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BEAM Me Up! Prototype Space Room Could Lead to Inflatable Moon Bases
The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) will be folded up into the trunk of the Dragon spacecraft like a parachute that is ready to be unfurled. The station's robotic arm will remove BEAM from the trunk, attach it to the Tranquility Node, and it will expand to more than five times its total compressed size in about 45 minutes.
It doesn't take a spaceflight industry expert to start dreaming about what expandable habitats could mean for future space exploration. Why not put up a dozen space stations orbiting the Earth? Humans could use them to set up colonies on the moon or Mars. What's to stop an eccentric billionaire from starting a space hotel? Robert Bigelow, founder and head of the company that made BEAM, talked to Space.com about the company's goals for the next 20 years, and the issues that stand in the way of the company's efforts to achieve them.