A few odds and ends from the last week of 2007:

• The Washington Times reported on Richard Garriott’s planned flight to the ISS in 2008 in an article published on Christmas Day. In addition to Garriott’s plans to perform commercial experiments on his flight, the article notes that “companies are invited to develop advertising campaigns or commercials that Mr. Garriott could shoot in space.”
• The British newspaper The Guardian reexamines Virgin Galactic’s plans to perform suborbital spaceflights from Kiruna, Sweden, allowing passengers to fly through the aurora borealis. There’s not much news here, other than that a sounding rocket flight is planned for November with cameras on it “to find out what being inside the aurora actually looks like”; it apparently never occurred to scientists to do this before.
• In Monday’s The Telegraph, also from the UK, Jim White feels a blast of nostalgia for the heady days of the 1960s space race thanks to Virgin Galactic (with an assist to Wallace and Gromit). Virgin’s planned suborbital flights will be expensive, but “for many of us of a certain vintage it might well represent the finest value for money: I’m getting all excited about the possibility just writing about it.”

In an article on its web site posted Thursday, famed insurer Lloyd’s of London looks at the potential business of insuring commercial human spaceflight. “Lloyd’s brokers and underwriters say there is capacity in the market to provide insurance cover for the commercial flights if underwriters are convinced about their level of exposure to passenger liabilities,” the article states, summarizing the developments by Virgin Galactic and then talking with a number of people in the insurance business, particularly in the small but established niche of space insurance.

Not surprisingly, there are a lot of questions about the level of risk and, thus, the availability of coverage and the rates for such insurance. “[A]t present until the design and construction of the craft itself is finalized then insurers will not be in a position to give any rating to the risk,” said Roger Bathurst, CEO of International Space Brokers. He adds that, if such insurance is provided, “the risk will be extremely specialist and the Lloyd’s market would be viewed as a natural home for what may be the final frontier for aviation risk.”

One area of concern for insurers is that the target market for suborbital spaceflights will be people of high net worth, creating a high degree of exposure for insurers in the event of an accident. “An aircraft which would be regularly full of very high net worth passenger would cause some concern for underwriters in terms of their exposure should any accident occur,” said Chris Gibbs, a space underwriter for Brit Insurance. That’s no surprise for people in the industry who have raised concerns about the availability and cost of insurance for commercial human spaceflight. As Pat Bahn of TGV Rockets has said on a number of occasions, “Amateurs talk propellants, professionals talk insurance.”

AFP reported yesterday that Roskosmos head Anatoly Perminov suggested the end was near for tourist flights to the ISS on regular Soyuz taxi flights there. According to Perminov, the planned increase in the ISS crew size from three to six—expected by the end of the decade, when ISS assembly is complete—will leave no room on Soyuz taxi flights to the station for tourists. “I’m afraid that from 2009, tourism as we see it today may be discontinued,” Perminov said, according to the report.

Perminov did indicate that there is strong demand for such flights, enough that “we cannot satisfy all requests”. However, the article doesn’t address the possibility that additional Soyuz spacecraft could be manufactured, perhaps for dedicated tourist flights to the ISS (not to mention plans for circumlunar tourist flights). Space Adventures has reportedly been looking at what’s needed to increase the Soyuz production rate, so this report may be a little premature.

A follow-up to our earlier coverage of the re-launch of Space Access LLC: A Corpus Christi, Texas TV station reports that the company’s plans include an “an economically-friendly community on roughly 25,000 acres of land” on Kenedy Ranch south of the city. That development is said to be similar to Celebration, Florida, the Disney planned community near Orlando. The article doesn’t indicate why the company wants to undertake a major real estate development on top of a suborbital vehicle project—the vehicle project alone would appear to be challenging enough for a startup company.

Back in July I noted here that a new Indian TV channel was planning a contest with a suborbital spaceflight as the top prize. Indiantelevision.com reports that the televised portion of this contest is ready to begin, with four episodes starting Sunday. According to the article:

The episodes are divided into four rounds - the crazy TV show, the spykar space party moonwalk, the great combination commentary and the black hole - each comprising of different set of challenges for the contestants.

I’m not sure what a “great combination commentary” is, but overall this series sounds pretty crazy even without the contest so named. The winner will be “India’s first space tourist”, according to the article, but as previously noted here at least one Indian is among Virgin Galactic’s Founders, and probably has an inside track to be the first in space.

It’s almost like a flashback to the 1990s. Space Access LLC, a company that dates back to the mid-1990s, formally announced its plans Thursday to provide suborbital space tourism flights starting in 2011. Back in the 1990s Space Access was proposing a spaceplane that could launch satellites or carry cargo to the ISS. The company is still pushing a spaceplane, now with a current focus on suborbital commercial human spaceflight, although the company does plan to provide orbital flights starting in 2014.

One thing that sets Space Access apart from other companies in the business is its technology: it eschews rocket engines for something called an ejector ramjet that uses liquid hydrogen fuel but oxygen from the atmosphere. The company claims that the ejector ramjet is seven times more efficient than a rocket engine because the vehicle doesn’t have to carry its own oxidizer. The company also claims that this approach is more “environmentally conscious” since liquid hydrogen doesn’t create carbon emissions and can be generated from renewable energy sources (it does admit that hydrogen today primarily comes from petroleum refinement). The “Skyhopper” vehicle will also be fast: flying up to Mach 7, compared to the Mach 3-4 peak speed announced by other suborbital spaceflight ventures.

Another unique aspect of Space Access is that it is inviting prospective customers to South Florida for a series of seminars starting in January where they’ll “participate in the development of a revolutionary vehicle” by attending seminars about the vehicle development. All this will be at an “exclusive private resort” on Key Largo, south of Miami, near where Space Access has offices (although the company’s mailing address is Huntertown, Indiana, a suburb of Fort Wayne.) The cost? $7,200 per person [adjusted on Friday to “only” $3,600] for the three-day event (based on double occupancy).

The company’s FAQ features some more details about Space Access and its plans. The company proposes to build up to eight of the Skyhopper suborbital vehicles and performing 15 flights a day. Flights will take place from facilities the company calls “SpaceGateWays”, with the first to be built south of Corpus Christi, Texas (as reported last week). It’s an interesting new venture, but it’s entering a crowded market with a new set of technologies: a difficult challenge for any company in any field.

Marketing Week reports Thursday that Virgin Galactic will be unveiling more than just the design of White Knight Two and SpaceShipTwo during an event at the American Museum of Natural History in New York on January 23. “We will be unveiling the entire design and structure of the project, and it looks nothing like what we’ve had before,” said Will Whitehorn. Among the additional details to come out at that event: the use of the system to launch small satellites and how the research that has gone into the project “can benefit other airlines”. Also to be revealed: a new branding scheme for Virgin Galactic. “The eye [in the Virgin Galactic logo] will remain, but it will have new branding around it and a new color scheme.” (Perhaps more use of Virgin’s distinctive shade of red?) Whitehorn also said that, in their current plans, the first commercial suborbital flights could take place “by the end of 2010.”

Another company is making an effort at developing a reality TV show with a space theme and prize. Isthmus, a paper in Madison, Wisconsin, reports that a pair of Univ. of Wisconsin alums are promoting a proposed reality TV series: “Geeks in Space” (featuring a trailer produced by Bo Ryan, the men’s basketball coach at UW). The concept: put a bunch of, well, geeks, in, um, space. Actually, a simulated spaceship here on Earth, where the contestants, in a bizarre array of costumes, would live together while competing in challenges. (Losing competitors are, humanely, not ejected out the airlock but instead put into a “freeze chamber” for the remainder of the show.)

The space tie-in comes from an agreement the producers have with Space Adventures. “They are willing to partner with us when the show sells and will provide many challenges and the ultimate prize,” said Megan Kaiser, one of the show’s creators, “a trip to the edge of space.” Since Space Adventures is not actively pushing suborbital spaceflight, one wonders how this would work if some network gives the show a green light.

Right now, though, the show is still a concept, despite pitches to some of the major broadcast networks and cable networks like, logically, the Sci-Fi Channel. “So far, every network has loved our show, but for one reason or another, has yet to make us an offer,” said Kaiser. However, if that writers’ strike drags on, you never know…

In this week’s issue of The Space Review, I provide an overview of spaceport developments in New Mexico and elsewhere. As you’ve read here, there have been a wide variety of developments in spaceports in various locations, even as the commercial ventures seeking to use them have found it harder than expected to get funding and overcome technical obstacles. Despite those concerns, many still see spaceports as a driver of economic growth, bringing high-tech space industry jobs to new regions.

As if the current crop of space tourism ventures, and the spaceports they plan to operate out of, aren’t enough, come a couple of developments. KRIS-TV in Corpus Christi, Texas, reports that Space Access is planning to offer suborbital tourism flights out of the city in the next future. If the name Space Access sounds familiar, it’s the same company, run by the same person, Steven Wurst, that was trying to develop a suborbital vehicle back during the RLV boom of the late 1990s. (I wrote an article about Space Access and other companies presenting at the Space Access ’99 conference in Phoenix for the now-defunct online publication SpaceViews in May 1999.) Space Access was then primarily pursing satellite launch, but it now appears focused on space tourism, although the report gives no information about the vehicle design other than the impression it is aircraft-like in some manner. While the online KRIS-TV article claims that flights “could begin as soon as January”, the actual video report, linked to from the article, indicates a 2011 start date for suborbital flights, which seems more realistic (or, at least, less unrealistic).

Meanwhile, Brian Feeney is pressing ahead with plans to develop a suborbital vehicle, also to serve the space tourism market. According to the Canadian Press, Feeney plans to select a site to build and launch his suborbital vehicle by the end of 2008. Several Ontario sites are mentioned, although an earlier report by the Toronto Sun put an emphasis on the Niagara region. This effort would presumably for the DreamSpace Group, announced last year but with little reported development since then (indeed, the company’s web site, which once had illustrations and other information, has reverted to a placeholder page from Network Solutions.)

The CP article gets commentary from Doug Welch, identified as a professor of physics and astronomy at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who is skeptical about timelines for space tourism ventures in general. “2011 sounds very unrealistic to me,” he said. “I’d be surprised if it would be before 2015, and if I had to put my own $20 on it, I’d say 2020.” Welch’s expertise in and knowledge of space tourism isn’t specified in the article. One wonders whether this is a case where a reporter picked an astronomy professor in the belief that he or she must therefore be knowledgeable about commercial space efforts; that’s like asking an electrical engineering professor to weigh in on the viability of Web 2.0 ventures…