Inflatable Space Station

This is pretty neat. Though, I'm not certain this is an environment I would want to live in. The concept of Micro-metorite would keep me nervous. (Not to mention that thing about radiation.)

The mission of Bigelow Aerospace's revolutionary prototype space habitat launched Wednesday has gone smoothly through its first day in orbit. The program's founder said the success achieved so far has been an exhilarating experience for his team before they set off to begin a comprehensive testing regimen on the inflatable space station pathfinder.

The craft - called Genesis 1 - marks the birth of Bigelow's grand commercial space adventure that should culminate in the construction of the industry's first private space station by 2015.

Real estate and hotel tycoon Robert Bigelow founded the company in 1999, and has since invested over $75 million of his fortune into the project. Upwards of $500 million could be needed by 2015.

Bigelow said he was pleasantly surprised how smooth the mission has gone in the first day of operations. He said he expected at least a few problems to be on his mind at this point in the mission, but so far none.

"We were more prepared actually for failure than we were for success," he said in a phone interview Thursday.

Launched on Wednesday atop a Dnepr rocket flown from a Russian missile base, Genesis 1 quickly got to work to ready for its mission. Compressed air in tanks attached to the spacecraft rushed into the module, inflating it to a total interior volume of over 100 cubic meters.

Is anyone else getting tired of all these things being launched from Russia? You'd think with a capatalist system we'd be able to provide more competition.