An article in this week’s issue of The Economist provides an overview of the nascent space tourism industry, based in large part on events at last week’s ISDC. This is a pretty good overview of the state of the industry, examining the major companies and some of the (largely technical) issues associated with them, such as choice of propellant, staging, and flight mode. Advocates of vertical takeoff/vertical landing vehicles might argue with the article’s assessment that VTVL is “about the most difficult way” to do suborbital flights (in addition to Blue Origin and Armadillo Aerospace, a couple of other companies are pursuing this “weird” approach, including Masten Space Systems and TGV Rockets.) The article also manages to conflate the Rocket Racing League and the X Prize Cup near the end, but otherwise this is a decent introduction to the topic.
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By now you’ve probably heard that NASA has shortlisted a half-dozen companies (that we know about, at least) for further consideration in its Commercial Orbital Transportation System (COTS) program for ISS resupply. According to MSNBC and other sources, the six companies that got the nod from NASA are Andrews Space, Rocketplane Kistler, SpaceDev, SPACEHAB, SpaceX, and t/Space. (SPACEHAB is the only one of the six to formally confirm the selection in a press release as of early this morning.) Final selections are expected some time this summer. What does this mean for commercial space tourism? A majority of the companies listed above have suggested, if not openly stated, that they plan to develop passenger vehicles to serve markets beyond ferrying crews to and from ISS. Both Rocketplane and SpaceX have stated that they plan to develop their manned vehicles regardless of COTS; getting a COTS contract would simply accelerate the process. T/Space has talked about the market for space tourists using its CXV vehicle in past conference presentations, while SpaceDev is also looking beyond just ferrying astronauts. What’s less clear is what orbital tourism plans, if any, Andrews and SPACEHAB have: SPACEHAB makes no mention of passenger services in its press release while Andrews remains tight-lipped about its plans. Proposals for a European spaceport for Virgin Galactic in northern Sweden have been featured by the Invest in Sweden Agency (ISA), a government agency that works to attract foreign investment in the country. The short article notes that Virgin Galactic in particular is interested in establishing a spaceport at Kiruna, which already hosts sounding rocket launches. However, despite the official imprimatur, the ISA article doesn’t indicate any kind of government approval or endorsement of the project: the article appears to be cribbed from (and cites) an article in a British newspaper previously discussed here. Masten Space Systems has received some attention from a somewhat unexpected source: Radio Netherlands. An article on RN’s web site provides an overview of the company and its vehicle plans, which include the ability to carry passengers by the end of the decade:
The Bakersfield Californian [free registration required] reports today that the appropriations committee of the California Senate tabled a bill that would provide Mojave Airport with an $11-million loan that would be used to provide spaceport facilities there. It appears that the committee didn’t single out the bill: according to the article the legislation was tabled “along with nearly all other bills that have significant price tags.” The committee will reconsider the bill next month when they have a better handle on the overall budget. In the meantime, spaceport supporters are planning to ask Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to put the money into a revised budget proposal he will send to the legislature later in the month. [Cross-posted from Space Politics] The good news: more and more people are reading this blog. The bad news: more and more spambots are attacking this blog. So, for the time being, I have turned on comment moderation to prevent posts from being overwhelmed with spam postings. Thus, if you post a comment, there may be some time (on the order of hours) before I will be able to approve and publish it. In the meantime, I’ll be looking for other solutions to deal with the comment spam that don’t require such moderation. The Russian newspaper Kommersant reported Monday that Anousheh Ansari might fly to the ISS before Charles Simonyi, the ex-Microsoft developer who signed a contract with Space Adventures last month. According to a Roskosmos official cited in the article, Simonyi’s plans to fly in spring 2007 may change because of “some recent developments, related to his business.” Ansari officially signed a contract last week as the backup to this fall’s flight of Daisuke “Dice-K” Enomoto, with the implication that she would get a seat on a later mission to the ISS. Ansari is also funding the development of a suborbital vehicle, the Explorer, being built in Russia; the article said that in addition to sites in the UAE and Singapore, the Explorer will also fly from an unidentified “airdrome” in the US. That’s the topic I address in an article in The Space Review about Burt Rutan’s luncheon speech Thursday at ISDC. As previously noted here, Rutan leveled criticism at everyone from NASA to the FAA to competing spaceflight companies during his talk. There’s been some criticism of his remarks, both in discussions at the conference and in the blogosphere, primarily arguing that his comments are not that constructive. That’s true, although if you examine some of his comments there is a grain of truth: many other people have criticized the current implementation of the Vision for Space Exploration because it looks like a copy of Apollo. Moreover, it is a little odd that, nearly two years after SpaceShipOne first flew to space, there are no other suborbital vehicles in service—not exactly what supporters of the X Prize might have originally envisioned. His comments aren’t likely to have much long-term impact (despite his claim that he plans to flight to change the regulatory structure for suborbital vehicles to more closely resemble aviation), although it has provided some entertainment value, if nothing else. Spacewalks have developed a reputation as events to be avoided if at all possible, being perceived as difficult, time-consuming, and dangerous. Yet, ask almost any astronaut who has performed one, and they’ll describe the wonder of floating in space, free from the confines of the space shuttle or space station. In an article in this week’s issue of The Space Review, Richard Speck argues that a lot of those perceived drawbacks to spacewalks are either myths, or can be easily circumvented (such as using reduced-pressure air, rather than pure oxygen, in suits.) Spacewalking by tourists on orbital missions will be analogous to scuba diving by people visiting Caribbean beach resorts—and maybe safer, too. In an ISDC presentation Saturday afternoon, Ryan Wilson of the X Prize Foundation described some innovative marketing efforts the organization is planning to promote this October’s X Prize Cup in New Mexico. In the next few weeks, he said, they play to start releasing a series of 30-40 “viral videos”: clips one to two minutes long promoting the event and some of the companies that plan to participate in it. The videos will be uploaded to sites like Google Video and YouTube, where the X Prize people hope people will see them and tell their friends about them, encouraging them to either attend the event or watching the webcast. On that last point, Wilson said that the foundation’s goal is to make the X Prize Cup the “top live streaming event of 2006″. The SpaceShipOne X Prize flights in 2004, he noted, attracted 2.7 million viewers, making it one of the largest online video audiences in history. At the show itself, he said that they’re planning on 20,000 people attending, up from the roughly 12,000 who went to the 2005 event. |
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