Beam revives a concept that NASA developed more than a decade ago for an inflatable four-story crew quarters on the space station. Congress halted the work as the station’s construction costs grew sharply.

Mr. Bigelow, who made a fortune in construction and hotels, licensed the technology from NASA and set up his factory here in North Las Vegas, investing more than $250 million of his own money. The company has already launched two unmanned prototypes into orbit, showing that they can remain inflated for years.

If Beam is successful, NASA will probably incorporate the technology into any manned mission to an asteroid or elsewhere in the solar system, or to build a base on the Moon or Mars. Inflatables could also overturn notions of what a spacecraft ought to look like: Instead of the sleek, shiny machines imagined in science fiction, the practical ones of the future may be blobby, soft-sided contraptions.

Mr. Bigelow holds space ambitions of his own. His company is building two much larger inflatable modules, each with 11,600 cubic feet of space, to launch as the world’s first private space station, docked together as station Alpha. The plan is to lease space on Alpha to countries that want to set up low-cost space programs and companies that want to conduct zero-gravity research. Tourists might be invited, too.

At the news conference, Mr. Bigelow announced prices for travelers to his space station: $26.25 million for a 60-day stay, including the ride to orbit atop a Falcon 9 rocket built by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX. If the traveler wished to book the rocket ride in a more expensive capsule under development by Boeing, the cost would be about $10 million more.

Mr. Bigelow said the pieces of his private space station would be ready for business as soon as other companies were able to provide the rocket transportation for the people going up and down. The Beam module is a variation of earlier designs, allowing Bigelow to set a fixed price for NASA. With most of its development programs, NASA pays the contractor for time and effort — and overruns. With the fixed-price contract, if Bigelow runs into obstacles, the company, not NASA, will absorb the additional costs.