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I’ve been too busy in the last week with other work to post here, so instead here are a few summaries of some recent developments in space tourism and related fields:
Flight International reported this week that the European Commission is considering funding a feasibility study for a “European version” of SpaceShipTwo. The €110,000 (US$145,000), 12-month study would look at the various issues associated with developing an air-launched suborbital passenger spacecraft similar to SS2 (but launched from an Airbus, of course; this is a European study, after all.) If this is the best that the EC and European industry can come up with, it’s hard to think that they’re that serious about suborbital space tourism: they’d be better off supporting existing European ventures, like ARCA in Romania or Starchaser, nominally based in the UK but with a presence in New Mexico.
Flight International also reports that plans by Virgin Galactic to built its New Mexico spaceport facilities underground have been changed by geologic studies that found that the bedrock at Spaceport America was unsuitable for their original plans. The spaceport design will still be environmentally friendly, Virgin officials said, including a dome that will collect what rainwater falls there and solar panels for generating power.
Space tourist, er, private space traveler Anousheh Ansari paid a visit to Huntsville last week, visiting the US Space and Rocket Center and speaking to Space Camp attendees there. She was accompanied by Homer Hickam of Rocket Boys fame, who had struck up an email correspondence with Ansari prior to her flight.Asked if Hickam might write about Ansari and her flight, he responded, “We may talk about that. It could happen.”
Potential space tourists in Kansas City, Jacksonville, and even Naples, Florida don’t have to go far to book a flight: travel agents in those cities are among the 45 in North America selected by Virgin Galactic to sell trips. The selected agents will have to under go “accreditation training” next year before beginning their five-year sales agreements.
MSNBC reports, in a surprising development, that PlanetSpace is in negotiations with the state of Ohio about establishing a spaceport at a cargo airport on the outskirts of the state capital, Columbus. Rickenbacker International Airport, a former Air Force base that is today a cargo and passenger charter airport, would be the landing site for suborbital flights of PlanetSpace’s Silver Dart vehicle, and potentially also serve as a manufacturing site for it. Local and state government officials are in negotiations with PlanetSpace on an investment package potentially worth up to $20 million.
A few items of interest from this article: This is the first time that I can recall PlanetSpace saying that they plan to use the Silver Dart, which they originally proposed for orbital missions for NASA’s COTS demonstration program, for suborbital flights. Previously, they planned to use a capsule that would splash down (that capsule is still shown on the PlanetSpace web site.) That approach does make sense, though, if they’re still interested in developing the Silver Dart for orbital flights, which they are (chairman Chirinjeev Kathuria told MSNBC’s Alan Boyle that they’re still interested in NASA’s COTS program once it moves out of its current demonstration stage.) The Ohio site would not be used for orbital operations: PlanetSpace is still planning on developing a spaceport for that in Nova Scotia, as announced this summer.
Another issue is flight operations of the suborbital Silver Dart. PlanetSpace doesn’t intend to conduct launches from Rickenbacker, instead launching “from a floating barge or from a land-based pad”. Unless SilverDart has significantly different flight characteristics than other early-generation suborbital vehicles, which have limited crossranges, that launch site would have to be relatively close to the airport; perhaps no more than a few hundred kilometers. (Maybe Lake Erie?) That means that PlanetSpace may require two different spaceport licenses, one for launch and one for landing—which could be further complicated if the Canadian-American company decided to carry out launches from, say, Southern Ontario or the Canadian side of Lake Erie. Coordination with air traffic control would also pose more problems than for spaceports in California, New Mexico, or Oklahoma, especially since Rickenbacker is about 20 kilometers from Port Columbus International Airport, the city’s main passenger airport.
There’s also the question of where the money will come from for PlanetSpace to develop the Silver Dart and its Canadian Arrow-derived launcher. Kathuria, the article notes, is a millionaire who has had success in several industries (although a previous space venture he invested in, MirCorp, didn’t turn out so well). Apparently PlanetSpace’s funding is not a concern for Ohio officials, who cited “Kathuria’s confidential list of partners and backers” as one of the reasons why they’re in serious negotiations with the company.
Famed physicist Stephen Hawking dropped a big hint yesterday that he would like to take a suborbital spaceflight with Virgin Galactic: as the BBC reported, Hawking said that, “My next goal is to go into space; maybe Richard Branson will help me.” MSNBC’s Alan Boyle follows up on this statement and finds that, yes, Virgin Galactic would be happy to help Hawking realize his goal, and that Hawking might be able to experience weightnessless on a Zero Gravity Corp. aircraft flight as soon as next year. (Be sure to skim through the dozens of comments to Boyle’s Cosmic Log post: while most people are very supportive of Hawking’s desire to fly in space, there are a few that criticized the “morons” who “want to spend billions into a fairy tale journey into outer space.”)
An interesting note: this is not the first time that Hawking has been linked to Virgin Galactic. In a number of previous reports, like this Business Week article back in August, Hawking was listed among celebrities who were either interested in such a flight or who had already signed up. However, since those lists included people like William Shatner and Sigourney Weaver who have since stated that they have no interest in flying in space, it’s been tough to take those lists seriously.
Earlier this week I noticed a press release from Universal Space Systems (USS) announcing their “2006 Pre-release Holiday Sale” for their upcoming report, the “Space Adventurer Assessment/Report”. This document, which the release humbly describes as “the ultimate reference guide whether you will be taking a trip into space in the next few years or many years from now”, is on sale through Christmas Eve for the low, low price of $2,000, one-third of its list price.
The idea of selling research reports for hefty prices is commonplace in a wide range of industries: when we originally released the Space Tourism Market Study at Futron four years ago, we charged $1,500 for the suborbital-only version and $2,500 for the suborbital and orbital version. (Two years ago we made the report free to all.) Another company, Research Reports International, issued a report earlier this year on the space tourism industry for “just” $199, although as noted here there’s not much original work in that report. USS does provide a table of contents and sample pages from the report; it’s tough to judge the report from that alone, but what’s provided suggests a comprehensive report, although at a basic level of detail and primarily regurgitating existing information.
A bigger concern for prospective customers is the lack of information about the company itself. The company’s web site does have a toll-free number and email addresses, but no mailing address. (The press release is datelined “Upham, NM”, but that seems unlikely since no one lives in Upham, the future site of Spaceport America.) The company’s domain name, universalspacesystems.com, has its registration information, including address, assigned to contactprivacy.com, a Toronto company that provides a Whois privacy service. The web site also doesn’t provide any information about who works for the company, to gauge their expertise and credentials. That doesn’t mean the company’s up to no good, of course, but does suggest you might want to do a little research on your own before paying $2,000 or more for their report.
(I’ve contacted the company y email, asking for some more information about themselves and their report; I’ll pass along any response.)
MSNBC’s Cosmic Log reports that the FAA has issued a temporary flight restriction for the airspace around Blue Origin’s launch site in West Texas. The restriction, in effect from 7:30 am through 12:30 pm CST on Thursday through Saturday, is similar to one in effect earlier this month for Blue Origin’s first low-level flight test. Company officials told the local newspaper, the Van Horn Advocate, that the November 13 test was a success but offered no additional details.
J.D. Fortune, the relatively new lead singer of the band INXS, told the Canadian publication JAM! Showbiz that his band has been offered a most unusual gig, although his description of it makes you wonder just how real his claims are:
INXS has played some great gigs the past year, including to 70,000 people in India, according to Fortune, but there’s one gig that will top them all, if it goes through – in space.
Virgin Group entrepreneur Sir Richard has formed Virgin Galactic, a space tourism company, which aims to send civilian passengers into suborbital space by late 2007 (for $200,000 U.S. a seat), and Branson wants some live music onboard.
“He’s looking to put a band up in space to do a 45-minute set, going around the world doing six orbits around the planet and then coming back down, but, man, I’m afraid to fly,” says Fortune. “I’d be on so much Xanax, I don’t even think I’d be able to speak (laughs).”
That’s right, 6 orbits in 45 minutes, all in a suborbital vehicle. I don’t think Mr. Fortune will need to worry about the Xanax.
This week’s issue of Aviation Week features an article about White Knight, the carrier aircraft for SpaceShipOne. While SS1 is now hanging from the ceiling of the National Air and Space Museum, White Knight is still flying today, serving as “an ideal testbed for large, heavy payloads,” in the words of William B. Scott, the AvWeek writer who got to fly on White Knight recently. Much of the article discusses how White Knight served as a pathfinder for key SS1 systems, ranging from the environmental control system (ECS) to the landing gear actuators on White Knight (which are the same as the feathering system actuators on SS1). Flying White Knight is a little difficult because of the unique pattern of circular portholes: “It’s like flying inside a giant ‘whiffle ball’,” said Scaled Composites’ Doug Shane. Still, he notes, “The [SS1] feather was, relatively speaking, a genius idea, but the whole idea of using this airplane to solve the problems for SpaceShipOne was equally genius. It’s the best thing we did for the program.”
Brief notes about a few space tourism-related articles that appeared over the last few days:
- In this week’s issue of The Space Review, Alex Howerton offers an “appreciation” of last month’s X Prize Cup, emphasizing that despite the failure of any competitors to win prizes, the event is a big step forward for the NewSpace industry. “The sense of failure, if there is one, stems from the difference between our expectations and reality. We get impatient; we want to go to space now, and we can’t be bothered to wait until the system actually works.”
- Also in TSR, Sam Dinkin interviews Jessica French, who, besides being the daughter of Rocketplane Kistler president George French, worked for Virgin Galactic at its display at the EAA AirVenture show last year. Oh, and she also designed the logo for Dinkin’s skill game venture, SpaceShot.
- Shanghai Daily reports that an unnamed young Chinese businessman will be the country’s first space tourist, flying on Virgin Galactic in 2008.
CNN International is airing CNN Future Summit, a show that, in its words, “brings together some of the brightest minds of our time to see how science and technology are shaping our future.” One of the topics of the show will be space tourism; the “brightest minds” the show includes are Anousheh Ansari and Buzz Aldrin. The program is showing on CNN International several times a day from Thursday through Sunday. (Note that this is airing on CNN International, not the regular CNN network in the US. Therefore, it will be difficult for people in the US to see it unless and until CNN US reairs the show.)
In advance of the show the Malaysian newspaper The Star has been publishing articles about Aldrin, Ansari, and even the host of the CNN International program, Richard Quest.
A SPACE.com article today provides an update on plans to launch Bigelow Aerospace’s Genesis 2 spacecraft, a small-scale demonstrator of the company’s planned inflatable orbital habitats. The launch, which earlier had been pushed back to January 2007, is now planned for “the early end” of the first quarter (which sounds like sometime in late February or early March), still on a Dnepr. The reason for the slip isn’t discussed in the article, although the Dnepr has yet to return to service following a launch failure just two weeks after the successful Genesis 1 launch.
The article also recaps the agreement announced in September between Bigelow and Lockheed Martin to study human-rating the Atlas 5, a plan described by a Lockheed official as an effort “to evaluate the market of space tourism and research to determine if Atlas could be a part of this potential new market area.” While there were rumors earlier this month that another Bigelow-Lockheed announcement was imminent, there’s no indication in this article of anything like that in the works.
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