SpaceDev is reportedly planning an event Wednesday to “unveil” its proposed orbital space plane, Dream Chaser, as part of its effort to win a COTS contract from NASA. The event will be held not at the company’s San Diego-area headquarters but instead in the Denver area, where SpaceDev now has a presence after its acquisition of Boulder-based Starsys Engineering; some of its teammates on its COTS proposal are also located in the area. Wednesday, by the way, will mark the second anniversary of the first suborbital spaceflight by SpaceShipOne, powered by a SpaceDev hybrid engine.
You’d think there would be bigger things to worry about in Lebanon than “creating awareness” about space tourism, yet an article in The Daily Star describes a seminar last week about the potential of space tourism at the Beirut Travel Academy:
“We need to create awareness,” explained Hassan al-Zein, who led the event. “Dubai is going to become the launching center for space tourism in the Middle East, so we need to inform people here about the very real possibility. It has now become affordable.”
While the possibility of travelling at 28,000 km/h “is sure to be of interest to the Lebanese, who are renowned for their love of speed”, the reporter wonders near the end of the article if space tourism is such a wide idea. “After all, how many beautiful spots worldwide have been ruined by the tourism industry?” Good thing that there’s plenty of space to ruin.
An article in the Singapore newspaper Today makes an interesting claim: that the spaceport planned for the island city-state will be “the world’s first commercial tourist spaceport.” The source of that claim is unclear, although the article sites the February announcement by Space Adventures about the spaceport project as “plans to develop the world’s first civilian spaceport in Singapore.” The actual Space Adventures press release makes no such claim, other than a statement by Eric Anderson that with the Explorer suborbital vehicle under development “we will enable operations of the world’s first commercial suborbital flights.”
There are several obstacles that make it unlikely that Singapore’s spaceport will be first. For starters, spaceport project backers in Singapore say the facility is scheduled to open by 2009; by that time commercial suborbital flights may well be available in Oklahoma, Mojave, and perhaps New Mexico. (No date was announced for another Space Adventures spaceport project in the UAE.) Second, the group backing the spaceport is still trying to line up financing, even while a study by KPMG has raised the cost of the effort from $115 to $130 million. Of that, the article revealed, Space Adventures is providing $10 million; no other investment was revealed in the article, although the spaceport group said it still plans to have all the necessary financing lined up by the end of the year.
Orlando Sentinel columnist Eric Michaels recounts a trip on Zero-G’s aircraft he took earlier this year. It’s clear from his column that he enjoyed the trip; his stomach, not so much: “Trust me, I’ve never had so much fun making myself sick.” In his case, the queasiness didn’t come until after he completed all his parabolas. “I was lacing up my sneakers when the Action Stomach started sending hints up the pipe that it wasn’t happy. Seconds later, I watched a backward replay of breakfast. Thankfully, I had eaten lightly.” He notes that Zero-G claims that only one in 100 fliers will experience motion sickness, but “of the eight rookie fliers on my trip, six had to use air-sickness bags.”
Of course, Michaels could have avoided that unpleasantness by taking the motion sickness drugs Zero-G provides. However, “I’m not prone to motion sickness, and Nancy Reagan once told me to ‘Just Say No.’ So I stuck to her sage advice and passed.” In the end, though, “I wish I’d said ‘Yes’ to the drugs.”
Yesterday was a big news for up-and-coming commercial spaceports that want to serve the space tourism market:
Oklahoma’s spaceport at the former Clinton-Sherman Air Force Base has received its operators license from the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation. (The announcement was rather low-key: while the FAA issued a press release about the license, that press release isn’t available on FAA’s web site; see RLV and Space Transport News for the full text of the release, which apparently got a scattershot email distribution. [Update: the official press release is now available as a Word document on the FAA/AST web site.]) It’s certainly a big step forward for the spaceport, although one that had been anticipated for some time: over a month ago at ISDC, George French of Rocketplane Kistler said that the license would be official “in the next two weeks”. In his MSNBC article, Alan Boyle notes that the license “gives Oklahoma an edge in the nascent space tourism industry”, although that edge may be illusory: other planned spaceports, most notably New Mexico, will likely have their FAA licenses well in advance of any commercial operations planned from them, so it will come down to the ability of the companies that plan to operate from them to carry out their business plans.
Speaking of New Mexico, the state has selected a company to begin work designing the Southwest Regional Spaceport. California-based DMJM/AECOM beat out two other finalists to win the contract to provide architectural and engineering services for the spaceport. That work will include “hangers [sic], control building, support buildings, roads, utilities, launch pads and fuel storage facilities,” according to the state press release. An AP article notes that a final contract between the state and DMJM/AECOM is still being negotiated, and will cover an initial “programming” phase.
SPACE.com reviews Spaceport Singapore, the spaceport announced by Space Adventures earlier this year. While the spaceport will host suborbital spaceflight, it will also provide a number of other attractions, including a space camp and various simulators. One sticking point, something that Space Adventures’ Eric Anderson has mentioned in speeches in the recent past: the full $115 million needed for the spaceport hasn’t been raised yet, although proponents believe they’ll have the money in hand by the end of the year.
Space Adventures announced yesterday that Tom Jones (the former astronaut, not the singer) has signed on the company’s advisory board. Jones is a veteran of four shuttle missions and recently published a memoir of his days as an astronaut, Sky Walking. “I’m impressed with the level of focus and dedication at Space Adventures in opening the space frontier to the private sector,” Jones said in a press release. Jones joins a number of other former astronauts who serve as advisors to the company.
Flight International provides some relatively new details about the performance of SpaceShipTwo, based on comments made by Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn and Scaled Composites’ Brian Binnie at a space tourism forum in London last week. According to the report, SS2 will fly to an altitude of 140 km and experience 7 g’s on reentry. However, the “shuddering” experienced by SS1 during the end of its engine burn–caused by the intermittent injection of nitrous oxide oxidizer as the tank neared depletion–may still exist in SS2 because of “its slim design margins”. (The article does note that SS2 will use a “new hybrid rocket motor”, which is not surprising given both that SS2 will be larger than SS1 and the deteriorated relationship between Scaled Composites and SpaceDev, which built the hybrid motors used by SS1.)
The 7-g reentry is a little surprising, because that’s a lot of acceleration to expose tourists to, although that’s probably not avoidable given the higher altitudes SS2 will fly to. That will make the development of seats that can protect passengers from the worst accelerations all the more important. One odd point at the end of the article: the increased downrange of SS2 “could enable it to land at Roswell instead of the New Mexico South West Regional Spaceport near Las Cruces.” But why would you want to do that? The purpose of suborbital space tourism is not to go from point A to point B, but to go from point A to point A via space. Landing at another airport only increases logistical complexities and costs.
That’s the gist of a short Flight International article about the two companies, based on comments that representatives of the two companies made at a space tourism forum last week in London. According to the article, Chris Faranetta of Space Adventures said that “it is a race” to see who would be the first to offer suborbital space tourism services, while Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn said “he was only interested in developing the safest system.”
This sort of jockeying is not unique to companies trying to break into, or create, a new market. The comments say something about the relative position of the two companies: those companies that believe they are, or are perceived to be, in the lead, have little incentive to play up a race with lagging competitors, while those farther behind will do just that to more closely associate themselves with the market leader. Virgin Galactic is certainly perceived as the market leader for suborbital space tourism. Virgin Galactic is sticking to a late 2008 date for beginning commercial service, while Space Adventures has not disclosed a date for its Russian-developed Explorer, although the company has downplayed Russian reports that the Explorer will not be ready for test flights until at least 2009.
Last month we mentioned Mark Rocket, a New Zealand businessman whose dedication to flying on Virgin Galactic went so far that he changed his last name to Rocket. It turns out Mr. Rocket is quite the entrepreneur: besides his own personal web site, he has the “Rocket Network” of businesses, primarily related to internet services and business: shopping cart software, anti-spam software, and email marketing campaign solutions. One that stands out is Rocket Florist, an online florist. It has, though, attracted the critical attention of comsumer.org.nz, a Kiwi equivalent of Consumer Reports. According to an article by the non-profit organization, it charges $80 for bouquets from customers but the value of the orders it passes on to local florists for fulfillment is only $49, in part because of a convoluted supply chain with several middlemen, each taking a cut. “Rocket Florist’s service is a waste of money,” the article concludes, noting that people can save money by using a local florist instead. “After all, it’s just a bunch of flowers - it isn’t rocket science.”
One other note: Mr. Rocket’s web site includes a number of images from his visit to Mojave last month along with a number of other Virgin Galactic “Founders.” One photo is a group shot with “50″ of the Founders (although there appear to be only about 40 people in the photo, including Burt Rutan) posing in front of the White Knight aircraft. This is probably one of the few group shots of a significant fraction of Virgin Galactic’s 100 Founders.
A CNET News.com article about a speech Greg Olsen gave at a San Francisco conference this week provides some general details about his experiences as a space tourist, but also some interesting insight into how he got interested in taking the Soyuz trip to the ISS in the first place:
A New Jersey resident, Olsen got the idea for his trip one morning in 2003 while reading the paper at a local Starbucks. Space Adventures–a U.S.-based space-travel agency contracted with Russia–had sent the first two private citizens to ISS, according to a news article that day. Olsen, who was recently flush with cash from the sale of his optical technology company Epitaxx to a telecom operator, decided it was a good time to pursue a long-held dream.
One other trivia item of note: it appears that Huggies is the diaper brand of choice among Soyuz crew members.