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This year’s edition of the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book includes a gift that it calls “genuinely out of this world”: a charter suborbital flight on SpaceShipTwo. It’s just like it sounds: an SS2 flight for you and five of your closest friends as some point after Virgin Galactic begins passenger service in 2009. And it can be yours for only $1,764,000.00 (the catalog helpfully including the number of cents in the list price for those penny pinchers out there.) That works out to $294,000 per passenger, which is considerably higher than the current list price of around $200,000 per person. However, this charter flight package also includes a post-flight vacation on Necker Islands for each passenger and a guest, including “an exclusive celebration” hosted by Richard Branson himself.
At the Virgin Galactic press conference last week in New York, company president Will Whitehorn said that they would offer “group deals” where people could buy an entire flight, like in the Neiman Marcus promotion (although not necessarily with the Necker Island party afterwards.) Whitehorn even hinted at the specific Neiman Marcus deal, saying, “We’ve got some early experiments going on with that, there’s going to be one —we’re not allowed to talk about that, are we, the one with the retailer in the US?” Whitehorn did say that such charter flights would not happen until Virgin Galactic fills out its planned fleet of five SS2 vehicles.
You’d think that one of the first public appearances by Anousheh Ansari would attract a fair amount of media attention. However, most of the media coverage of a press conference held yesterday in Washington to kick of the Archon X Prize, the $10-million genomics prize the X Prize Foundation is running, mentioned her only in passing: see the AP and BBC for some examples. Ansari is part of the “Genome 100″, a group of 100 celebrities, scientists, and others whose genomes will be mapped by the prize-winner as a bonus. Beyond that, though, her recent flight to the ISS isn’t mentioned in the article: was she not available for comments, or did the reporters have their eyes only on the prize?
An article today in the Decatur (Ala.) Daily about the FTC’s approval of the United Launch Alliance includes this passage:
“Decatur might want to rename itself Space Port America,” said Loren Thompson, Ph.D., a military and aerospace analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va., and a Lockheed consultant.
Since Thompson immerses himself in military issues, he may have forgotten than the name “Spaceport America” is already used by New Mexico’s fledgling spaceport. (Moreover, they actually don’t launch anything in Decatur, only build rockets.) And don’t think about turning the phrase around and calling Decatur “America’s Spaceport”: that’s taken, too.
Today marks the second anniversary of SpaceShipOne’s capture of the $10-million Ansari X Prize with its second suborbital spaceflight in under a week. (Of course, they didn’t officially get the check until a ceremony in St. Louis the following month; details, details.) MSNBC’s Alan Boyle reflects on the anniversary and asks, in essence: dude, where’s my spaceship? There haven’t been any manned commercial suborbital spaceflights since SpaceShipOne’s final flight two years ago, and it will be a while before the next takes place. (I voiced similar comments back in June, on the second anniversary of SS1’s first space flight.) Boyle does find some optimism about the future from Peter Diamandis and Gary Hudson; Hudson in particular believes the number of self-funded ventures that don’t need to be constantly fundraising is the key difference between now and past false starts. “Investors are easily spooked,” Hudson said. “Zealots – and I mean that in the good sense – are not.”
The X Prize Foundation issued a media advisory today confirming that Anousheh Ansari will be in Washington DC tomorrow morning to appear at a press conference where the foundation will be announcing their new genomics prize. (I have a meeting conflict and can’t get out of the office to attend, unfortunately.) No other appearances or other events during here time in Washington (or anywhere else until the X Prize Cup later this month, to the best of my knowledge) have been announced.
Lost in the news last week about the SS2 unveiling, Ansari’s return to Earth, and the formation of another space tourism company was this little tidbit from Russia: the Russian space agency Roskosmos plans to increase the price it charges for commercial passengers on Soyuz flights. The price will go up nine percent, from $20 million to $21.8 million. A Roskosomos official blamed good ol’ inflation for the increase, saying that the cost of spacecraft components have gone up “dramatically” over the past two years. What tourists themselves will pay, though, is unclear: according to Roskosmos, “each tourist flight deal is discussed individually and is considered a commercial secret.”
For this week’s issue of The Space Review, I wrote a more detailed report on Thursday’s SpaceShipTwo event in New York. In addition to the details about the SS2 cabin itself, there’s some discussion about how Virgin Galactic is putting SS2 in a larger context, seeing it as a step towards low-cost orbital spaceflight, and for much more than space tourism. (And who knew Richard Branson would be more popular that Alyssa Milano?) In the same issue, Taylor Dinerman talks about the importance of suborbital vehicles like SS2 and SpaceDev’s Dream Chaser as a first step to low-cost orbital RLVs.
I finally got around today and posted a selection of photos I took of the SpaceShipTwo event Thursday at Wired NextFest in New York on Flickr. There’s a mix of pictures of the cabin itself (including one of me trying out one of the seats) as well as the people there, including Richard Branson, Will Whitehorn, and a special guest appearance Thursday evening at a Virgin Galactic reception by New York Governor George Pataki.
The Soyuz TMA-8 spacecraft carrying Anousheh Ansari and two astronauts landed safely late Thursday in Kazakhstan, and Ansari appeared to be in good condition as she emerged from the capsule after landing; her husband, Hamid, was on hand to greet her. I have not seen much about her near-term post-landing plans, although she is reportedly going to be in Washington DC on October 4 for an announcement about the $10-million Genomics X Prize the X Prize Foundation is developing. She will also be at the X Prize Cup later in October in New Mexico.
Rocketplane Kistler (RpK) announced today that is has signed an agreement with Andrews Space, with the latter company taking over the role in RpK’s COTS program that had previously planned to go to Orbital. As you may recall, Orbital announced on Monday that it was backing out of plans to take on the role of managing the development of RpK’s K-1 vehicle, as well as canceling a planned $10-million investment into RpK. Under Thursday’s agreement, Andrews will take on “supporting responsibility for systems engineering and integration and safety & mission assurance” for the K-1 project, and also make an unspecified strategic investment in RpK. Andrews was one of the six finalists in the COTS program but failed to win one of the two awards.
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X Prize 2nd anniversary
Today marks the second anniversary of SpaceShipOne’s capture of the $10-million Ansari X Prize with its second suborbital spaceflight in under a week. (Of course, they didn’t officially get the check until a ceremony in St. Louis the following month; details, details.) MSNBC’s Alan Boyle reflects on the anniversary and asks, in essence: dude, where’s my spaceship? There haven’t been any manned commercial suborbital spaceflights since SpaceShipOne’s final flight two years ago, and it will be a while before the next takes place. (I voiced similar comments back in June, on the second anniversary of SS1’s first space flight.) Boyle does find some optimism about the future from Peter Diamandis and Gary Hudson; Hudson in particular believes the number of self-funded ventures that don’t need to be constantly fundraising is the key difference between now and past false starts. “Investors are easily spooked,” Hudson said. “Zealots – and I mean that in the good sense – are not.”