Posted: Mon, Sep 27, 2004, 11:12 AM ET (1512 GMT)
Robert Bigelow, owner of a company developing commercial space modules, is expected to announce as early as this week the creation of a $50-million prize for the development of an orbital space transport, Aviation Week reported in its latest issue. The "America's Space Prize" would award $50 million for the first company to develop a vehicle that could place five to seven people in orbit by the end of the decade. Bigelow himself is expected to contribute have of the prize purse, with the other half coming from an unnamed donor who is in final negotiations with Bigelow. The prize would allow the use of existing and non-US boosters for launching the spacecraft. Bigelow's company, Bigelow Aerospace, has quietly been developing inflatable habitation modules based on the TransHab design pioneered by NASA in the late 1990s. Bigelow has already announced plans for unmanned launches of test modules, called Genesis Pathfinder, in the next two years, leading to a full-scale module, called Nautilus, which could be docked together to form a small space station.

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•  Aviation Week article