signed a US$17.8 million contract with Bigelow to develop the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), then projected to fly in 2015. The module was berthed to the International Space Station on 16 April 2016, and was inflated on 28 May 2016. it remains at the station. Since early on, Bigelow has been intent on "pursuing markets for a variety of users including biotech and pharmaceutical companies and university research, entertainment applications and government military and civil users". The business model includes "'leasing out' small space stations or habitats made of one or more [B330] inflatable modules to different research communities or corporations". Despite these broad plans for space commercialization, the space tourism destination and space hotel monikers were frequently used by many media outlets following the 2006/2007 launches of Genesis I and Genesis II. Robert Bigelow has been explicit that he is aiming to do business in space in a new way, with "low cost and rapid turnaround, contrary to traditional NASA ISS and Space Shuttle operations and bureaucracy". In October 2010, Bigelow announced that it had agreements with six sovereign nations to utilize on-orbit facilities of the commercial space station: UK Astronomy Technology Centre (United Kingdom), Netherlands Space Office (Netherlands), Defence South Australia (Australia), Singapore Government Technology Development Agency (Singapore), Japan Manned Space Systems Corporation, chairman is a previous director of JAXA (Japan) and Swedish National Space Board (Sweden). In February 2011, Dubai of the United Arab Emirates became the seventh nation to have signed on. In 2011, Bigelow employed an in-house team of model makers, coming from the film and architecture industries, to make detailed models of their space habitats and space stations. Scale models were sent to "potential customers, including governments and corporations, as a reminder of the possibilities". Reportedly due to delays in launch capability to transport humans to low Earth orbit, Bigelow dramatically reduced staff in late September 2011, because crew transportation would not become available until "years after the first B330 could be ready", laying off 40 of their 90 employees. In late March 2012 Bigelow began increasing staff levels once again. By April 2013, Bigelow was saying that they would have B330 modules ready to go to space by the time that commercial passenger spacecraft were available to ferry their customers to the dual–BA330 Alpha space station – expected in 2017 – and that Bigelow was ready to enter into contracts with customers.