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No, it’s not what you think. During his luncheon speech yesterday at ISDC, former astronaut Rusty Schweickart made an interesting analogy about space tourism:
I realized that space tourism is a little bit like sex: it’s exciting, it’s a little bit dangerous, or risky, perhaps, and when it’s well done it’s tremendously satisfying. But there’s more to it than that because, at a deeper level, it’s also the basis for reproduction, which is the foundation of survival.
He went on to say that the long-term future of humanity is dependent on two things: getting humans into space, and protecting the Earth from asteroid impacts to enable that diaspora. His talk primarily focused on the latter, but he identified space tourism as a way of enabling the former. “It depends on the evolution of space tourism, which reflects the desire of everybody in this room, in one way or another, to get out into space.”
If you’re still focused on the sex part, though, Apogee Books is publishing a new book this summer titled Sex in Space by Laura Woodmansee which examines the myths and realities of the subject.
In his presentation about Rocketplane Kistler at the ISDC on Friday, company CEO George French suggested that the Oklahoma Spaceport would soon get its launch license. “Oklahoma is going to be getting their spaceport license very shortly, and it’s already been published in the federal record.” He said the license would be official in the next two weeks. “There’s going to be a big party in Oklahoma” when the license is announced, he said, “and I’m told you’re all invited.” A check of the Federal Register didn’t turn up any announcement of a spaceport license, although the May 5th edition did contain a “Finding of No Significant Impact” declaration regarding the environmental assessment of the proposed spaceport, a key milestone towards getting the spaceport license. An announcement in the next couple of weeks suggests that it may come at the next meeting of the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC), which will take place at FAA Headquarters on May 24. [Disclosure: my employer performs work for FAA/AST, but is not involved in the spaceport licensing process.]
Although Richard Branson wasn’t present at the ORBIT Awards dinner Thursday night, he did give an acceptance speech by video at the event. He revealed the early origins of the name “Virgin Galactic”: “Back in 1992, I registered the name “Virgin Galactic Airways”. I registered it because I loved the sound of the name, but also I thought it would be a way of spurring everybody at Virgin to go out and try and find a reusable space vehicle that would be possible for tourists to use one day.”
Will Whitehorn of Virgin Galactic, who picked up the award for Branson, offered a slightly different recollection of the name. Whitehorn said his boss is “slightly dyslexic” and sometimes gets dates mixed up; Virgin Galactic was actually founded in 1999, not 1992. The inspiration, he said, came while Branson, Steve Fossett, and Per Lindstrand were in Morocco in late 1998 for their launch a balloon on a round-the-world flight. Buzz Aldrin was there to see the balloon launch, and they ended up in a bar talking while waiting for weather conditions to improve. The conversation, Whitehorn recounted, came around to a discussion about why NASA always launched rockets from the ground, at which time Aldrin talked about early air-launch concepts. “You know, there’s got to be a better way to do this, and we better find it,” Whitehorn recalled Branson as saying to him at the time. “We better register the company name now, in case someone else tries to use the Virgin name for space tourists.”
That timing makes some sense, since Virgin Galactic first popped up on people’s radars in the industry in the spring of 1999, when there were reports that this new Virgin Galactic venture was in negotiations with Rotary Rocket Company, something that Whitehorn confirmed in a speech at last year’s ISDC.
On Friday the Russian news service RIA Novosti reported that Anousheh Ansari had officially been signed up as the backup to Daisuke “Dice-K” Enomoto for this fall’s Soyuz ISS flight. The news wasn’t that surprising, since she had previously been reported to be in training in Russia to serve that role, possibly as a prelude to flying herself.
So could she account for that “extra” $20 million not otherwise accounted for in the company’s press release last week marking the fifth anniversary of Dennis Tito’s flight to the ISS? It turns out that, by coincidence, there was a plenary session about Space Adventures Friday morning at the ISDC, with company president Eric Anderson and recent ISS tourist Greg Olsen among those speaking. Before the session I talked with another company official, who declined to offer any confirmation about Ansari’s status and whether she represented that extra $20 million. In a brief conversation after his speech, Anderson didn’t offer any confirmations, either, although he did note that, hypothetically, “I wouldn’t go through that training if I wasn’t going to fly myself.” When asked about the extra $20 million, he first seemed to indicate that it was actually deposits for suborbital flights, but then later said, “so that makes it $140 million.” The press release itself states that the $120 million the company has received in revenues has been for orbital spaceflights. (See Alan Boyle’s Cosmic Log entry on the same and related subjects.)
During his speech, Anderson didn’t mention Ansari by name as a potential or future customer, but did say that besides Enomoto and Charles Simonyi, there are “a few others that we haven’t announced yet. There are a lot of people who are in the queue and who will be experiencing the space experience of a lifetime in the next few years.”
One of the problems tourists visiting the ISS face today is that there is very little cargo capacity available in the Soyuz spacecraft used to ferry people to and from the station. To help potentially alleviate that problem, Constellation Services International (CSI) announced Thursday that it has signed an agreement with Space Adventures to allow future tourists to send more cargo to the ISS. CSI, which submitted a NASA COTS proposal earlier this year for its “LEO Express” cargo resupply system, would carry additional items, such as “significant research experiment materials, multi-media hardware and other supplies”, for future tourists to the ISS in advance of their stay. CSI anticipates that the LEO Express service would be ready as early as 2008, pending funding.
At ISDC Thursday night the Space Tourism Society, in conjunction with the NSS, gave out the 2006 ORBIT awards for those people and organizations who have done the most to support the space tourism industry. The official list of awardees actually excludes one person: Dennis Tito was a surprise winner of his new eponymous award, which went to orbital space tourists Greg Olsen (in attendance) and Mark Shuttleworth (not in attendance.) Still, the list of awardees encompasses a large fraction of people who have made major achievements in space tourism to date. With so many big names getting awards, though, it makes one wonder who will be left to get an award next year…
Burt Rutan was the luncheon speaker Thursday at ISDC, and his his extended speech (which lasted close to an hour counting Q&qmp;A) he fired some shots at pretty much everyone else involved in the space industry, including NASA, FAA/AST, and other ventures. For some summaries of comments, check out the articles at SPACE.com, MSNBC, and the AP. (I may write a summary article of my own later, when time permits.) A sample zinger from Rutan, which generated perhaps the most “ooooohhhhh”‘s from the audience: “Some people are still chasing dreams, and even name their ships appropriately”—a barb aimed at SpaceDev and its Dream Chaser vehicle design.
You might think that Rutan came off as a grumpy old man—an industry curmudgeon of sorts. He prefaced many of his sharpest comments with words like, “I’m here as a humorist.” Still, I suspect many of his comments stung, especially in those cases where his words had a ring of truth. Still, he received rousing ovations from the audience on a number of occasions. He stuck around long after his speech to sign autographs and have pictures taken with people, and if you ever doubted Rutan had a soft side, here’s proof:
During the Q&A session after his speech Thursday morning at the ISDC, Elon Musk of SpaceX divulged some details about the development of a manned capsule the company has been quietly working on. “It’s been a low priority because obviously we have to get the booster right before,” and his voice trailed off to some laughter from the crowd. “We’re putting the cart before the horse.” He revealed that work on the capsule has actually been on hold for some time. “We stopped work on our prototype manned capsule a little over a year ago because it was way ahead of the booster.” Winning a NASA COTS contract, he said, would accelerate the development of the capsule: with that funding he believes the capsule would be ready to fly in 2009. “If we don’t, then it probably gets delayed by a couple of years” to around 2011, he said. He added that without the COTS funding SpaceX would develop a “scaled down version” of the capsule “with a little less capability.”
SPACE.com reports on a little-discussed safety risk for future space tourists: exposure to space radiation on their flights. That’s less of a concern for suborbital spaceflights, where passengers spend only a few minutes above the protection of the atmosphere, than for future orbital or extraorbital excursions. The need for monitoring space weather conditions by future space tourism operators was discussed at last week’s Space Weather Week event in Colorado. (It has also been brought up at previous Space Access and Space Frontier Conferences by Barbara Thompson of NASA Goddard; at last month’s space Access conference, immediately before Space Weather Week, she encouraged the community to be involved with space weather professionals regarding the types of data they need and how to collect and disseminate those data.)
It may be some time before people get married in space (or maybe not, if you can do a condensed ceremony on a suborbital flight), but when it happens, one thing the bride won’t have to worry about is what to wear. The Guardian reports that Japanese fashion designer Eri Matsui has designed a wedding dress “that looks good without the aid of gravity.” Matsui told the British newspaper that she photographed models on parabolic flights sponsored by the Japanese space agency JAXA to help her design. (Sadly, the article doesn’t include any photos, nor is it obvious on Matsui’s web site what the dress looks like.) Matsui is also sponsoring a “Hyper Space Couture Design Contest”; the winner will collaborate withMatsui on designing clothes for the “first generation of fashion-conscious space tourists.” (Rocketplane Ltd. is listed as one of the sponsors of the competition.)
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