Another article on Bigelow ovah heah.

"NASA has hitched its wagon to us," Bigelow says. "They're here every other week now because this is the technology that they will depend on in the future."

"The technology itself isn't that complicated," Bigelow says. "But we've had to reinvent the process. Instead of handing out fat contracts to all of the usual suspects, the big contractors, we're doing this on our own, looking for the best deals we can find. The big contractors have been charging NASA 50 times what something costs. They did it because they could get away with it. Not us. We haven't accepted a dime of government money."

To understand just how revolutionary Bigelow's projected cost savings might be, consider the International Space Station. By 2010, this troubled project will have cost a total of $50 billion, will be 10 years behind schedule and will contain about half of the habitable work space that had been planned, around 550 cubic meters. Just two of Bigelow's planned modules will exceed the entire work space of the ISS, but since the modules will cost around $100 million apiece, the savings become obvious. Two hundred million dollars vs. $50 billion is quite a difference... Bigelow went shopping. American aerospace giants were willing to sell him the valve at costs that ranged from $300,000 to $1 million. Bigelow found and purchased the same valve from a European company. The cost for the identical valve? A mere $5,000.

The one attraction he doesn't like to talk about is the chance for his guests to get a little "space nookie." Since humans are inherently horny, there is no question that some space tourists would take the trip just so they could join the 62-Mile-High Club. Bigelow acknowledges this likelihood, but worries that salacious visions of space sex will detract attention from the more serious applications of his technology.

{He overlooks the important marketing precident - porn made the internet. Just ask Broz}