Hotels in space?

[Erich Habich]

Bigelow Aerospace's successful launch of the Genesis-1 on 12. July 2006 is
the first time a private company claims extraterrestrial space for human
habitiation. It is planned to develop the modules eventually as a private
space station.

The image on this page shows the current position of the first Genesis
module: http://satellite.ehabich.info/genesis.html

Other news agencies had this to say:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5173388.stm
http://www.raumfahrer.net/news/raumfahrt/13072006153921.shtml

I am not affiliated with Bigelow Aerospace.
Erich Habich

[Jim Kingdon]

Another good set of articles are:
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0607/14bigelow/
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0607/12bigelow/
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0409/27bigelow/

which describe the schedule for Genesis 2, a series of 6 to 10
pathfinder missions, and the operational station.

One of the striking things here is the large number of test flights.
Compare with ISS, which featured few in-flight tests (I think there
were a few tests of tools or other small pieces on the shuttle) and no
backups for any of the operational hardware.