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Yesterday’s report that PlanetSpace is planning to develop a spaceport at Cape Breton, Nova Scotia generated a fair amount of media attention in Canada. Some summaries of the coverage:
- PlanetSpace tells the Canadian Press that they will proceed with their orbital vehicle, Silver Dart, even if they are passed over in NASA’s COTS competition. That’s a good thing, since PlanetSpace hasn’t made anyone’s list of finalists for the competition. The article also states that PlanetSpace was formed last year “was created in response to NASA’s request for bids to shuttle cargo and crew to the space station”; the timing seems a little off there since the company’s formation was announced in May 2005, prior to the formal announcement about COTS.
- The Toronto Star follows up its initial report with news that the Canadian Space Agency is aware of the project and supports it, although it wasn’t clear if CSA was willing to back that support with funding. The report also hints that MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA), a Canadian company that built the shuttle and station’s robot arms, among other space projects, might be involved in the effort in some way: a company spokesperson would only say that “two members of its firm familiar with the program were on vacation.”
- The Globe and Mail looks at the project from the perspective of Mark James, the Nova Scotia Business Inc. official who was initially “laughing under his breath” about the idea of a Cape Breton spaceport, but was won over by the company.
- The proposal wins some support from an editorial in the Halifax Daily News in Nova Scotia. “The impulse to crack jokes… is irresistible,” the editorial notes, but adds that “this notion is not as far-fetched as it appears at first glance.”
- Another Halifax newspaper, the Chronicle Herald, features a skeptic about this whole approach: me. I talked with the reporter for about 15 minutes, discussing my issues with the project (which I outlined here yesterday); I was surprised how much play those comments got in the article. I’ll note here that my skepticism doesn’t mean I don’t believe that the company can do what it’s claiming, only that there’s insufficient evidence available publicly today to support claims that they can—a subtle but important distinction.
The Toronto Star reports this morning that PlanetSpace has signed an agreement with the government of Nova Scotia to develop a spaceport in the province for the company’s planned orbital vehicle. As reporter Scott Simmie writes:
…Nova Scotia has signed a “team agreement” to provide 300 acres of land – and perhaps even some funding – for a massive orbital launch facility that will involve industry giants and could eventually be on scale with huge NASA operations.
There are a lot of big claims there: “massive orbital launch facility”, “industry giants”, and “on scale with huge NASA operations”. However, the evidence to support that in the article is pretty weak—perhaps simply because the agreement hasn’t been formally announced yet, but nonetheless enough to raise questions among skeptics.
For example, the article claims that the company has “also been in talks with the U.S. space agency, which is very interested in their Silver Dart design.” (So interested, it seems, that the company did not make the cut in the first round of the COTS evaluations.) Company chairman Chirinjeev Kathuria told the Star that the company “in discussions with NASA to sign a space act agreement with one of the NASA centres to build a cargo and crew vehicle for the International Space Station.” This sounds like a typical Space Act agreement where NASA facilities are provided for testing, or other assistance, with no exchange of funds. In other words, if PlanetSpace is going to build a “cargo and crew vehicle” for the ISS, it will have to raise the money elsewhere to do it.
Perhaps that’s where the “industry giants” come in. No names were mentioned in the article, but Mark James, an official with Nova Scotia Business Inc., the province’s business development agency, said that “industry leaders from Canada and the U.S. are on board”.
The size of the proposed facility seems a little small: it’s less than half a square mile, whereas Spaceport America in New Mexico will have access to nearly 50 times the land. (James also says that New Mexico is spending “over $500 million for a facility similar to this”; that’s two to three times what the state plans to spend on the spaceport, even when converting from US to Canadian dollars.)
One space tourism-related item not covered in last week’s report about the company: PlanetSpace is still planning to develop and operate the Canadian Arrow suborbital vehicle, but not from the Nova Scotia spaceport. Instead, Kathuria said Canadian Arrow will operate from a “Midwestern state”. However, there’s not much in the way of options there: Oklahoma’s spaceport is inteneded for horizontal takeoff and landing vehicles, not VTOL vehicles like Canadian Arrow; New Mexico, while most likely able to support such launches, is not typically considered a “Midwestern” state. Maybe Spaceport Sheboygan would be an option…
A New York Times article Sunday about the special incentives and packages that credit card companies provide to their best customers includes a brief mention of a special Zero-G flight offered by American Express:
Some American Express Platinum cardholders looked behind the curtain of space flight last month with a zero-gravity flight on a modified Boeing plane in Orlando, Fla. At $6,500 a person, the chance to fly with the Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin proved so popular that American Express has added a second “go weightless” flight.
Given that a standard Zero Gravity Corp. flight goes for $3,750 plus tax, that’s a, um, hefty premium to pay to float with Buzz.
SPACE.com landed an exclusive interview with Burt Rutan, published back on Friday. By and large there’s not a lot new here: many of the comments he made here are similar to comments he has made in the past, such as at the ISDC in May. He revealed that one of his biggest concerns was potential investors getting cold feet, which is why he picked Richard Branson over some alternatives to develop SpaceShipTwo, despite Branson’s outspokenness. “He was selected as an investment source because he was very early telling everybody what he was going to do, and usually I’m against that. But he’s putting his reputation on the goal of this program… doing that on day one.”
Rutan also said that being able to experience weightlessness is “a close second” to getting the view of the Earth from space. That’s why SS2 will have a large cabin so people can float about during their four minutes in weightlessness. Also, the onset of gravity will be gradual, taking more than 40 seconds to reach 1-g; enough time, he feels to get passengers strapped in before they experience stronger accelerations during reentry.
Those reading Rutan’s comments closely will also pick up on his choice of words: “I’m focusing now on going ahead and doing something that I never did with airplanes. That is, not just do research but go ahead and build something that would be certified. Produce it and sell it to spacelines and let them go out there and compete with each other to fly the public.” Also: “That’s the reason we feel we’ll easily be able to certify people floating around and getting into a seat…more of a bed to lay flat.” Notice the use of “certified” and “certify”: suborbital spacecraft are licensed, not certified (something the FAA will take great pains to point out), although Rutan rarely hides his dissatisfaction with that approach, preferring aircraft-like certification to launch vehicle licensing.
Bigelow Aerospace surprised a lot of people late Friday when the company announced that it planned to “accelerate future plans” related to the series of experimental orbital modules it planned to develop and launch. Details were sketchy, and the company said it would only provide additional details early next year, when it launches its next spacecraft, Genesis 2. The company offered an odd mix of reasons for the change, including “the outstanding performance of Genesis I, the hoped-for adequate performance of Genesis II and various additional factors—including, but not limited to, domestic and international issues forecast over the next four to five years bearing upon America’s transportation and launch deficits.” I’m not exactly sure what a “launch deficit” is, unless that’s supposed to mean difficulty finding affordable launch options for its spacecraft.
One near-term result of this is that Genesis 2 will be the only mission opportunity for Bigelow’s “Fly Your Stuff” program, where people can pay to fly photos and items into space. This is an interesting turn of events, since when I talked with Robert Bigelow last month, he suggested that the program was a key experiment in generating revenue and public interest in his company’s work. “We are very involved with experimenting—and this is a grand experiment all of its own—with outreaching to the public,” he said. “We’re captivated by the adventure here, and part of the adventure is exploring whether the public is going to be interested.”
A Sydney Morning Herald blog entry reports that a number of travel agents in Australia have signed up to sell SpaceShipTwo flights for Virgin Galactic. Nine travel agents around the country will offer the flights at A$264,000 a ticket, starting with a A$26,000 deposit. Five Australians, including two from the Australian science magazine Cosmos, already purchased seats before the travel agents were selected.
What’s more interesting, though, are the comments to the post left by readers. Yes, there are a few critics asking why people would spend money on a suborbital spaceflight when that money “could be so well spent down here on earth.” (As if the money was actually being spent in outer space.) Many more people seemed interested, if they had the money, or just quipped jokes. “Hope the $260K includes food & drinks?”
MSNBC’s Alan Boyle checks in with PlanetSpace, one of the lesser-known space tourism companies. PlanetSpace evolved from Canadian Arrow, one of the two Canadian X Prize entrants (The da Vinci Project being the other); Canadian Arrow planned to develop a vehicle similar to the V-2 for suborbital spaceflights. Most of the focus of the report is on the company’s “Silver Dart” orbital spacecraft, which was proposed for NASA’s COTS program but did not make the cut. Still, the company is proceeding on several fronts, including negotiating a Space Act agreement with an unnamed NASA center, working with the Canadian Space Agency on plans for an orbital spaceport in Canada, and may get involved with ESA’s space tourism initiative.
It’s difficult to tell how seriously to take all of these developments. Entrepreneurial ventures will often explore many avenues to seek markets and funding, but run the risk of spreading themselves too thin. It’s notable what the MSNBC report doesn’t discuss: the progress on the Canadian Arrow vehicle itself, which is still mentioned on the PlanetSpace site but isn’t brought up in the article other than the fact that clusters of the booster would be used to launch the Silver Dart. (Also unclear is how the Chicago-based PlanetSpace could participate in the ESA program; at the very least, they would have to establish a European subsidiary or partner with a European company.) PlanetSpace chairman Chirinjeev Kathuria said that many of his company’s plans have to stay confidential for now while details are worked out. That’s fine, but progress is even better.
Space Adventures announced today that Charles Simonyi, the company’s most recent client, has won medical approval from Russian authorities for a future Soyuz flight. Space Adventures did not disclose, though, when Simonyi might fly, saying only that “More details regarding Dr. Simonyi’s scheduled launch date, commencement of training and specific mission objectives will be announced in the coming months.”
So will Simonyi be the next orbital tourist after Daisuke “Dice-K” Enomoto, who is scheduled to fly to the ISS next month? Or will it be Enomoto’s backup, Anousheh Ansari? SPACE.com profiles Ansari today, describing a person who wants to fly into space herself, even if that means waiting until 2008. The logjam is based in part on Russian plans to fly a Malaysian guest cosmonaut to the ISS next year, but the report also claims that Simonyi will fly to the ISS next spring, something that is less certain now than when Simonyi’s contract was first announced this spring. She’s not picky about how she gets to space, either: her company, Prodea (which is also backed by her husband and brother-in-law), is funding development of the Explorer suborbital vehicle that Space Adventures plans to operate, while she also has “seats reserved” on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo.
Wired News’ Jason Silverman pays a visit to Spaceport America, whose limited infrastructure “looks more John Ford than Jetsons.” Much of the article is about preparations for the New Mexico spaceport’s first launch. a UP Aerospace, including the installation of a hydraulic launch rail nicknamed “T Rex”. Things didn’t go smoothly, but after a little effort everything fit in place:
Finally, perhaps noting the approach of dinnertime, the crane operator hopped down from his cab and, using a sledgehammer and pieces of wood, began knocking the bolts a few sixteenths of an inch this way or that. Not exactly rocket science, but by nightfall, T Rex was securely bolted to the Spaceport’s launch pad.
Somehow I don’t think you’d be able to get away with that at the Cape or Vandenberg.
Some more news on Virgin Galactic’s visit to RAF Lossiemouth, which is being scouted as a potential Scottish base for the space tourism company:
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