Bob Bigelow (who is not in attendance at this Personal Spaceflight Symposium) is apparently offering three quarters of a billion dollars for a launch contract:

The contract or purchase agreement would be worth $760 million in total for eight launches. To show that Bigelow Aerospace is serious, it will deposit $100 million in an escrow bank account up front if the plan goes forward.

The potential offer tops the $500 million NASA has budgeted for its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) programme, which is part of the agency’s own effort to spur development of commercial orbital crew launch capabilities.

Sounds like he’s finally starting to get serious about solving the launch problem.

[Update a few minutes later]

I find the timing of this announcement interesting. I doubt that it’s a coincidence that he decided to do it the same week that NASA issued an announcement for a COTS recompetition.

If one believes that one of the reasons that RpK had trouble closing their financing was because people didn’t believe that the NASA market could be counted upon, this provides a useful secondary (or even primary) market to help make the business case. Perhaps it was his intention to help the COTS competitors get their financing lined up.