A survey released yesterday by World Travel Market, a UK-based travel industry event organization, offers a somewhat pessimistic take on the space tourism market. The study, based on a poll of 1,030 Britons who took a summer vacation in 2009, found that only 27% said they would be interested in traveling into space; 50% said they were not and 23% said they might be interested. In addition, 74% said “they feared space travel would remain too expensive and exclusively for the super rich”, and only 4% thought it would became an “affordable mass-market travel product” within 30 years.
The numbers at first glance don’t sound promising: the press release leads off by claiming that “price concerns are turning holidaymakers off from becoming space tourists”. However, the numbers aren’t that surprising. First of all, the poll doesn’t appear to have limited their polling to people with the means to pay for a spaceflight at currently-planned prices. Second, the numbers aren’t that different from previous polls that did put such limits on respondents: for example, the 2002 Futron/Zogby poll found that 19% of people with the means to pay for a space tourism flight were either “definitely” or “very” likely to take a suborbital spaceflight (a number that rose to 28% when given a more rosy description of such a flight). Even that more pessimistic number resulted in a forecast of thousands of potential tourists a year after just a few years of operation.
“It’s disappointing holidaymakers fear they will be priced out of becoming space tourists,” Fiona Jeffery, chairman of World Travel Market, said in the release. “However, I’m confident the price will drop dramatically the more space tourism takes off.” Even if there isn’t a dramatic drop in prices, though, there’s still a potentially lucrative market to be tapped.
At last week’s unveiling of SpaceShipTwo in Mojave, Virgin Galactic commercial director Stephen Attenborough said that it was the company’s relative strong performance during the current recession—a “substantial net increase” in customers—that attracted the attention of Aabar Investments, the Abu Dhabi fund that purchased a 32-percent stake in the company for $280 million.
But a comment by the head of Aabar suggests that it’s interested in Virgin for a different reason: point-to-point transportation. Khadem Abdulla Al Qubaisi tells Arabian Business, “The point here is to use Abu Dhabi and LA as a hub, or somewhere in the US, and to fly from Abu Dhabi and land in the other place in two or three hours.”
If so, that’s a long-term vision. SpaceShipTwo is not capable of point-to-point transportation (not over any meaningful distances, at least) and it would presumably require at least another generation of technology development to build the systems capable of the faster speeds (and assorted other technical issues) needed to do intercontinental flight: all that would take years to develop, particularly at the current pace of work and investment. Also, there are no plans for SpaceShipTwo, or other suborbital vehicles, to fly out of LAX or other Los Angeles-area airports (unless one considered Mojave, 150 kilometers away, as in the LA area.)
Aabar, though, has some near-term issues to deal with, such as getting its investment in Virgin approved. The Times of London reported Monday that Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS) has started a review of the Aabar investment, giving it a level of scrutiny than only a small fraction of such foreign investments get. The Times claims that the CFIUS review had created “a growing concern” in the UAE that the deal might need to be altered, or could even be blocked. Why CFIUS, which usually limits its investigations to deals with national security concerns, was looking into the Aabar-Virgin deal wasn’t clear; it could be because of Scaled Composites’ other work with the US military, or, perhaps, because of other applications of the hybrid rocket motor or other technology being developed for the system. (Also recall that Aabar is providing Virgin an additional $100 million to develop an air-launch smallsat launcher system using WhiteKnightTwo.)
Al Qubaisi told Arabian Business that he was “unconcerned” about the CFIUS investigation. “I think everything is smooth and there is no problem at all,” he said, adding that he expected the review to be completed in a few weeks.
At about 7:45 pm Monday night, with the Virgin Galactic post-rollout party in full swing in Mojave, the person who had been announcing routine bus departures to various hotels made a more urgent announcement: everyone was asked to “evacuate” the tents where the event took place because of a high wind warning, and to instead board the waiting buses to leave. The video below shows what happened to those tents after hurricane-force wind gusts ripped through them. Fortunately, that destruction took place after we left.
It’s cold. It’s windy. (advance excuse for typos: my hands are still warming up!) Not the best weather to roll out a new spacecraft, but it was still an interesting event. SpaceShipTwo is a beautiful spacecraft, rolling up to the site attached to WhiteKnightTwo.
There were, by Virgin’s count, about 800 people for the rollout, ranging from California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and New Mexico Gov. Bill RIchardson to Virgin customers (“future astronauts”), sales agents, and other invited guests. The event took place on a tent erected on the end of a runway at Mojave Airport, one that rattled in the wind at times during the speech. (Did I mention it was cold and windy?) There was about an hour’s worth of speeches, a brief “press conference” (if you can call about four questions that) and then the rollout of the SS2 in the bitter cold.
There were no great surprises at the event, in terms of major announcements or other developments. I asked Burt Rutan about the test schedule for SS2: he would not give any dates for when tests would start (although one rumor floating around the press site today was that the first “captive carry” test flight could be tomorrow, weather permitting.) He did say the test program would be like that Scaled did for SS1, with captive carry tests, then glide tests, eventually leading to powered flights. But he didn’t say how long the test program would last or how many flights it might involve.
I’m sitting in a hotel next to the Mojave Airport, which is serving as the registration area for SS2 rollout event. Even though the event is still a couple hours away, Virgin has already issued a press release about the unveiling and included some photos, one of which is below:
The Virgin Group, including Virgin Galactic, is well known for its planned, glitzy events to showcase the company and their achievements. Today is scheduled to be no exception: the rollout of SpaceShipTwo in Mojave reportedly will include some kind of lightshow Monday evening. A check of the NOTAMs, or notices to airmen, for Mojave Airport (KMHV), shows that the airport’s runways will be closed Monday night, and there’s also a reference to that “airspace lightshow”.
One thing Virgin can’t control (not yet, anyway) is the weather, and it won’t be cooperating. Right now there’s only report clouds and light rain in Mojave, but the forecast mentions snow, and lots of it: up to five inches (12.5 cm) today, and up to two more inches (5 cm) tonight. Mojave may get much less, but it still doesn’t look like it will be the most inviting day to roll out a spaceship.
As you’ve noticed, Personal Spaceflight has undergone a dramatic redesign, including a new name. The new design was long overdue – the site has been using the same design since its inception in 2006 – but the focus of the site is changing slightly. Back in 2006 NewSpace was almost synonymous with space tourism (or personal spaceflight), and that’s where the bulk of the attention was focused. Today space tourism is still important, but other entrepreneurial efforts, and new markets, are emerging, from smallsat launches to orbital spaceflight to serve the ISS and more.
It’s a bit ironic that the site is relaunching today, given that today’s the day Virgin Galactic is unveiling SpaceShipTwo in Mojave. (I’ll be there, and reporting on it here over the next day.) Virgin Galactic has been closely tied to space tourism, but even they have recognized the emergence of other markets besides space tourism. Moreover, that suborbital research market is gaining momentum, as I report in today’s issue of The Space Review. So this is a major milestone, but also part of an interesting time for the entrepreneurial NewSpace field.
If you have any questions or comments about the new design or content, please email me at jeff [at] thespacereview.com, or leave a comment here. I’ll be tweaking the site over the coming days and weeks based on this feedback and more.
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