The New Mexico Economic Development Department’s occasionally-updated Pulsar blog reports that “basic infrastructure” is being installed at the Southwest Regional Spaceport site in southern New Mexico. Proposals for the overall architecture of the spaceport design are due next week, with a final design to be announced this summer. The design, the post notes, should be “remarkable and memorable” as well as environmentally sensitive. (Disclosure: my employer has previously done work for this department.)
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Greg Olsen is scheduled to be in Los Angeles Thursday for the ORBIT awards dinner at ISDC, but he has something arguably more important to do today. The Newark Star-Ledger reports that Olsen plans to announce a $5 million donation to his alma mater, Fairleigh Dickinson University, today. Normally in response to such a donation, the university names a building or something after the donor. Instead, Olsen asked that the school rename its School of Computer Sciences and Engineering after two former professors, Lee Gildart and Oswald Haase, who taught Olsen when he was a student there. Olsen had kept in touch with both professors over the years, including on his flight to the ISS last year. ” As he became successful, Olsen never forgot his old professors. He e-mailed Gildart from space and sent Haase his astronaut photo with a note reading, ‘Thanks for getting me started.'” I’ll be heading out late tomorrow to LA for the International Space Development Conference. This promises to be one of the biggest space conferences in recent memory (at least outside of IAF and AIAA events) with over 1,000 people registered so far. The conference schedule is filled with interesting presentations (at least judging by their titles), and as is often the case with multiple-track conferences, there’s often more than one presentation worth seeing at the same time. And there’s only one of me (thank goodness). Thus, an open invitation to readers of this blog who will be at ISDC: if you attend a presentation on space tourism or related topics that you think is worthy of attention here, and would be willing to write a short summary, drop me a note during or after the conference and if I didn’t attend the conference or didn’t plan to mention it here, we’ll work something out. Thanks! Marc Garneau, the first Canadian astronaut and until late last year the head of the Canadian Space Agency (he resigned to make an unsuccessful run for a seat in Parliament), visited a school recently in Westmount, a suburb of Montreal where he lives. An article in the Westmount Examiner recounts his comments about space tourism:
Michael Belfiore reports on his blog on a speech given by Burt Rutan before high school students in Mojave. Rutan said that the town hasn’t changed much since he moved there in 1974, but that over the next four to five years “Mojave’s going to look a whole lot different.” With what he claims to be ” $1 billion in private money committed to the blossoming commercial spaceflight industry around the world”, according to Belfiore, there’s “a reasonable chance that Mojave will be for space flying what Silicon Valley is for the big industries of the last two decades.” Rutan continues to maintain a low profile regarding SpaceShipTwo: “We feel it’s best to let our competition think that we’ve quit. You just get a lot more fun showing somebody stuff that they don’t expect.” He did reveal, though, that SS2 will have a much greater downrange capability than SS1, being able to fly over 300 kilometers from boost to landing, giving passengers a varying perspective of oceans, mountains, and desert. Rutan also fired a broadside in the direction of New Mexico and its spaceport plans:
True, you can see a somewhat more varied landscape above Mojave than you can above southern New Mexico. Clark Lindsey used Google Earth recently to simulate the view of a suborbital passenger from several locations, including Mojave. The big difference between Mojave and New Mexico is the ocean: I played around with Google Earth a bit this weekend simulating the view from the Southwest Regional Spaceport and found that, at best, you might see a sliver of the Gulf of California. However, one thing that Google Earth does not take into account is cloud cover. Anyone who lives or has spent some time in southern California knows that a thick marine layer develops over the ocean many nights and moves inland, persisting well into the morning; this would obscure much of the view of the ocean and coastline. (Then there are those pesky winter storms.) If “the view is the thing”, as some have claimed, will space tourism operators—in Mojave or elsewhere—be forced to wait for clear skies not just at their spaceport but in areas of viewing interest hundreds of kilometers away? In the first of what he plans to be monthly essays in The Space Review on the progress of his business, Sam Dinkin of SpaceShot describes the process that went behind the selection of his company’s motto, “Astrae Popularetis”. The phrase can mean “You shall see the Stars belong to the People”, but he notes that it can have alternative interpretations, including “You shall see the Stars devastated, totally despoiled.” He also has some comments on his business strategy (flights won in his company’s competitions cannot be resold to prevent downward pressure on Rocketplane’s retail prices) and his competition, Virgin Galactic. In an article in this week’s issue of The Space Review, I write about the Teachers in Space program being kicked off by the Space Frontier Foundation. The project seeks to provide teachers with the experience of traveling in space by giving them rides on suborbital vehicles. While not strictly space tourism, a project like this, if it does indeed get going, could provide suborbital space tourism operators with another stream of customers and revenue: while three companies have initially donated one ticket each, the project eventually plans to purchase flights, either through donations or government-supported programs. And teachers who have a good experience on those flights might not only inspire students to study math and science (as the program hopes), they might also help sell the flight experience to other paying customers. And they’re coming to a school or an airport near you, at least if you’re in New Jersey. NorthJersey.com reports on an appearance by Brian Binnie, SpaceShipOne pilot, at the Lincoln Park Airport in New Jersey on Saturday. “It’s like meeting Charles Lindbergh or the Wright brothers,” said airport manager Peter DeRosa. Meanwhile, two days earlier and about 70 kilometers away, ISS space tourist Greg Olsen spoke to elementary school students in Lebanon, New Jersey, the Easton (Pa.) Express-News reported. Olsen told the students that floating in weightlessness was his “most thrilling experience”. “Imagine if you could float in the middle of the air,” he said. “It’s like magic.” A Space Adventures press release today marking the fifth anniversary of Dennis Tito’s flight to the ISS claims that the company’s “efforts in offering commercial seats to the public have resulted in $120 million (USD) worth of orbital spaceflight sales.” The company has so far flown or signed up five people—Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Greg Olsen, Daisuke (Dice-K) Enomoto, and Charles Simonyi—but using the widely-reported “list price” of $20 million a set, that adds up to only $100 million. Has Space Adventures signed up a sixth, as-yet-unannounced tourist? (Remember that prior to the Simonyi announcement earlier this month, Anousheh Ansari had been considered by many to be the next tourist after Enomoto, given that she was training in Russia to be his backup.) Or is the list price actually higher than $20 million: at least $24 million, if not higher (given that it’s widely believed that Tito paid less than $20 million for his flight)? Today marks the fifth anniversary of the launch of the “first” commercial space tourist, Dennis Tito, on a Soyuz taxi flight to the ISS. (There are other “tourists” who flew in space before Tito, ranging from Helen Sharman to the politicians who got rides on the shuttle; Tito, at least, is the first tourist who paid his own fare.) Tito’s plans for today are unknown, although he spent yesterday at Purdue University, giving a talk there last night. You can see him this coming Thursday at the International Space Development Conference in LA: he’s scheduled to appear at the Orbit Awards Banquet there Thursday night. |
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