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Space Adventures announced Tuesday morning that it will acquire Space Launch Corporation, a company that was at one point developing a low-cost responsive launch system for DARPA. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed; Space Launch will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Space Adventures. Space Launch, founded in 1999, is best known as the company that won the Phase 2 contract for the Responsive Access Small Cargo Affordable Launch (RASCAL) program run by DARPA. RASCAL would have been a two-stage launch system with a reusable supersonic aircraft as the first stage (implementing an engine technology known as MIPCC) and an expendable second stage, for launching small satellites into low Earth orbit. DARPA elected not to proceed with RASCAL in early 2005 and the company has been keeping a low profile since.
Space Adventures said in its release that its acquisition of Space Launch Corp. gives it “a technology development capability and access to significant space system intellectual property that will be leveraged to bring to market future space tourism vehicles in the United States.” While Space Adventures CEO Eric Anderson said that his company “will remain focused on the marketing of spaceflights as a space travel company”, it seems that the company is starting to blur the line between a pure space tourism travel agency and a developer/operator of space tourism vehicles.
As you may have already heard, the trustees of the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Prize Trust awarded the first Heinlein Prize to Peter Diamandis last week. The prize, designed to reward practical contributions to space commercialization, went to Diamandis for his role in establishing the X Prize, among other space-related accomplishments. (Pat Bahn identified a number of potential prize candidates in an article in The Space Review in February; in a followup a month later he noted that since the prize rules limited qualifying contributions to after the creation of the prize in 2003, the X Prize was perhaps the only event that qualified.)
The prize carries with it a purse of $500,000, but it’s not the only thing Diamandis will receive when he accepts the award on July 7: according to the X Prize Foundation press release, he’ll also get “a gold Heinlein Medallion, the Lady Vivamus Sword (as described in Heinlein’s book Glory Road) and a Laureate’s Diploma.” A gold medal is not surprising, nor is a “Laureate’s Diploma” (assuming that it’s just a certificate of some kind), but a sword? A replica of the sword is available for sale (for just $2,500!) complete with the inscription described in the novel: “Dum vivimus, vivamus” (while we live, let us live”). Just try getting it through airport security on the flight home, though…
Wednesday night’s CBS News broadcast included a two-minute, 45-second segment on plans to develop a commercial spaceport in New Mexico. The report was even-handed, and even optimistic about the prospects for space tourism at the spaceport, which today is still just empty land save for a small launch pad built for UP Aerospace’s sounding rockets. The one funny thing is about how the closest town, Truth or Consequences (note the SpaceShipOne illustration in the header image on the city’s web site) is reacting to the spaceport:
“We’re amazed at the amount of traffic that has picked up,” [police chief Russell Peterson] says. “We’re lookin’ at puttin’ in two or three more stop lights, and we haven’t developed anything yet.”
Now, why would traffic be picking up that much in a town with currently only a single stoplight? Like the report says, there’s nothing there yet; even construction work on spaceport facilities has yet to begin. And how does the town know that the increased traffic is related to the planned spaceport?
While many astronauts have spoken favorably of space tourism, a couple of current and former astronauts recently were more skeptical. In a speech this week in Pensacola, Florida, former astronaut Kathryn Sullivan turned “sarcastic”, noting the costs of orbital spaceflight:
When it came to space tourism, Sullivan’s tone turned sarcastic.
It costs $10,000 for each pound lifted into space, which would equate to $60,000 to take a gallon of water, let alone a tourist, she said.
“She doesn’t beat around the bush,” said Ken Ford, chief executive officer of the [Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition].
It’s true that launch costs are high today, but she ignores the fact that five people have either flown in space, or have signed up to do so, at a cost of about $20 million each, even at today’s prices. If companies like SpaceX carry through on their promises to lower launch costs to something like $1,000 per pound, it will only increase the size of the market.
NasaSpaceFlight.com reports that astronaut Scott Kelly took part in an online chat organized by the British tabloid The Sun. As you might expect from such a paper, the topic of aliens came up, but so did space tourism:
Interestingly, Kelly doesn’t see the attraction in space tourism, especially the future plans to set up permanent hotels in space and on the moon.
‘A few Russians have spent more than a year in space. As far as people spending their whole lives there, it may happen some day, but I would wonder why.
‘Space is a pretty hostile environment, even within the confines of a shuttle. You have to deal with effects of radiation and you have to deal with the effects of weightlessness.
‘I know people are reserving seats with Virgin Galactic, but they are sub-orbital flights that only last a few minutes.
Either Kelly or the reporter seems to have conflated tourism (temporary trips to space) with settlement (permanent migration to space). A lot of people like to visit places, but don’t necessarily want to live there. (Recall the saying, “It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to stay there”?) And there is a niche of people who, for a variety of reasons, would not mind settling down in orbit, the Moon, or beyond.
So desperate, it seems, that we’ve turned to the movies for insight? In a LiveScience.com blog post, SPACE.com’s Tariq Malik notes that a new ad for the upcoming summer blockbuster Superman Returns features a spacecraft, presumably the Virgin Galactic spacecraft piloted by Richard Branson in his cameo appearance in the film. “But is it SpaceShipTwo or just another Hollywood spaceship with Branson at the wheel?” Malik asks. Based on the screen grabs from the ad, the answer would be no. Previous reports have all suggested that SS2 will be a scaled-up version of SS1, but the spacecraft in the movie looks more like a scaled-down cousin of the shuttle (or an X-38-like derivative): note in particular the shuttle-like cluster of engines in the back. This vehicle in particular would not be able to perform the “carefree” reentry mode by raising its wings and tail section, like SS1; Burt Rutan has been adamant that this is one of the breakthroughs that made SpaceShipOne possible. The carrier aircraft also looks like a modified jumbo jet than a version of White Knight.
I have to admit that, when I saw the trailer for the movie in a theater a week ago, I wondered for an instant it that might be the Virgin Galactic vehicle said to appear in the movie. The next instant, I wondered if Richard Branson would find a way to make it into the trailer (no, he didn’t, at least in that one.) Then the scene shifted and Kate Bosworth showed up on the screen, and I forgot all about spaceships and Branson.
MSNBC’s Cosmic Log cites a report by the Interfax-Military News Agency (not freely available online) with some news about Explorer, the suborbital space tourism vehicle under development in Russia for Space Adventures. According to the report, the vehicle, known is Russia as the AKS-55-5, will be ready to begin test flights “as early as 2009″. That could make it difficult for Space Adventures to achieve its plan, announced in February, “to provide [the] first suborbital spaceflight tourism vehicles.” Rocketplane’s XP vehicle is scheduled to begin test flights by next year, while SpaceShipTwo should be flying by then, too. It’s not clear if there has been some sort of delay in Explorer’s development, the Interfax report is inaccurate, or if Space Adventures got a little ahead of itself in its February announcement.
On the aptly-named Space Cynic blog, Shubber Ali complained on Sunday about an article in the Sydney Morning Herald that gave what he felt was an overly rosy view of the emerging space tourism industry. As he put it: “‘Oh, no,’ i thought to myself. The Kool-Aid has made it to Australia.”
While the article was originally only available in the print edition, it’s now available online. Reading through it does produce a few cringe-worthy moments: the reporter forgot about ISS tourist Greg Olsen, and lumps together some poorly-funded ventures like Reaction Engines with Virgin Galactic. Much of the article attempts to describe what a prospective Virgin Galactic tourist will experience. Interestingly, the article refers to Virgin’s vehicle as the “V.S.S. Enterprise”; that’s the name that was bandied about for the first SpaceShipTwo vehicle when the project was first announced in 2004, but hasn’t been used much, if at all, by the company recently.
The article concludes with the “five questions you’re dying to ask about space tourism.” Odds are you haven’t been dying to ask most of these, like this:
Q Is there any truth to the rumour that space flight could cause breast implants to explode?
A The MythBusters program tested the claim and declared it busted, but the only way to know for sure is to give Pamela Anderson a free ticket.
Oh, let’s not bring that up again, please…
One New Zealander is really looking forward to taking a suborbital flight on Virgin Galactic. How much? The New Zealand newspaper The Press reports that he recently changed his name to “Mark Rocket”. Seriously. (Mr. Rocket would not disclose his previous name.) He is apparently one of Virgin Galactic’s “Founders”, the elite group of 100 that will get the first rides on SpaceShipTwo. As part of his status, he attended the ISDC in Los Angeles earlier this month with a number of other Founders, and also got a look at the development of SS2 at Scaled Composites. “I guess I’m just a real space nut,” he admitted. You don’t say.
Rocketplane Kistler announced late last week that it has teamed up with Alenia Spazio North America to work on cargo containers that could be used on commercial ISS resupply missions. (The Rocketplane press release about the agreement is not on either the Rocketplane or Kistler Aerospace; free registration is required to read the article in The Oklahoman about the deal.) The agreement covers the development of pressurized cargo containers, and not passenger modules, that would be used for commercial ISS flights as part of the NASA COTS effort.
The state of Michigan isn’t pursuing a spaceport, unlike next-door neaighbor Wisconsin (which may or may not be serious about a spaceport), but an editorial Friday in the Bay City Times suggests that the state should take the idea seriously. Why? Jobs and money, of course: “Don’t just think out of the box in trying to save, rebuild or reshape the state’s economy. Think out of this world.” (The editorial cites an economic impact report for the New Mexico spaceport, which in the interests of full disclosure I should note was performed for the state by my employer.) The Times even has scouted out a location for the facility: “an enormous, old bomber base with humongous runways up in Oscoda”, on the shores of Lake Huron. Beyond this editorial, however, there’s no sign the state is considering the idea of a spaceport.
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Spaceport Michigan?
The state of Michigan isn’t pursuing a spaceport, unlike next-door neaighbor Wisconsin (which may or may not be serious about a spaceport), but an editorial Friday in the Bay City Times suggests that the state should take the idea seriously. Why? Jobs and money, of course: “Don’t just think out of the box in trying to save, rebuild or reshape the state’s economy. Think out of this world.” (The editorial cites an economic impact report for the New Mexico spaceport, which in the interests of full disclosure I should note was performed for the state by my employer.) The Times even has scouted out a location for the facility: “an enormous, old bomber base with humongous runways up in Oscoda”, on the shores of Lake Huron. Beyond this editorial, however, there’s no sign the state is considering the idea of a spaceport.