Hotel magnate Robert Bigelow, founder of Bigelow Aerospace, has always admitted he went into the business of building expandable space habitats such as BEAM (Bigelow Expandable Activity Module) inflated on May 28 so he could build space hotels for space tourists. And be the one to launch space tourism, the future of tourism.

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The success of BEAM's inflation aboard the International Space Station on the second try takes Bigelow one step closer to his ultimate aim: building the world's first space hotel. That space hotel goes by the ungainly name of the "Bigelow Next-Generation Commercial Space Station" and it should be good to go by 2020, luck and a manned spacecraft permitting.

That's the year two of Bigelow Aerospace's B330 inflatable space habitats that look like winged marshmallows will be ready for launch into low Earth orbit.

Bigelow's first space station -- and the first to be built since the International Space Station -- will consist of two B330 expandable space habitats connected to each other. The space station will have crew capsules; solar arrays for power; propulsion and a docking node.

Bigelow's own space station will have room for up to three crew or tourists that can spacewalk simultaneously, compared to the maximum of two that can spacewalk outside the ISS.

It will be the first station funded and built by private business and not by a government. It will be inflated in space to form a habitat that can protect space tourists and astronauts from the perils of outer space.

Bigelow described the B330 expandable habitats as "time shares," a term common in the tourism industry. A time share is an arrangement where several joint owners have the right to use a property as a vacation home under a time-sharing agreement. This concept also seems to apply to space, under Bigelow's definition.

Bigelow said the first visitors to his space hotel will likely be space tourists that will stay for about a week. He also wants to brand his space hotels so he can keep costs down with the sponsorship money.

 "We would love to see Disney have a Disney space station," Bigelow said. "Wouldn't that be cool?"

Is he thinking Captain America and Iron Man, too?

The only thing preventing Bigelow's space hotel from launching earlier than 2020 is the absence of a human rated orbital spacecraft, in this case the SpaceX Dragon V2, needed to transport people to the hotel. Dragon V2 is expected to see service starting 2017.

As for BEAM, astronauts will use BEAM over the next two years and stay inside for several hours at a time to collect data and assess conditions inside the habitat.

TagsBeam, Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, International Space Station, Robert Bigelow, Bigelow Aerospace