NewSpace Journal » Space Adventures

Space Adventures returns to suborbital spaceflight

Jeff Foust — Fri, 28 May 2010 12:43:21 +0000

Eric Anderson (left) and John Carmack talk about their suborbital partnership at ISDC on Thursday.

As expected, Space Adventures announced Thursday at the International Space Development Conference, (ISDC) in Chicago its partnership with Armadillo Aerospace to provide suborbital space tourism flights. Armadillo will develop a vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) suborbital vehicle carrying people to at least 100 kilometers altitude, with Space Adventures selling the seats, starting with its existing customer list of about 200 people, including several former astronauts.

The presentation, featuring Space Adventures president and CEO Eric Anderson and Armadillo Aerospace founder John Carmack, offered few technical or schedule details about their plans. There is no finalized vehicle design yet: a video shown in the presentation showed a number of differenent Armadillo concepts, from a cone sitting atop four propellant tanks with a central engine to the “fishbowl” concept Armadillo showed off in 2008 for the short-lived suborbital joint venture between Armadillo and the Rocket Racing League. Carmack also offered no timetable for the beginning of tourist flights, although he did note the company hoped to be flying unmanned scientific payloads to altitudes of approximately 100,000 feet (30 kilometers) in the next year, and to 100 kilometers altitude in the following year.

Instead, the presentation was examining in more general terms the companies’ plans, including why Space Adventures, who has made a name for itself for nearly a decade by arranging flights to the International Space Station, would get into the suborbital spaceflight business. Anderson noted that when Space Adventures was founded in the late 1990s, its focus was on suborbital spaceflight at a time when many vehicle developers were saying “we’re only two years away,” he recalled. “We didn’t have any idea at the time that we would be fortunate enough to be able to launch private citizens to orbit before suborbital flights,” he continued. Later, Space Adventures considered working with a Russian company to develop a suborbital vehicle called Explorer, which he said they abandoned because “frankly, it got too expensive.” As Armadillo made progress with their vehicles, “I was just so impressed” with their efforts he was convinced they were the company that could really reduce the cost of space access.

While neither Armadillo nor Carmack discussed the cost of the project, they did confirm that Space Adventures was providing Armadillo with funding to support it, at least in part. Alluding to past partnership announcements that failed to pan out, Carmack said, “One of my new rules on this is that I’m not going to get up and talk about something unless a check has cleared.” And since Carmack was getting up and talking about this, he confirmed, “Space Adventures has actually paid Armadillo Aerospace to begin developing a new suborbital vehicle.” Carmack said later that under their agreement, Space Adventures will pay Armadillo unspecified amounts upon achiveing certain milestones in the vehicle development effort. “The amount of money that has changed hands here is not trivial, but it’s not enough to fund the vehicles,” he said. “It isn’t enough money to pay for these vehicles, it’s enough money to make me think about not pursuing other contracts.” He added that he expected to kick in more of his own money into the venture, but also looked to getting funding from NASA’s Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research (CRuSR) program for flying scientific payloads.

The timelines that they did reveal suggest that Space Adventures and Armadillo will not be the first to market for commercial suborbital space tourism, given the progress being made by companies like Virgin Galactic and XCOR Aerospace. Carmack addressed this as well, in the process perhaps raising the hackles of some of his competitors in the audience at the ISDC. “It’s a fool who doesn’t think he has any competition,” Carmack said. On Virgin, he said, “I think they have explicitly not chosen the most cost effective solution on this. I don’t think they will be able to compete on price, eventually, but some people will prefer their experience.”

Carmack was critical of XCOR from a funding standpoint. “I believe that, if fully funded, they could build a vehicle that could fly, that could service passengers,” he said. “I do not believe they are fully funded.” He then issued something of a warning to other companies, after earlier noting that Armadillo planned to accelerate its development plans and hire more people. “I think one of the best things about having the other companies in the industry is that it’s developed some very skilled and talened people, and we’re probably going to steal some of them.”

Carmack also said he felt Armadillo’s VTVL vehicle was a superior approach to a winged vehicled like SpaceShipTwo or Lynx. A ballistic reentry, he said, is better than a winged reentry, noting one fatality from the X-15 program. Launching a winged vehicle, he added, is “a lot harder than making a ballistic vehicle fly right up.” Thus, for greatly reducing the cost of suborbital spaceflight, “the powered [vertical] landing has significant benefits.” After the presentation I talked briefly with XCOR COO Andrew Nelson, who said, “People will want a lot of different experiences. We believe that most people will want something involving wings.”

ISDC has a strong NewSpace flavor this year

Jeff Foust — Thu, 27 May 2010 10:38:27 +0000

I’m at the airport waiting to catch a flight to Chicago for this year’s International Space Development Conference, the annual conference of the National Space Society. (I was already supposed to be there, but Untied, er, United, canceled my flight last night.) This year’s conference has a particular emphasis on NewSpace, more so than conventional space companies. Some highlights:

On Thursday morning Eric Anderson, president and CEO of Space Adventures, will announce the company’s “New Venture”, according to the title of his talk. This is likely to be the exclusive marketing agreement with Armadillo Aerospace the company announced last month; at the time the company said they would announce additional details at ISDC. We’ll hopefully learn more about the deal and why Space Adventures, which had de-emphasized suborbital space tourism in recent years in favor of orbital spaceflight, is jumping back into this market.

Virgin Galactic will be represented by its new CEO, George Whitesides, who returned to the company earlier this month after roughly 18 months at NASA in several roles, including chief of staff to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. With Virgin and Scaled continuing their captive carry flights of WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo, hopefully we’ll get some updated details about their plans for upcoming tests and introduction of commercial service. Whitesides is scheduled to speak late Saturday afternoon.

On Friday morning there will be updates about the progress of XCOR Aerospace and Bigelow Aerospace by XCOR CEO Jeff Greason and Bigelow DC Operations Director Mike Gold, respectively. XCOR is working on its Lynx suborbital vehicle, so we may learn more details about the progress they’re making on their prototype. Bigelow, as Aviation Week reported earlier this month, is ramping up its marketing efforts for its inflatable orbital habitats. Bigelow will also benefit from the new interest in commercial crew transportation as part of the NASA fiscal year 2011 budget proposal. On Friday afternoon Masten Space Systems president and CEO Dave Masten will talk about winning $1.15 million in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge last year, and presumably their ongoing efforts as well.

There are also several other talks from representatives of the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation, Spaceport America, and several other NewSpace companies, including a panel Saturday morning on “The ‘NewSpace’ Paradigm”. So the next few days should offer a good opportunity to see where much of the NewSpace industry stands as of 2010 and what companies think their prospects are.

Brief notes: Soyuz, Virgin, and… iCarly?

Jeff Foust — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:07:03 +0000

The news media has something of a case of amnesia when it comes to space tourism in Russia: they regularly, breathlessly report comments that Russia will stop flying space tourists on Soyuz flights to the ISS. Every few months, it seems, a Russian official makes comments to that regard, dutifully reported by the wire services and others. There’s a good reason why they’re not: the seats are all needed for ferrying crews to and from the ISS, particularly with the retirement of the shuttle. Also recall that Russia had made similar statements in the past only to have seats become available, as was the case with last year’s flight of Guy Laliberté. When that flight opportunity was first announced last year, Space Adventures’ Eric Anderson said he felt there still might be occasional flight opportunities even after the station goes to a six-person crew.

Virgin Galactic provided an update on their plans at a conference in Dubai this week, although the information they provided appears to be largely similar to what the company reported at a suborbital research conference in Boulder last month. Will Whitehorn did say that he didn’t believe the company didn’t need additional investment to complete development of SpaceShipTwo after Abu Dhabi’s Aabar Group invested $280 million into the company last year. Although Aabar has exclusive regional rights to SS2, Whitehorn said there were no plans for SS2 flights to take place there for the foreseeable future.

If you (or, rather, your kids) watch the Nickelodeon show “iCarly”, you might be interested in Friday’s episode, based on this description: “A quirky billionaire asks Carly and her friends to put on the first live Web show from outer space, so they undergo tests for space travel.” A billionaire who wants to send some kids into orbit to do a webcast is probably a little more than just “quirky”.

Who is Laliberté’s backup?

Jeff Foust — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:04:13 +0000

One issue not raised with last week’s announcement of Guy Laliberté as the next commercial ISS visitor is who his backup would be should he be unable to fly. Yesterday Space Adventures CEO Eric Anderson hinted that an announcement was forthcoming, saying only that the person was “a very talented and special lady”. However, the Russian news service Interfax beat him to it, reporting Thursday that Barbara Barrett would back up Laliberté and that both had started training.

So who is Barbara Barrett? Her Wikipedia bio describes her as an “International business and aviation attorney, Businesswoman, Diplomat, [and] Rancher.” Among other accomplishments, she has climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and became the first civilian woman to land an F/A-18 on an aircraft carrier (although there is some debate in the talk page associated with the Wikipedia entry about whether she actually landed the plane or was just along for the ride.) She served briefly as US ambassador to Finland last year and has been on a number of boards, including the Aerospace Corporation. She is also married to Craig Barrett, the retired CEO and chairman of Intel.

Notes on the Laliberté announcement

Jeff Foust — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 10:38:23 +0000

As expected yesterday, Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté announced his plans to fly to the ISS at the end of September on the next Soyuz flight to the station. Laliberté is calling his flight the “Poetic Social Mission” in space “to raise humanity’s awareness of water-related issues” for his One Drop Foundation. “Information about our world’s water-related issues will be conveyed using a singular poetic approach,” according to the site, including a poem he is writing with a Quebec poet with other forms of “artistic performance” as well.

The press conference itself was an odd affair, split between Moscow, where Laliberté was, and Montreal, where Canadian Space Agency president Steve MacLean spoke. (CSA is providing advice to Laliberté, but no other overt support.) This meant that Russian, English, and French were all spoken at the press conference, with Laliberté answering questions in the latter two languages. Oddly, while the press conference provided Russian-English (and, presumably, Russian-French) translations, there were no English-French translations, especially during the Q&A. (Laliberté read his opening statement in French first, then English.) Anglophone viewers were thus shut out of the information he provided in his responses in French, and vice versa.

Laliberté did say that he had been in Star City since May 10 for medical tests, which he has passed. Prior to getting started he exchanged emails with the two previous commercial visitors to the ISS, Charles Simonyi and Richard Garriott, getting guidance on the experience and other issues, including life in Star City. As for the price of the trip, Laliberté would not disclose a figure, citing confidentiality agreements, but said it was “pretty similar” to recent trips, which have been estimated to cost $35 million.

Cirque de l’Espace?

Jeff Foust — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:13:48 +0000

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) made an unusual announcement Monday: it would hold a press conference Thursday morning about the first Canadian space tourist, who would perform “the first philanthropic mission to the International Space Station”. The identity of that person, and the nature of that mission, were not immediately disclosed.

We do now, though, have a better idea of at least who will be going. NASA Watch first reported Tuesday morning that the tourist is Guy Laliberté, the founder of Cirque du Soleil. With a net worth as high as $2.5 billion, he certain has the means to pay for such a trip; moreover, this year is the 25th anniversary of the founding of Cirque. The Canadian Press also confirmed it was Laliberté, citing “a source close to the mission”.

Whoever the mystery Canadian customer is, he’ll be flying to the ISS on the Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft, scheduled for launch in late September on a regular taxi mission to the ISS. Space Adventures announced in April that a seat on that mission might be available since a Kazakh cosmonaut scheduled to fly had apparently been removed by the Russian space agency. At an April press telecon Eric Anderson didn’t indicate who it would be or how long they would have to fill the seat. Also unclear now is how much time, if any, Laliberté has spent training in Russia already.

Another area of interest is what the CSA’s role is in this mission. They are participating in the press conference, with CSA president Steve Maclean scheduled to speak. Canada’s standing on the ISS is higher now than ever, with Canadian astronaut Bob Thirsk already on the station for a long-duration mission and another Canadian, Julie Payette, scheduled to visit the station later this month on the STS-127 shuttle mission.

New developments on that fall ISS opportunity

Jeff Foust — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 11:35:47 +0000

Last week Space Adventures announced that they believed that there was a chance a seat would open up on a September Soyuz flight to the ISS that may allow them to fly another tourist to the station. And indeed that seat, which was to be occupied by a Kazakh cosmonaut, does appear to be open. According to the Xinhua news agency, Kazakhstan has “indefinitely postponed” plans to send a cosmonaut to the station, citing a lack of funding.

But who will fill that seat? Last Friday Space Adventures’s Eric Anderson said the seat could be filled by either one of their customers or a Russian professional cosmonaut. A headline on the Interfax news service Thursday, though, stated: “Russian or Japanese astronauts may replace Kazakh in September flight toISS” (the text of the article, unfortunately, was not available). Unless the Japanese astronaut is a Space Adventures customer, it would seem the company may be shut out of this flight opportunity. However, Roskosmos head Anatoly Perminov did say in another Interfax article earlier this week that future tourist flight opportunities would depend on NASA’s decision on the shuttle program, with the apparent implication that a shuttle life extension might free up some seats on Soyuz flights for commercial passengers.

First Chilean astronaut? We’ll see

Jeff Foust — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:30:39 +0000

Software developer Symantec announced Wednesday the winner of its contest to send someone into space: Jorge Patricio León López, who was selected from 30 finalists after participating in a weightless aircraft flight by Zero-G. As the press release claims, “In addition to being one of the first to participate in a commercial space travel flight, León could be the first Chilean in space as no Chilean has participated in a space flight at this time.”

But, as you might expect, there’s a catch. The suborbital flight that León won is provided by Space Adventures, which (as noted here a few months ago), isn’t emphasizing the suborbital side of its business, so it’s not at all clear when León might fly, and how. That would, though, follow a trend of Chilean efforts get one of its citizens in space: for several years Klaus Von Storch waited for everything to come together for a slot on a Soyuz mission to the ISS; that article was written in 2006 and, three years later, he still is grounded. Hopefully, when either Von Storch or León flies, they don’t end up like this fellow.

Space Adventures announcement today

Jeff Foust — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:01:49 +0000

Space Adventures sent out an announcement late Thursday that they will be holding a teleconference for media Friday at 1 pm EDT to “discuss [the] future of space tourism, [and] available seats for upcoming orbital flights”. From the announcement:

Join Eric Anderson, co-founder, president and CEO of Space Adventures, to discuss the future of space tourism. As Dr. Charles Simonyi prepares for his return to Earth from the International Space Station amid reports he is the “last space tourist,” Eric Anderson will discuss Space Adventures’ upcoming missions – including a new and exciting development.

I am hoping my travel plans will allow me to call in for this, and if so, will report here on what that “new and exciting development” turns out to be.

Paul Allen, future space tourist?

Jeff Foust — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:19:23 +0000

Compared to the good ol’ days (2001), a space tourist flying to the ISS these days is a little, well, ho-hum. Back in 2001 there was all the drama associated with whether NASA would allow Dennis Tito to fly to the station on a Soyuz, and if so, what sort of reception he would get when he got there. Today, while tourist visits to the ISS are far from routine, there’s enough of a precedent that the flight has to be particularly special to capture much attention—and in this case, with Charles Simonyi being the first tourist to make a return trip, it registers only modestly on the media’s radar.

The flight has also gotten some attention because Simonyi might be the “last” space tourist, at least for some time. Space Adventures’ Eric Anderson tells SPACE.com that there’s a slim chance of some flight opportunities in 2010 or 2011, but the company appears to be basing its future plans on a dedicated flight in 2011 or 2012.

Assuming there are future flight opportunities, either next year or in a few years, one person who appears interested—and has more than enough money to pay for the trip—is Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The AP reports that Allen, who was at Baikonur to watch Thursday’s launch, said he was interested in following Simonyi into orbit at some point. “It’s a few years off,” he told the AP.