This artist's rendering provided by Bigelow Aerospace shows a Bigelow inflatable space station. NASA is partnering with this commercial space company to test an inflatable room that can be compressed into a 7-foot tube for delivery to the International Space Station.
When it arrives at the space station in 2015, scientists will blow it up and let it sit for a few days to test for leaks. If it does not hold as promised, NASA will take back a portion of the already bargain basement price it paid Bigelow.
Standing beside scale models of research stations on Mars and the moon, Miller said the project will encourage commercial ventures to follow the path NASA blazes into space.
He added that it could also help achieve the holy grail of space exploration: missions that send astronauts out of orbit for more than a year.
"The only way to do that is to expand it out and voila you have living space for three people to go to Mars," he said. "You can get three times the volume of a metallic can, and you can go up in the same ferry."
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Hannah Dreier can be reached at http://twitter.com/hannahdreier .
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