December 12, 2021

Bezos Ripped for Celebrating Space Trip After Amazon Warehouse Collapse (Source: New York Post)
Jeff Bezos was blasted Saturday for cheering on his latest group of space tourists while making no mention of the deaths of at least two workers in an Amazon warehouse hit by a tornado Friday. The Amazon founder greeted former NFL star Michael Strahan and the other five members of the latest crew of his New Shepard rocket after the 10-minute flight landed in West Texas. “Welcome back, guys,” he said, as he opened the capsule door after their return.

Prior to the flight, he posted a photo on Instagram of himself with the space flight crew and the comment, “Happy crew this morning in the training center” — but made no mention on the social media site of the tragedy at the Amazon warehouse in Illinois. “You should worry about the tornado situation more,” one woman commented.

The billionaire celebrated his space success in the midst of the tragedy unfolding in Edwardsville, Illinois, where search and rescue operations continued at an Amazon warehouse that saw part of its roof ripped off and a sizable wall collapse late Friday. While some 30 workers managed to escape, it was unclear how many might still be trapped in the football-field sized rubble. (12/11)

One Private Space Station Effort Ends - Bigelow's BEAM Inflatable Module Transferred to NASA (Source: @toOast)
In December 2021, Bigelow Space One LLC transferred title and ownership of the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) to NASA's Johnson Space Center. BEAM is an experimental expandable space station module developed by Bigelow Aerospace, under contract to NASA, for testing as a temporary module on the ISS from 2016 to at least 2020. It arrived at the ISS on 10 April 2016, was berthed to the station, and was expanded and pressurized on 28 May 2016.

On 10 December NASA/JSC issued a sole-source solicitation for engineering support services for BEAM metallics/structures to ensure continued usage of the BEAM on the ISS.  This service includes on-call support in the event of anomalies and/or issue resolution impacting the BEAM and/or ISS interfaces to the BEAM. NASA/JSC intends to contract with ATA Engineering, Inc. starting as early as the first quarter or the second quarter of FY 2022 to support BEAM on-orbit operations. (12/12)