I was contacted by a reporter earlier this week looking for information about Sprague Astronautics, a company that made a splash a few years ago (under the name AeraSpaceTours) but has been quiet since. (Its last press release is dated June 28, 2005.) I haven’t heard anything about them for some time, and assume the company is either defunct or in deep dormancy, but would be curious to know more about what happened to it.

Also, I noticed earlier this week that the web site for Benson Space Company is down. If you go to the site you see this message: “This Website was developed by Rockets Away! Media a service brand of DoubleBill Productions, LLC.”; it then redirects to the Rockets Away! Media site without further explanation. Benson Space was active last year, including a new design for its suborbital vehicle at the ISDC in Dallas last May; there had been little in the way of updates since the summer, though.

(The picture above doesn’t have anything to do directly with the conference, it’s just a nice view of the Moon rising around sunset Wednesday as seen from the conference site in Las Cruces.)

Yesterday’s sessions of the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight didn’t have any groundbreaking revelations, but there were still some interesting developments and news from the various conference sessions, which I’ll summarize below:

• One of the most informative presentations during the day was the first, by Valin Thorn, deputy program manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew & Cargo Program. He addressed head-on the recent decision to terminate the funded COTS agreement with Rocketplane Kistler, saying that they had missed milestones not only for their financing, but also a cargo module critical design review. He called the K-1 concept “outstanding” and said he wouldn’t be surprised to see them resubmit a revised proposal in the new round of COTS bidding.
• John Herrington, filling in for George French in the same morning session (French was at the conference but called away to a board meeting), confirmed earlier reports that the company had lined up commitments from investors for $300 million of the sought-for $450 million (not $500 million as reported elsewhere), but those plans fell through because of a variety of reasons, including NASA’s agreement to buy Progress and Soyuz flights from Russia as well as comments by unnamed NASA officials that appeared to be disparaging towards COTS.
• Herrington did say that work was proceeding with the XP suborbital spaceplane, and the company plans to announce a revised design of the vehicle on Friday. From what I understand, this will be more than a minor tweak to the existing modified-Learjet approach. Herrington said that some of the investors who has expressed an interest in the K-1 may also be interested in investing in the XP (which is done by a separate subsidiary company, Rocketplane Global), but didn’t have anything specific to say about XP financing.
• Thorn’s talk also revealed some new developments by other companies that have unfunded COTS agreements. SPACEHAB is working on a concept called ARCTUS to develop a cargo spacecraft based on the Centaur upper stage. PlanetSpace, in addition to their work on their Nova booster and spaceplane, is also working on a less-ambitious concept that would use a launch vehicle called the Athena 3 (a Lockheed Martin Athena 2 augmented with two shuttle SRB segments) for carrying cargo to the station.
• SpaceDev CEO Mark Sirangelo said his company is continuing work on its Dream Chaser design for both orbital and suborbital applications, including working with NASA on an unfunded COTS agreement. The company’s operations have been disrupted because of the San Diego wildfires that forced them to evacuate their Poway, California headquarters; he said their team is working on their new COTS proposal from a trailer on a beach near San Diego.
• Sirangelo added that SpaceDev may work with Benson Space Company on engine technology for BSC’s suborbital vehicle, but plans no additional involvement on that project.
• Hugues Laporte-Weywada, senior vice president of EADS Astrium, didn’t offer a lot of new details about his company’s suborbital space tourism vehicle. That effort started in early 2006 with market and design studies; the Rocketplane-like spaceplane won out over rocket-and-capsule and air-launched spaceplane approaches. The company is continuing work on both technology and financing, and hopes to have all the money lined up to develop the vehicle as soon as possible in early 2008.
• The government-commercial synergy panel was a crowded mix of familiar topics (operationally responsive space, the Marine Corps’ SUSTAIN concept, and other RLV technology development work), without a lot of new developments announced.
• Two afternoon panels featuring past and expectant space travelers were combined into one, with Anousheh Ansari and two NASA astronauts (Michael Lopez-Alegria and Dan Barry) discussing what their orbital flights were like, as well as expectant or would-be space tourists Reda Anderson (Rocketplane), Craig Willan (Virgin Galactic), and Lori Garver (who tried to arrange a trip to the ISS in 2002) discussing their expectations. One theme that emerged: when you’re in space, take time to simply soak in the experience rather than get caught up in tasks or taking pictures.

Thursday’s sessions appear focused on spaceport development, financing, and more discussions with astronauts. I will continue, as schedule and technology permits, to microblog some insights from the conference on Twitter during the day.

As a followup to Benson Space’s announcement of its “low-G” reentry plan, Brian Binnie of Scaled Composites talked a bit about the planned reentry experience for SpaceShipTwo during a talk Saturday at the Heinlein Centennial in Kansas City. According to Binnie, the peak G forces on reentry will be about 7 Gs. However, in a later discussion, he said that the G-force profile during reentry will be shaped like a bell curve, with about 20 seconds where the forces are in excess of 4 Gs. (Taking 7 Gs lying flat, as passengers on SS2 will be doing, is equivalent to taking 3-4 Gs sitting up, he noted.) He added that while Benson Space’s approach could be a way to mitigate G forces, the approach Scaled and Virgin are taking has the advantage of being simpler and thus less prone to failures.

In his speech at the ISDC in May, Jim Benson said that the reentry forces that his company’s redesigned suborbital spacecraft would be less than the 6 Gs that SpaceShipTwo will experience. He wasn’t more specific then, but this week the company announced that their vehicle will subject passengers to no more than 3 Gs during reentry by spreading the deceleration forces over a wider range of altitudes. The vehicle will accomplish this through something called “Variable Ballistic Coefficient” slowing, which involves a number of vehicle configuration changes, most notably the dive brakes; the company has filed a patent application for this approach.

Something like this could prove to be a good differentiator over time: lower G forces will result in a more comfortable experience for passengers and perhaps allow people that for health reasons can’t tolerate higher G forces to fly at all. It may be less of an issue in the near-term, though, since people who are the most eager to fly (and have the means to pay for the flight) will probably be willing to put up with the inconvenience of a momentary surge of G forces.

Jim Benson used his appearance on a panel at the ISDC on Friday afternoon to announce his company’s revised suborbital spaceship. Benson said that the new design came together after SpaceDev completed a five-month study of the viability of using the original Dream Chaser design—a lifting body based on the HL-20—for suborbital flights. The blunt shape of the spacecraft generated a lot of drag during ascent, he said, requiring the use of an external booster to get the vehicle into space. Also, the found that it was impossible to have the vehicle land back its launch site without subjecting those inside to accelerations as high as 7 Gs. The g forces could be lowered, he said, but it would require landing about 100 miles (160 km) downrange. “I had a couple of sleepless nights, thinking, ‘This just doesn’t feel quite right,’” he said.

As a result, they looked at alternative approaches, and settled on the new design after Hoot Gibson, the former astronaut that is Benson Space Company’s chief test pilot, suggested looking at bullet-shaped vehicles like the X-1, X-2, X-15, and T-38. That led to the design announced Friday, which takes off vertically using six of the hybrid rocket motors SpaceDev built for the SpaceShipOne flights, flies to a peak altitude of about 105 kilometers, and glides to a runway landing. Benson said peak accelerations will be less than that planned for SpsaceShipTwo, which will generate up to 6 Gs during reentry. Benson said later that the company hopes to achieve a two-hour turnaround time for the vehicle, with the changeout of the hybrid motors being the critical factor. The vehicle can carry six people, including one pilot.

The redesign cost the company a couple of months, Benson said, but will result in something that is “even simpler to fabricate, less expensive, and faster” to develop, allowing the company to make up the lost time. Benson is working now on raising a round of funding to allow development of the new vehicle (which also goes by the “Dream Chaser” moniker for now, although he said they are considering a new name for it). He said he is talking with five key investors, anyone of whom could fund the whole project. If he is able to secure that money in the next few months, he believes that they can begin commercial flights in 2009, ahead of Virgin Galactic, Rocketplane, and others.

Ad Astra/SPACE.com reports that Benson Space Company and SpaceDev plan to release a new design for their Dream Chaser suborbital spacecraft during the ISDC this weekend here in Dallas. The design drops the HL-20-based lifting body approach for the vehicle in favor of a more conventional rocketplane approach that bears similarities to the X-15, albeit with a cockpit studded with portholes like SpaceShipOne. This vehicle is intended to be “safer and more aerodynamic” that the earlier design, Benson said. The article has only a few other details, but Benson is scheduled to speak Friday afternoon during a panel session at the ISDC, which may be his opportunity to talk more about the new design and its implications for the company’s space tourism plans.

Update: Just after I posted this Benson Space issued a press release announcing the new design.

Today’s Bakersfield Californian profiles two companies that are competing with Virgin Galactic to fly space tourists, namely Interorbital Systems and Benson Space. Both have Mojave ties: Interorbital is located at Mojave Airport and Benson Space plans to do testing at the airport. The same airport, of course, is home to Scaled Composites, which is developing SpaceShipTwo for Virgin and will host the initial flights of the vehicle, at least until Spaceport America in New Mexico is ready.

Given all the publicity surrounding Virgin Galactic, why would someone sign up with another company? Tim Reed, a Missouri businessman, says he’s getting a good deal: for $250,000 Interorbital will give him an orbital flight, versus the $200K for a Virgin suborbital flight. Interorbital believes that the suborbital market “will dry up” once cheap orbital flights are available, which is quite possible (depending on how cheap suborbital flights become in the process). The problem, though, is you have to develop a vehicle that can provide cheap orbital flights first, and as the article notes, “while the Mojave firm has developed detailed plans and conducted several rocket engine tests, no actual rocket for space tourism has yet been built.”

The website for Time magazine has a fairly detailed review article about the emerging space tourism industry. Writer Cathy Booth Thomas talks with a number of the leading companies, including Virgin Galactic, Armadillo Aerospace, and Benson Space Company, and also covers the more secretive Blue Origin; there’s also coverage if Bigelow Aerospace and developing spaceports, in particular Spaceport America in New Mexico. If you’ve been following the industry you won’t find that much new in this article, although the visit to Necker Island, Richard Branson’s private Caribbean resort where he gathered a number of his Founders late last year, is at the very least entertaining (including the obligatory discussion of sex in space, featuring Branson himself.)

Speaking of the Journal, the front page of today’s issue has an article about the lingering beef between Burt Rutan and Jim Benson. (Yes, subscription required. Blame the Journal, not me.) As many readers are already aware. SpaceDev, founded by Benson, built the hybrid rocket motor used by Rutan’s SpaceShipOne, but the two had a rather public falling out, which included threats of lawsuits by Rutan (which, the article states, were not followed through “to avoid the expense and distraction of litigation”.) The two now, of course, are rivals, with Rutan leading the development of SpaceShipTwo for Virgin Galactic and Benson starting a new company to help fund development of SpaceDev’s Dream Chaser concept. For those who have followed this issue over the last few years, there’s not too much new here, although reported Andy Pasztor does get comments from both Benson and Rutan.

One other item of note in the article: Benson tells the Journal that he is planning “a nationwide competition to hand out free rides aboard his spacecraft” that will be formally announced in the next few weeks.

When I saw Jim Benson at the FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference in the DC area on Tuesday, he said his company, Benson Space Company (BSC), would have an announcement to make on Wednesday. What would it be about? “You heard about the person recently who had to give up the flight he won?” he said.

It turns out the AP had the story on Tuesday, reporting that BSC had found a way to give Brian Emmitt a flight to space. Emmitt, as reported last month, had to give up a suborbital flight he won in an Oracle contest because he couldn’t afford the taxes on it. BSC, according to the AP article, will hire Emmitt as a consultant. He will be a “test passenger” when BSC’s vehicle, Dream Chaser, is ready for commercial service (as soon as late 2008, Benson says), and will provide feedback to the company in return. Since the flight isn’t being awarded as a prize, Emmitt won’t owe taxes on it—just on what BSC pays him.