Charles Simonyi is now officially the fifth commercial space tourist (or passenger, or whatever—let’s not start that debate again). The Soyuz TMA-10 carrying Simonyi and two Russian cosmonauts lifted off from Baikonur Saturday at 1:31 pm EDT and entered orbit nine minutes later. The Soyuz is scheduled to dock with the ISS on Monday afternoon. Simonyi will remain at the ISS until April 20—the longest spaceflight ever for a commercial passenger—returning to Earth in the Soyuz TMA-9 spacecraft along with two current members of the ISS crew.
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According to the final, still-unofficial tally of votes in Tuesday’s spaceport tax referendum in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, yes beat no by 270 votes, out of 17,770 votes cast. About 19 percent of registered voters in the county voted in the special election, with the spaceport tax being the only item on the ballot: county officials said that turnout, while low for a special election, was relatively high for a special election like this. Spaceport opponents, while disappointed in losing, believe they still hold the moral high ground. “It’s now at the point where we have the luxury, in two or three years, to say ‘I told you so,'” said Mitch Boyer, leader of a group that opposed the tax. “I can tell you right now [the spaceport] is not going to happen.” Two other southern New Mexico counties, Otero and Sierra, are also considering similar taxes, although it’s not clear when they would hold elections on them. On Tuesday Robert Bigelow plans to hold a press conference in Colorado Springs at the National Space Symposium to release more details about his business plan. Craig Covault of Aviation Week has already been briefed about those plans and provides some details in an article published online late Friday. The article discusses a step-by-step plan for developing his orbital habitats, starting with Genesis 1 (launched last year) and Genesis 2 (scheduled for launch later this month), followed by larger modules: Galaxy in late 2008, Sundancer in 2010, and then the full-sized BA 330 modules in 2012 and 2013. By 2015 Bigelow envisions having three outposts composed of multiple BA 330 modules in orbit. What about getting to and from the space stations? Bigelow said his company would contract for flight services with various transportation providers, agreeing to buy a certain number of flights per quarter or year. In his first full year of operations, he anticipates requiring 12-14 flights, increasing to three flights a month by 2016. Bigelow would buy from a number of companies, including COTS companies SpaceX and Rocketplane (which announced its letter of intent with Bigelow at the Space Access conference last month), and even Soyuz and Shenzhou flights from Russia and China, respectively. What will the modules be used for? Bigelow said they would be able to support “a variety of functions or variety of uses”, but he explicitly said he doesn’t consider his stations “space hotels”. “We have been identified as the space hotel folks and that’s not the case — that really never has been the case.” As for what exactly he has in mind, we’ll have to wait until Tuesday—or maybe even later. A Soyuz spacecraft carrying fifth orbital space tourist Charles Simonyi is scheduled to lift off today at 1:31 pm EDT. The launch will be aired on NASA TV and possibly might be picked up by the cable news channels. There is not much news about the launch, expect for the usual coverage about Martha Stewart, a “close friend” of Simonyi, who is i Baikonur to watch the launch. (No word if she plans to do some redecorating of the drab spaceport while she’s there, although she did declare that “Baikonur is beautiful.”) The FAA announced today that it has formally released regulations governing experimental permits for suborbital RLVs. Congress gave the FAA authority to grant such permits (analagous to experimental airworthiness certificates in aviation) in the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004. These regulations formally codify how such permits will be issued, although FAA has already issued permits to both Armadillo Aerospace and Blue Origin prior to the release of these regulations. I have not had an opportunity yet to review the final regulations; the FAA did release a fact sheet about commercial human spaceflight in general today, along with a press release, which I have included below: To facilitate research, development and testing of new design concepts for commercial vehicles intended to carry people into space, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) today issued regulations governing the issuance of experimental permits for the launching of reusable suborbital rockets. “These rules represent another step forward for commercial human space flight,†said FAA Administrator Marion C. Blakey. “To help move this exciting industry from concept to reality, our goal is to streamline and facilitate the licensing process for flight testing under the experimental permit while maintaining public safety.†A critical component of any reusable launch vehicle development program is flight testing. To help facilitate those tests, the allowable processing time for issuing a permit determination is 120 days compared to 180 days for a license. A single experimental permit will cover multiple vehicles of a particular design and allow an unlimited number of launches. The FAA will identify the type of design changes that may be made without invalidating the permit. The one-year permit is renewable following an FAA review. None of the test flights covered by an experimental permit can carry passengers for compensation or for hire. The new rules establish criteria for the physical area in which a vehicle with an experimental permit can operate. The area, among other things, must be large enough to contain planned trajectories. It cannot contain or be adjacent to a densely populated area. As part of the application for a permit, a vehicle developer will need to provide a program description, a flight test plan, and operational safety documentation, including a hazard analysis and a plan for response to a mishap. The new rules were mandated by the Congress in the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004. Final regulations for crew and space flight participants were issued in December of 2006. According to this morning’s Las Cruces Sun-News, the spaceport tax referendum in Doña Ana County, New Mexico officially has a 265-vote lead with 108 ballots to be reviewed. The “yes” lead initially was somewhat slimmer than earlier reported—173 instead of 204 votes—but the lead grew as the provisional ballots were reviewed and added to the tally yesterday. The results have to be officially certified, which will take place on Tuesday; barring a challenge (which didn’t appear to be in the works), the tax would officially go into effect the first of next year. Proponents were, naturally, gratified with the outcome. “I’m proud to be a citizen of this county today,” county commissioner Bill McCamley, one of the leading supporters, told the Sun-News. In a press release (not yet posted on its web site), National Space Society executive director George Whitesides (himself a customer of spaceport tenant Virgin Galactic), noted that this “is the first time that the new industry of personal spaceflight has come before a popular vote – and the referendum’s passage is an endorsement of the industry’s economic potential.” Opponents of the tax appeared resigned to defeat, but consoled themselves that they had put up a hard flight despite a lack of money. “I compliment the proponents, but you know, they spent a lot of money compared to our campaign, which was grassroots,” Oscar Vásquez-Butler, a county commissioner opposed to the tax, said. Opponents of the tax claimed to have spent only about $1,000, while supporters reportedly spent up to 100 times as much. It appears that a spaceport tax referendum in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, has been approved. The Las Cruces Sun-News reports that the lead in “yes” votes now is greater than the number of remaining provisional ballots to be counted, meaning that the tax would pass even if all of the remaining ballots were against the measure. New Mexico governor Bill Richardson issued a brief statement in light of the news, saying that the “positive vote for the Spaceport Ballot Initiative means America’s New Frontier begins in southern New Mexico.” Election officials in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, are expected to begin verifying and tallying today the 541 provisional ballots cast in Tuesday’s spaceport tax referendum. Some of the ballots were thrown out yesterday, although officials didn’t disclose to the Las Cruces Sun-News how many were disqualified, and why. The review of the remaining provisional ballots is expected to be completed by Friday. Both sides said they were optimistic that the final tally would go their way, but there would have to be a significant shift in the provisional ballots to negate the 204-vote lead for the tax: the 541 ballots would have to be against the tax by just over a two-to-one margin to give “no” a lead, a ratio that is greater now that some of the provisional ballots have been thrown out. But what about a recount? Both sides have given some thought to a vote challenge depending on the outcome, but will wait until after the provisional ballots are counted before making a decision. One factor that could work against tax opponents is that anyone requesting a recount must pay the costs of the recount—over $5,000—and spaceport opponents ran their campaign on a shoestring budget that was only a small fraction of that amount. The final outcome of Tuesday’s spaceport tax referendum in Donña Ana County, New Mexico, won’t be known until Thursday, although the tax had a narrow lead late Tuesday night after all official ballots were counted. In the simple yes/no vote, there were 204 more yes votes than no out of over 17,000 ballots cast, with all of the county’s 109 precincts reporting in. However, there are 541 provisional ballots—those cast by people who don’t show up on the list of registered voters, or who went to the wrong voting location, for example—that have yet to be counted. Those will be counted starting Thursday, and officials said it could take several days to review those ballots and add them to the count. Supporters of the tax appeared confident about the outcome, especially after they overcame an early deficit when the results of early voting last month put “no” on top by several hundred votes. |
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Simonyi backlash
When Dennis Tito flew six years ago, the question was whether or not a private fare-paying citizen could visit the International Space Station. By last year that controversy had disappeared and had been replaced by more mundane ones: was Anousheh Ansari the first female space tourist or not? So far, Charles Simonyi’s flight to the ISS has been free of controversy, so The Nation magazine tries to stir one up by suggesting that Simonyi should spend his money on charitable causes rather than a flight to the ISS. Author Richard Kim, a professor of American studies at Skidmore College, asks, “Is there a more perfect symbol of the excesses of global capitalism than Charles Simonyi’s 13-day joyride into outer space?” He sees Simonyi’s flight as symptomatic of super-wealthy Americans who would rather spend money on yachts, mansions, or, in this case, spaceflights than donate it to charity.
However, Professor Kim’s essay suffers from a fatal flaw: the false dichotomy. Either billionaires can spend their money on themselves or donate it to worthy causes, Professor Kim seems to argue. However, there’s no reason why they can’t do both. Even Professor Kim acknowledges in his essay that Simonyi has made a number of significant charitable donations. Moreover, Simonyi’s flight is hardly a selfish joyride: he is using his flight as an educational tool, including planning several amateur radio contacts with US high schools, and will conduct experiments for the Japanese, European, and Hungarian space agencies. Professor Kim, however, seems fixated instead on the single gourmet meal that Simonyi and his ISS crewmates will enjoy during the 13-day flight.