Genesis-1 Update

The space sausage/watermelon appears to still be functioning well and Space.com interviewed a few people who know a lot about space in general about the business venture.

SPACE.com asked prominent leaders in various space fields to appraise Bigelow's down payment on the future.

"This is as close as it gets to entrepreneurial orbital excellence … funded by private Bigelow dollars and an operating, subscale, test space station on-orbit," said Burt Rutan, head of Scaled Composites in Mojave, California.

Rutan and his team are busy building suborbital space transportation for the flying public–a fleet of SpaceShipTwo vessels and carrier motherships. He said that he heartily congratulates Bigelow…as do many of the other "little guys" in the new industry.

"Pioneers like this are what it takes to get out of our three-decades-long period of no progress toward opening the frontier for the people," Rutan explained. "Go, Bob! Go!"

There are quite a few others interviewed besides Rutan. It's an interesting take on the civilian space program.