case. The speed and focus of commercial markets forces in a previously government dominated hardware environment indicate a series of several different factors are important to private money investors. First, the innovation of the hardware for re-entry was important, because it tended to by pass conventional thinking and aerospace tradition with another innovative more commercial solution. Second, the importance of the cost of the commercial service to be provided and the private financing required getting to that cost was less. Just having costs mentioned is different for most space public. Many competing teams, 28 entrepreneurial teams worldwide, were excited by the $200k ticket price and the 18,000 excited potential customers visiting Virgin Galactic website. Third, the speed at which existing commercial entrepreneurs like Virgin’ Richard Branson react, when the market and costs are in the right commercial range to make money on the invested capital. Fourth, and little recognized occurrence was the realization by the public and the investors that this liquid rubber rocket engine was inherently safe and 100 times less

Figure 5. The ET Barrel Section in the manufacturing process at the Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans, LA and operated by Lockheed Martin. The Barrel Section is 27.6’ outside diameter before the spray on TPS and the lines inside are “T” shaped 1.25” deep.

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expensive than previous rocket engines plus rockets have finally become safe enough for the public to consider riding. roughly the Space Ship One rocket engine was approximately 25% of the $25m total cost.

Orbital space is truly an emerging economic frontier and Amercia’s previous investment in space technology should

position the country in the best place to capitalize and exploit this orbital environment. The Russians actually entered the space tourist market first and America fails to fully recognize the space frontier for the emerging economic opportunity that it is. It should be pointed out that producing a vehicle to launch and return passengers using an orbiting facility as a destination is estimated to be an order of magnitude more difficult than attaining 100 kms, but has also become the next commercial prize proposed by Robert Bigelow. (Ref. 2) The establishment and support of a commercial facility in orbit to receive these customer’s is also more difficult and putting the trip and accommodations together into a package capable of exciting the hotel entrepreneurs of the world is also difficult and the focus of the habitation testbed. Several government and Congressional studies have suggested more commercial attempts to unlock the financial strength of American and tap the private investment for commercial space activities. The value to NASA and the government budgets previously supported by taxpayers money is that commercial space brings private money and expects to own the hardware and the business models created. This private money-ownership business model is not foreign to American or Global Business, but is difficult to implement with the Federal Acquisition Regulations and procurement procedures.

Creating a Commercial Transition Strategy for

each major NASA Program like Apollo, the Delta launch vehicle, the Atlas launch vehicle, the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station, The Hubble Telescope, the Exploration Initiative and other programs would at least give private investors an opportunity to position American industry in the global aerospace market and provide some return to the taxpayer’s 60 years of investment in the Federal budget process. Taking society to space is another method of providing the taxpayer with a return on their investment.

In five years, orbital space tourism to orbit

might be possible, because the commercial vehicles might actually be ready to transport tourists to orbit. The previous four space tourists and reporters launched to space have used government-operated vehicles. These emerging commercial launch vehicles can provide the transportation for trips to and from facilities in earth orbit. Government funded facilities have accommodated four people, but forty per year would overwhelm the International Space Station and complicate the strained logistics and existing station partner’s programs.

Figure 6. One option for the Habitation Testbed inside the 53,000 cubic foot Liquid Hydrogen Tank and using both inflatable volumes inside the ET and outside to evolve toward two orders of magnitude in cost reduction to attract earth based hotel operators.

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Virgin Galactic made headlines around the world with plans to start the process of capturing space tourism

transportation markets. Suddenly almost anyone can obtain astronaut status with money by launching to 100 kilometers.

III. � Habitation Testbed The next step for Space

Tourism maybe a Habitation Testbed leading to a commercial Hotel in Orbit with commercial transportation to carry space tourist passengers and the supporting logistics required for the construction and sustainable support of commercial the current cost of habitation in orbit is probably two or more orders of magnitude more expensive than traditional hotel operators are willing to consider. The testbed in Figure 6 is an “Ugly Ducking” of a solution, but the price and the other actors like logistics, orbital tourist activities and all the other “Hotel” operator’s barriers to entry should be answered, so that a real hotel operator or a series of hotel entrepreneurs emerge like the 28 entrepreneurial teams of the X-Prize.

The transition to orbital hotel operations is the goal of the Habitation testbed. To effectively transition to traditional

hotel operators, the testbed must address cost, logistics, luxury, food, marketing, and all the things a normal hotel provides plus a pressurized atmosphere with the oxygen replenished. These hotel operators must overcome the lack of gravity and a cost of given moderately priced items like items like water, power and labor on earth with a realistic system of reclaiming water, generating power and an oversized orbital staff approaching the size of the group of space tourists served. Some of that work has been done by NASA and the Russians, but must be more available, more cost effective and the ECLSS hardware, for example, must handle 53,000 cubic feet of pressurized volume.

The American Space Prize has been suggested and likely funded by Robert Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace in Las

Vegas, NV. The prize is $50m for an orbital vehicle to transport passengers to and remain at the Bigelow Aerospace Orbital Facility. Moon, Mars and Beyond will include humans and eventually space tourists. By reducing the cost for space tourists now, means the acceleration of mankind’s movement into space.

A. What To Do In Orbit? Astronauts spend free time looking at earth. As it is not advisable from the safety point of view to cut either the tank

or the inflatable modules in order to install windows, a standard aluminum series of modules will be dedicated to this viewing function and linked to the hotel including personalized data recording for the space tourist’s use. Separate viewing modules designed for the long term viewing of earth and outfitted with the imaginative tools and hardware to make it a memorable space tourist experience are combined with the large “view quality” windows and a module interior not for the casual glance, but the memory making view of a magnificent blue planet.

Earth is 70% water, so 70% of the time will be looking at water and getting ready for the 30% of the time over land.

Passenger vehicle traffic, docking cargo transfer and departure can be over water, but the truly valuable viewing time

Figure 7. The inside of an ET with padding. Trampolines not shown. Space Island Group

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over land will be precious. It is precious, because each space tourist can bring a viewing audience of friends along on the journey and to share in some of the experiences electronically.

Floating in microgravity is fun and with some surface training can be acrobatic. Trampolines in a one gravity

environment go from 2 G at the trampoline surface to almost a weightless feeling at the top of a jump. In microgravity we just don’t really know what lots of interior volume will be like, but the longer the time between the contacts with the trampoline surface at each end of the 100’ long liquid hydrogen tank domes, the more time for acrobatics. It will take some earth based trampoline training for the novice not to look like an uncoordinated idiot flying through the air. Imagine yourself on a trampoline at either end of the patted interior of a 27’ diameter by 100’ long padded hydrogen tank. Figure 7 attempts to depict experience, but it will be something you would like to write home about, but will be even happier a complete edited video version you, as a space tourist, have content control over. Six days and seven nights in orbit maybe a typical vacation. Preparation for an orbital vacation is up to a year of physical, technical, safety and mental training, but much of it can be done at home via video and in a series of weekend events.

B. Shuttle Derived Vehicle (SDV) Opportunity

Only ~ 15 or more shuttle mission remain

for the existing ET, but a “Heavy Lift” launch vehicle evolving from the space shuttle components appears on the horizon. This anticipated Shuttle Derived Vehicle (SDV) has been studied and proposed for years and one version is shown in Figure 8. Another addition called the Aft Cargo Carrier has been studied by NASA and would provide a cost effective path for commercial space entrepreneurs to exploit the $500m invested transportation cost of each ET or ET derivative. Suggesting entrepreneurs get involved at the beginning of the SDV activity might be the first step in accelerating the flow of commercial innovation and private money into a previously government supported space development program. The commercial development factors of exploiting the ET and its anticipated unmanned payload carrier in orbit differ significantly from the NASA goals and programs, but can significantly stimulate entrepreneurs/private development.

C. Interior Design Paola Favata’ of Anastrophe Design has

completed some design work inside the external tank, where volume is not a constraining factor. Figure 9 depicts some of her innovation in addressing living in a microgravity environment in low earth orbit.

In order to compensate for the lack of external windows, at least in the first configuration phase, the hotel is

conceived as a miniature city where promenades are distributed all over the hotel and guest rooms are provided with “internal” windows.

About one-fourth of the internal space will be dedicated to guest rooms of two sizes and typology, according to the

guests’ needs; the remaining three-fourth of the hotel’s free volume will be arranged as common areas providing the

Figure 8. The Shuttle Derived Vehicles options discussed use components from the space shuttle system to reduce costs and accelerate the schedule to provide the “Heavy Lift” capability. Both the outside vehicles use the ET, but the one on the left appears better for assembling larger vehicles in LEO.

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major services which are present in terrestrial hotels plus rooms specifically arranged to host space entertainment activities.

The Space Tourist Society and John Spencer their founder have been active in creating public awareness and Figure

10 depicts the cruise like atmosphere for vacationers where the cost of the trip is likely to preclude the younger market.

D. Salvaged External Tank The salvaged external tank and the inflatable habitation

structure are technical and financial options for commercial habitation structures. Fig 6 The External Tank (ET) Habitation and Logistics Testbed with various other habitation volume options including 11’, 15’ and 27’ Diameter Habitation Insert Packages and Logistics Containers transported by the Aft Cargo Carrier (ACC), the space shuttle, emerging Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLV’s) and ELV’s. The External Tank (ET) is salvaged within an Enabling Agreement (Rev. 3) between NASA and GLOBAL OUTPOST, Inc. and the result of a previous NASA Solicitation.

E. Core ET Expense GLOBAL OUTPOST, Inc. has placed a cash deposit for

five salvaged ET’s in orbit. The salvaged external tank is available through a cooperative NASA GLOBAL OUTPOST “Enabling Agreement” which provides a transportation free external tank in orbit per a cash deposit placed some years ago. The cost to transport a similar volume exceeds $500m. This doesn’t mean the ET is actually worth $500m, but may be worth something, if it is used effectively to create or replace something that is used in orbit. GLOBAL OUTPOST, Inc. is seeking partners interested in developing external tank applications in orbit.

F. Transition To Hotel Operations

Combining innovation with the pioneering work by NASA and others can bring down the testbed cost and permit the testbed to evolve into orbital hotels for the rest of us.

Logistics is an important transportation system that must

be dependable, adaptable and take advantage of the lower cost commercial launch hardware establishing a flight record of reliability, safety and other aspects leading to a “Passenger” capability. Hotel operators must understand how they can make money in an off planet region never before considered as a profit environment. The ECLSS industry must take the best of the hardware available and create a system of maintainability, reliability, redundancy and cost effective hardware to support the hotel operations.

Figure 9. Paola Favata’ of Anastrophe Designed three interiors that reflect the innovation in a lack of a constraining gravity environment.

Figure 10. A farther view look at orbital space tourist accommodations provides some gravity, out of this world class view from the room and the kind of luxury expected of a 5 star resort in low earth orbit. John Spencer of the Space Tourism Society. www.Space-Tourism-Society.org

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How does a society get to a larger space economy? By taking society along and building a leadership position that says America is moving mankind off the planet for logical reasons of space exploration, resource development and the expansion of our species into the Moon, Mars and Beyond our solar system, where the government does not have to pay the entire cost of infrastructure.

IV. � Phase I Commercial Transportation Node Figure 11 combines the need for transportation

Testbed to produce a Phase I Commercial Transportation Node. This transportation node is envisioned by Lunar Transportation Systems (LTS) in later unmanned commercial cargo services to and from the moon. LTS uses the existing EELV’s and later SDV “Heavy Lift” vehicles to complete the already commercial leg from the earth’s surface to low earth orbit, where an emerging transportation node, Phase I, permits the transfer of cargo and propellant for the commercial Lunar transportation services. The node starts small and makes use of the mass of hardware normally discarded by previous space systems. Each pound to orbit has some transportation value associated with it and can be used as mass for future tether operations and transportation nodes around earth and the moon. Such a commercial facility expands with use and provides support to emerging unmanned cargo vehicles to and from the moon as proposed by Lunar Transportation Systems (LTS), T’ Space and probably others.

If the commercial transportation of cargo to and

from the moon is to eventually be a commercial business, then the cost reduction and hardware needs to start at the beginning of the program rather than the commercial after thought as in the past programs. The key is the degree of cooperation developed between government and commercial entrepreneurs to combine thinking and forces enough to stimulate and accelerate the entrepreneurial process. This cooperation could be more difficult for each group than actually building their own hardware, but the gain for NASA can be spectacular and provides the potential for private money flow into the space development environment and the larger space economy that will result. Moving society into space will do more to stimulate the voter than all the other previous efforts to stimulate the public support for space.

Lunar Transportation Systems (LTS) is a commercial space start-up company by the same team that started

SPACEHAB, Inc. and Kistler Aerospace and suggests an 800 kg quick cargo landing on the moon’s service followed by a gradual build up of capability to 30,000 kgs by varying their ability to support their reusable vehicles at transportation nodes in various locations. Their commercial approach is privately financed given some stimulation and cooperation with NASA and offers unmanned non-critical cargo transportation services taking advantage of technology advances over a 50-year “Reusable Highway” to and from the moon. The company recovers the hardware normally thrown away in previous space operations. If the reader thinks about it, the trade routes of earth developed for various reasons, but it was at the transportation nodes that commerce usually emerged.

The Phase I Commercial Transportation Node shown in Figure 11 uses discarded hardware and spent stages

clamped together to create a long mass heavy facility capable of supporting early tether approach operations,

Figure 11. The Phase I Commercial Transportation Node evolved from discarded spent stages and cargo hardware to become a mass heavy long axis facility to provide vehicle support services using government market to create a long term Reusable Highway to the Moon Commercial Development/Resource Recovery. Pictured is Lunar Transportation Systems, Inc. by Walter Kistler and Bob Citron for a commercial cargo transport system evolving to nodes to further reduce costs in a privately financed venture.

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transportation vehicle servicing and later tether enhancement of payloads and eventually human accommodations. Sustained activities on the Lunar surface require transportation that gets more capable and economical over time, not more expensive. NASA can “Touch the moon and Go onto Mars,” but sustain Lunar operations require an economical transportation system financed by the private sector using the initial NASA market to create a sustained two-way transportation systems for 50 years using all the innovation possible. The North Slope Contractors, the four bigger oil companies on the planet, spent $12 billion of their risk capital upfront to develop the facilities at the Prudhoe Bay Oil field before oil got expensive. Now and hundreds of billions of dollars of later money spent on 18 other fields, the original $12 B was a small portion compared to the later billions spent after profits flowed. Their secret, “Get to revenue flow and spent the majority of development funds out of revenue lows.”

V. � Phase II Commercial Transportation Node

Predicting the future can be difficult,

but evolving with a market may be more of an indication of the changes and growth required in a Commercial Service Platform. Figure 12 attempts to predict the future of tethers as an unmanned approach technique, habitation, lunar vehicle servicing, thermal storage and the enhancement of payloads using tethers. The problem with predicting the future is raising the private capital, because investors like to know they are going to have a future as shown. At some point facilities try to serve too broad a customer base and the Phase II Commercial Transportation Node tries to serve both an emerging habitation Space Tourist Market and a transportation vehicle service market for vehicles to the moon. Commercial railroads and oil fields are developed in stages, using technology when it is ready and with funds that come out of the revenue stream. So far most of space development has been financed by government funds, but this practice can’t go on forever and should evolve into government funds used as a market stimulus for the private funds. Figure 12 depicts a variety of services within these two markets major markets of transportation and habitation.

The two markets are commercial habitation leading to space tourism and commercial launch vehicle servicing

leading to the delivery of transportation services to a variety of emerging launch vehicles including those from earth and those going to and from the moon. In a decade space tourist vehicles will transport 10 to 40 people per trip to space and need a destination experience with accommodations to last “Six Days and Seven Nights” and justify the $6m total cost. Roughly half the cost is transport and half is for accommodations. This is market of $15 B each for accommodations and transportation each per year, if 100 tourists per week are in the flow. The true cost salvaging the ET for several uses,

Commercial TransportationNode - Phase II

Salvaged ET w/ AftCargo Carrier (ACC)Hatch for Cryo Storage w/ Active Cooling

Short Term CryoStorage w/Movable Covers

Elevators & Roboticsto Handle TetherApproach & Captureof Vehicles

Aft Cago Carrier25' Diameter Payloadsby 22'

Tether PayloadDeploymentResearch & Testing

Cryo TankTransferFrom Storagew/ PlantRobotics

Habitation Testbedfrom Salvaged ETused for Crew& Developmentof ECLSS, Structure & Other Subsys

InflatablesInside &OutsideVersions

LogisticsModules Tanks & Dock

LTS VehicleHardware

25 ' Dia.TransHabDerivative

Figure 12 The Phase II Commercial Transportation Node provides services to a variety of emerging transportation industries and evolves with the markets emerging from the NASA Exploration Activities.

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taking advantages of the Shuttle Derived Vehicle opportunities not fully known at this time and servicing one or more commercial transportation vehicles yet to fully emerge, are not known. The commercial services include modification of the ET for several purposes, short term and long term cryogenic propellant storage using multiple commercial and other launch vehicles to transport logistics cargo, cargo handling in several forms, habitation of government and non-government humans and tether operations for vehicle approach and tether research into payload enhancement. No entrepreneur in his or her right mind would or could take on the risk of raising the private money for such a venture without some assistance from a NASA market or the passage of the “Invest in Space Now” Bill in the United States Congress. The Phase II Node is expected to benefit with innovation from commercial and other sources and expects to enable a variety of commercial and government programs.

LEO space tourists for $20m/trip are now reality. Dennis Tito has paid for the trip to the International Space

Station. Others appear to be following. Space tourist Tito probably got sick like half the astronauts from Space Adaptation Syndrome (SAS) in microgravity. SAS seems to affect half the participants in the NASA Parabolic Flights aboard the modified Boeing 707 aircraft flights as well as half the orbital space travelers. Test pilot experience of some of the astronauts does not seem to change the ratio of people affected. The parabolic flight simulation of microgravity have emerged in some other countries and some solutions may emerge, but the early space tourists must be tough and capable of going back to their home towns with positive stories of space tourism. The length of the orbital stay probably has to extend beyond the three-day adaptation period of SAS. This also means the interior surfaces and systems must be designed to be washable, sanitary and odorless. A business raising and spending the amount of money required cannot depend on one market in the commercial space business.

VI. � Phase III Commercial Transportation Node

The hotel with partial gravity

could become reality in 20 years or 200 depending on the degree we, as a nation, unleash the commercial and financial strengths of our country to move out into the next economic frontier for mankind. Figure 13 continues the assembly of larger space tourist facilities using the ET as a market and continues to service space vehicles going to and from the Lunar surface with facilities massive enough to provide the momentum exchange and tether services to further reduce the cost of transportation.

The weight of the facility has reached the point that the use of tether operations to enhancement of payloads and even

entire vehicles may be possible. The rule of thumb is the mass of the tether facility in both earth and lunar orbits must total 28 to 30 times the mass to be enhanced by momentum exchange and other tether related operations. The Lunar Transportation Systems, Inc. is anticipated to eventually place 30 tons on the Lunar surface given the proper logistics support at various transportation nodes in route. This means each facility in each orbit must be 450 tons in each orbit to handle and enhance 30-ton payloads. If entire vehicles and payload combinations are to be enhanced, then the facilities must be even more massive. The gain from using tether payload enhancement is the significantly less propellant required for the journey. The establishment of the “Reusable Highway’ to the moon means cost so low, nobody will use any other transportation means for the 99% of non-human cargo to and from the moon. This provides our nation some degree of control over our economic destiny. It is some of what a leader nation does. The assembly of space tourist structures beyond early shelters and possibly torus shaped facilities can be accomplished. The vehicle servicing market may evolve to large vehicles going to Mars and beyond.

Figure 13. A Series of Phase III Transportation Nodes in Earth and Lunar Orbits using Tether and other techniques to transport cargo to and from the Moon’s surface.

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VII. � Predictable Future - Habitation

After over fifty years of space

development, the full force of the global industrial sector has yet to fully emerge in this emerging space sector of our economy. Because transportation to orbit is half of a new space venture’s cost, only the “One Trip” to money flow communication satellite ventures has been successful. Commercial habitation is clearly a “Many Trips” to a profit kind of venture, but habitation is a very predictable need for both NASA and commercial organizations preparing to do almost anything in space. We as a nation need to get good at supplying this service cost effectively. Habitation services are the first service after transportation to be offered in most remote camps on earth and it maybe in space. Before society populates the moon, habitation technology must overcome the early barriers in earth orbit. NASA and the Russians have overcome almost all the barriers except cost. Space tourism needs to find a method of effective cooperation with NASA with testbed cost as the major development driver, because cost is the barrier for private money in the commercial space industries. The space tourism industry requires cost effective habitation facilities in orbit to emerge as a factor in the world economy at this point in history. Innovation may be the key.

The combination of the ET, the NASA-Johnson Space Center, the TransHab Concept with the innovative inflatable

structures and the existing International Space Station Environmental Control Life Support (ECLS) systems could provide some interesting possibilities for commercial habitation in orbit. People still dream about space hotels like Space Island’s large torus structure shown in Figure 14 and 15. Both use the external tank as a basic building block.

VIII. Future Growth Eventually, space travel and tourism activities will become competitive with commercial market forces dominating.

Figure 15 depicts a more complex multi-tank torus based on designs by the Japanese Shimizu group.

IX. Conclusions Space tourism and the supporting commercial habitation industry are not a direct result of existing NASA Habitation

programs and therefore need something to help jump-start their success. Burt Rutan and Richard Branson have provided that needed jump-start for space tourism to emerge.

Habitation facilities will be needed in this decade and don’t just appear overnight. Space tourism can be a large

industry. America has made the investment require to make commercial space and space tourism “American” industries, but so far it is a Russian industry. This industry can emerge faster by learning from previous technology developed in the space program, but we must nurture its commercial roots by offering appealing orbital habitation hardware capable of safe and affordable development and use. The interior habitation design must address the lack of gravity and be

Figure 14. The Space Island Group’s Torus in orbit serving a variety of markets and customer groups from a basic structure of salvaged external tanks (ET’s).

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functional as well as appealing. Logistic operations, especially in remote environments, are expensive and essential for safety. This accommodation hardware must eventually be financed by private sources and operated by commercial organizations capable of generating a profit for the investors. The accommodations must be safe, interesting, expandable and affordable to excite the space tourist and overcome commercial barriers.

A testbed can reduced the time and money required for surface based hotel operators to make the jump to space habitation. The two orders of magnitude of cost reduction may help stimulate the effort and transition to market forces.

X. � Conclusion The conclusion is habitation is important to

Space Tourism industry and NASA can’t build something with public funds for a commercial industry, but the Russian can and have done so with transportation and MIR. Cost is the biggest barrier to American industry stepping up to the Habitation challenge. A testbed could help bring surface based industries and orbital hotel operations together by solving many of the problems and barriers to entry.

Appendix

Appendix A - Creating a Commercial Transition Strategy Creating a Commercial Transition Strategy for each major NASA Program like Apollo, the Delta launch vehicle,

the Atlas launch vehicle, the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station, The Hubble Telescope, the Exploration Initiative and other programs would at least given private investors an opportunity to position American industry in the global aerospace market and provide some return to the taxpayer’s 60 years of space investment in the Federal budget process. Taking society to space is another method of providing the taxpayer with a return on their investment.

The Commercial Transition Strategy (CTS) is a plan by an interested party or organization on an option for

transitioning the NASA Program hardware from government ownership and operation to the commercial sector for the purposes of realizing additional value from the technology and the hardware originally funded by the taxpayer and now ready for retirement. The DoD performs this transition everyday by selling hardware and other items as War Surplus” and/or offering the same to allies and other countries in return for some value. It is hoped that NASA Program hardware would be of value after the design life of the hardware is reached and a commercial organization could make the transition to profitable commercial operations earning revenue and generating of taxes. The Hubble Program might have become a follow-on commercial operation, if the Commercial Transition Strategy (CTS) were drafted by the Hubble operators or some other organization and these commercial people were given sufficient time to plan and raise private funds for follow-on commercial “for profit” operations and the generation of tax revenue. Skylab, the space shuttle and ISS are all examples of potential opportunities for Commercial Transition Strategies (CTS). Sometimes valuable hardware and technology is just transitioned into the aerospace companies that built it and any potential value is sometimes lost.

Figure 15. A space station hotel proposed by Shimizu Corporation was used as a model for simulations of the transportation costs, which will greatly affect the demand for space travel and its total costs.

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2. Appendix B – What would commercial industry say, if they were asked to comment on the space shuttle components and the innovation used to transition to Shuttle Derived Vehicles in a “Heavy Lift” configuration?

Starting from

zero on a new aerospace hardware program is what America has done for sixty years in space. Each program is a new clean sheet design rather than an extension of existing hardware or modification and improvement of hardware as most other industries do, because the goal is sometimes technology development rather than deriving any commercial benefit from the expenditure of tax dollars. It is logical that the people asked to do the Phase A studies and Preliminary designs on the new clean sheet design are the same people that get paid for building the new hardware as it rolls off the plant floor, but these same organizations also realize new hardware pays better than improving existing systems. In the industrial world incremental improvements are used to reduce the capital costs and to keep a company competitive in a commercial market. It is the way that most other industries work.

Aft Cargo Carrier Payload - 25' Diameter by 22' Payload Volume equal to original shuttle Payload Volume

2 Each Intertank Sections

SDV Payload is 25' Diameter & Moves Bipod forward

Aerodynamic Spike shiftsre-attachment off P/L Carrier

Add Aerodynamic Spike on ET

Payload Carrier ~ 5 times the original STS Volume 27.6'

27.6'

Same

T Taylor 4 Jan 01Space Shuttle Upgrades to Commercial SDV

Space Shuttle Payload Bay 15' Diameter by 60' = 10,600 CF Existing

SpaceTransportation

System

SDV Commercial Versions T Taylor 13 May 05

Figure 1. SDV Upgrades of a commercial market nature to satisfy a secondary market for the commercial unmanned Shuttle Derived Vehicle (SDV) evolving from one Payload Bay Volumes (PBV) to seven PVB’s and increasing propulsion w/ longer SRB’s, LRB’s and reduced drag from the aerodynamic spike + fluid spike.

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Two thirds of the existing shuttle design life remains unused. Part of the problem is a government bureaucracy rather than a business runs shuttle operations. Shuttles could operate unmanned as a cargo transportation business operated by business people with some market cooperation from NASA and DoD with some care not to trample emerging launch hardware innovation. It might give commercial organizations the ability to share the hardware by operating it with NASA as a part time customer and commercial customers able to pay some of the operations costs. Put it up to American industry, offer the 10-15 remaining STS missions as a commercial market for a business approaching Wall Street with a Business Plan showing the $10 Billion pre-existing NASA market and fold in the United Space Alliance as a potential partner. What would commercial space habitation and other industries say, if they were asked to comment on what SDV upgrades should be implemented on the space shuttle to permit a commercial operator of the shuttle to address other markets besides NASA? Expand the SDV capability with money out of the commercial transportation revenue flow by introducing the innovation below. The innovation is designed to open new commercial markets at a reduced cost and position America in new markets of space tourism, propellant sales, lunar resource recovery and other markets.

Figure 1 depicts the existing space shuttle at the top and an elongated ET below it. The elongated ET uses only those changes that do not force a recertification of the ET, which is estimated to cost over one billion dollars. The elongated ET uses two Intertank sections and provides some storage in the Intertank volume areas approximately equal to the original payload volume in the space shuttle payload bay. Later the Aft Cargo Carrier (ACC) is added and triples the available payload volume and probably requires the five segment SRB to fully utilize the increased shuttle payload volumes. Both the ACC and the Forward Cargo Compartment (FCC) provide an opportunity to salvage the ET in orbit and fill the liquid hydrogen tank volume with approximately 22,000 CF of internal habitation materials installed inside the tank after the NASA 8 minutes of use and the salvage operation in orbit. Somewhere after the space station is completed and the shuttle begins launching unmanned, the space assembly of larger NASA structures and commercial structures are started.

An extension on the ET nose, a aerodynamic spike attached to the ET, can assist the unmanned ET approach and

offload at facilities in orbit without damaging the facility, because the spike dock attaches to a tether tip attached to station and not he station itself. This spike can help provide reduced ascent drag and increased payload weight capability to orbit judging from the SBIR Phase I results of Transonic Wind Tunnel tests. It should be pointed out that the entire ET now goes all full orbital velocity on all of the 120 or so launches to date and has invested within it the cost of transporting 58,250 pounds of mass to orbit. If the ET were used in orbit this previous investment by NASA might be worth $10,000 per pound, if the ET were used in orbit and worth a total of $580m per ET.

The Advanced Programs Group, Martin Marietta Aerospace, now called Lockheed Martin, at the Michoud

Assembly Facility near New Orleans, LA, has studied the Aft Cargo Carrier (ACC). In about $ 8m in studies over about six years in the 1980’s it was determined that 10 ACC’s could be designed, fabricated and used in the space shuttle system for $300m. That is $30m per ACC and about what the ET costs to produce. The total ACC cost contains the development upfront costs, so the follow-on ACC’s could cost less.

The bottom half of Figure 1 proposes the “Heavy Lift “ SDV upgrades required for the exploration of the rest of

our solar system. Suggestions to the Side Mount SDV include the five segment SRB, a payload carrier of the same diameter as the ET to capitalize on the Michoud tooling and the ability to use the carrier after the launch in various projects in orbit. The Side Mount SDV is longer and wider than previous versions and provides approximately six times the payload volume of the original shuttle and will require the extra propulsion provided by the larger SRB and possibly a hybrid Solid Booster. The aerodynamic spike can evolve into a fluid spike providing transpiration cooling and flow separation to decrease the ascent drag and provide increased payload weight capability to orbit.

References 1. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, A gravity hotel torus structure in a movie written by Arthur C. Clarke, directed by Stanley

Kubrick with scenes of the hotel inside and outside. Also as a published book. 2. Bigelow Aerospace, Las Vegas, NV, AV & ST Mag, July 5, 2004, p.21, “Inflatable habitat stirs Chinese interest” 3. The TransHab Module: An Inflatable Home in Space, (IS-1999-05-ISS027JSC), May 1999, Module Overview,

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/spacenews/factsheets/pdfs/thabfacts.pdf 4. U.S. Patent 6,206,328, Taylor, et. al., Mar. 27, 2001, "Centrifugal gravity habitation torus constructed of salvaged orbital

debris," a variety of designs for habitation uses of the external tank in orbit.

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5. U.S. Patent 6,439,508 B1, Taylor, et. al., Aug. 27, 2002, "Inflatable Habitation Volumes in Space," an inflatable habitation volume expanded 2.5 times in orbit and providing increased debris impact protection over metal pressurized hull designs.

6. External Tank page at the Space Frontier Foundation website, http://www.space-frontier.org/Projects/ExternalTanks/ 7. Space Shuttle External Tank, Lightweight Model, System Definition Handbook, Aug 1980, Martin Marietta, Michoud

Operations, New Orleans, LA 8. Taylor & Associates, Inc., “ET Applications in Space,” Study Contract for Martin Marietta Corporation, Tom Mobley,

[Aft Cargo Carrier (ACC)], 1979, Suggests ~100 uses for a salvaged ET in orbit. 9. GLOBAL OUTPOST, Inc. and NASA Enabling Agreement, No. 1564-001-00A, Rev. 3, dated 20 April 1993, includes a

deposit for five ET’s on orbit. 10. U.S. Patent 5,813,632, Taylor, et. al., Sep. 29, 1998, "Salvage Hardware Apparatus and Method for Orbiting Hardware,"

is one salvage method tentatively approved by NASA and leading to the recovery of 58,000 pound 154’ long orange ET (External Tank) propellant tank in orbit.

11. Taylor, T.C. (1980), Commercial Operations for the External Tank in Orbit, Eighteenth Goddard Memorial Symposium, Washington, D.C., AAS 80-89, March 1980.

12. Hilton, Barron, President, Hilton Hotels, Barron Hilton Corporation, AAS Hotels in Space 67-126, 1967 AAS Conference, An historic speech on space hotels by a builder of hotels.

13. “Commercial Proposal, TransHab Module at ISS,” 12 Nov 1999, GLOBAL OUTPOST, Inc. 61 pages, 4 proposals of varying lengths and detail to NASA-JSC

14. U.S. Patent 4,867,395, Taylor, et. al., with Bob Citron, Sept. 19, 1989, "Flat end cap module for space transportation systems," designed to fit in the Space Shuttle, www.SPACEHAB.com, NASDQ Symbol SPAB, a privately financed space commercialization company raising over $300 in private funds, uses "Mid-deck Locker" an industry standard experimenter volume by carrying 60 or more Mid-deck Lockers to orbit and microgravity "manned tended " research in orbit. The SPACEHAB has manifested 18 times and achieved an order of magnitude cost reduction compared to similar research in the Spacelab Module.