Last week Interorbital Systems, which is developing the Neptune orbital vehicle, announced that it was partnering with DestinySpace Enterprises (DSE) to sell flights on the vehicle. Who is DestinySpace? The press release describes the company as “the world’s leader in space tourism retail”, which no doubt comes as a surprise to Space Adventures and Virgin Galactic, since it appears DSE hasn’t sent anyone to space or racked up much sales for tourist flights. The company’s web site describes it as “The Official Retailer Of The Space Tourism Industry” (official according to whom?) and it describes its mission as “a company working within the space tourism industry designed to act as a portal for all faucets of commercial space travel.” Obviously they hope to tap the latent demand for spaceflight and thus open the spigots of cash flow.

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.”