Space Adventures announced today that it has acquired a 100% stake in Zero Gravity Corporation, the company that provides parabolic flights that simulate weightlessness. Space Adventures already had a stake in the company (of undisclosed size, but said to be “one of the largest investors” in Zero-G); terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. “Our decision to acquire the remaining equity in ZERO-G is a strategic fit within Space Adventures’ overall business plan, strengthening our position as the only operational commercial spaceflight services company,” Eric Anderson, president and CEO of Space Adventures, said in a statement. Zero Gravity Corp. will continue as a separate operating unit, with co-founder Peter Diamandis continuing as CEO. Diamandis, who also co-founded Space Adventures, will become managing director of the company as well. Former NASA astronaut Byron Lichtenberg, another Zero-G co-founder, will remain as CTO of the unit. The deal actually dates back to the beginning of the year, but was not announced until today.

This acquisition is not necessarily that surprising (given in part that Diamandis helped found both companies). Space Adventures cut its teeth back in the late 90s selling zero-g flights in Russia (since Zero-G was still working its way through the regulatory process to permit such commercial flights in the US), and bringing that capability in-house doubtless has some financial benefits to the company. The press release plays up the vertical integration aspect of the deal, allowing the same company to offer everything from the parabolic flights to orbital missions, but right now there’s not much in-between, especially since Space Adventures has been downplaying earlier plans to develop suborbital vehicles.

A Reuters article last week led with the news that Virgin Galactic planned to order additional SpaceShipTwo vehicles, with an initial order of five. That, though, has been what the company has been saying for some time (although the option for seven more, also mentioned in the article, isn’t as widely known). Virgin’s Alex Tai added that he expected the company to be profitable “inside the first five years”.

The Reuters article was filed in Singapore, where Virgin Galactic and other companies were for an aerospace expo. A local publication, Today, reported that Virgin’s plans to expand beyond Spaceport America could breathe new life into proposals for Spaceport Singapore. The proposed spaceport was announced two years ago by Space Adventures, which proposed to use a Russian-designed suborbital vehicle to operate out of there as well as a new spaceport in the UAE. However, Spaceport Singapore has stalled out; the web site’s sole press release dates from the original announcement in February 2006. Space Adventures’ Eric Anderson told Today that they have managed to raise only half the funding required for the project, although he remains hopeful that the rest can be found by the end of the year. Singapore officials appear to be indifferent to the project; the city-state’s trade minister told the publication that the spaceport was a private, not public. venture.

[Apologies for the long delay in posts - I’m catching up on a lot of other work.]

Last week Flightglobal.com reported that there will be no more seats for paying passengers on Soyuz flights to the ISS after April 2009 because of the increase in the station’s crew size from three to six. The article cited ESA officials, who said that the increase in crew size means that all the seats will be filled on the taxi flights, despite the increase in flight rate needed to support the larger crew.

I happened to talk for a moment with Space Adventures CEO Eric Anderson after a speech he gave last Wednesday at the FAA’s annual Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Crystal City, VA. I asked him about the report and he said they had reservations secured for the April 2009 and were in negotiations for flight opportunities beyond that. (Something that was later added to the Flightglobal.com report.) [As Mr. Coppinger notes below, that statement was in the original article, and I simply missed it the first time I read the piece.] Asked if he would be interested in doing business with one of the commercial ventures planning to provide crew resupply services to the ISS under NASA’s COTS program, he said that he would be happy to talk with “whoever can provide safe and effective transport” to the station.

Space Adventures announced today that Australian entrepreneur Nik Halik will be the backup to Richard Garriott on Garriott’s fall 2008 flight to the ISS. Halik is paying $3 million for the privilege of being the backup; that money can be used later towards the cost of his own orbital or other spaceflight. Halik, 38, is described in the press release as “the CEO and founder of several companies including Financial Freedom Institute and Money Masters”. He is also an adventure tourist with plans to climb Mount Everest in 2009. He’s also an author of an upcoming book, The Thrillionaire, which the release describes as “an autobiography that also provides astute investment strategies.” Enough to make you feel lazy, no matter how busy you are.

Readers might recall that Halik claimed to have been selected as the backup two months ago, according to accounts in the Australian media. At that time Space Adventures said that no selection had been made but that Halik was one of the candidates. Evidently that premature announcement didn’t spoil his ultimate selection.

Space Adventures announced Monday that its latest orbital spaceflight client, Richard Garriott, has started training for his October flight to the ISS. Garriott is in Star City, Russia, where his training, including Russian language lessons, have kicked into high gear, he tells SPACE.com. “This year is definitely where all my priorities and schedules have rotated to where space becomes the top priority and terrestrial activities become secondary,” Garriott, a computer game developer, said.

Neither the SPACE.com report nor the Space Adventures press release, though, said anything about the selection of a backup for Garriott. Back in November, Space Adventures announced it was offering the backup flight opportunity for $3 million, which could be credited for a future flight. After one Australian claimed to be that backup candidate in late November, the company said no selection had been made, but that someone would be picked by January “at the latest”.

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.”

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.

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…

Apologies for the short notice, but Eric Anderson of Space Adventures and his latest client for a Soyuz flight to the ISS, Richard Garriott, will be on WAMU-FM in Washington DC at 12 noon today on The Kojo Nnamdi Show, talking about space tourism. If you’re not in Washington and/or can’t listen at noon, archives of the show should be available on the web site later today.

News reports out of Melbourne, Australia over the weekend indicated that Space Adventures had selected an Australian-born millionaire to be the backup to Richard Garriott on his trip to the ISS next October. “Self-described ‘thrillionaire’ Nik Halik has been named as the back-up crewman for next year’s October commercial flight to the International Space Station,” reported the Herald Sun. Another paper, The Age, also reported that Halik said that he had been selected as the backup for the trip, putting him in “a good position to lead the next flight in 2009″.

There’s just one problem with all this, as you might imagine upon reading this far: Halik hasn’t been selected yet by Space Adventures to be the backup. According to company spokesperson Stacey Tearne, Halik is indeed one of the candidates to pay $3 million to be Garriott’s backup, but no decision has been made. A selection will be made in January “at the latest”, she said in an email this morning.

Little details like that aren’t stopping Halik from dreaming big, though. According to the Herald Sun he said he wants not only to go to the ISS some day, but also “be one of the first to colonise the moon”. “By 2018, the Japanese want to colonise it and have a moon base and use it to explore the galaxy,” he told the paper. (This may be news to the Japanese.)

It appears that Halik, who made his money through investments and investment seminars (”over 31,178 people have already attended his Mastery Educational Events”), has been pursuing this goal for some time, according to this 2006 article:

In 2003, Nik commenced his training through the Russian Orbital Space Program. Having completed his Edge of Space supersonic flight and Zero Gravity training flight just recently in Moscow, he will be the first recorded Australian civilian to fly Sub-Orbit soon, qualifying him the status of being certified as an astronaut. The next adventure after this will be his ultimate mission and destiny to launch to the International Space Station (ISS) for a fortnight orbital stay. Nik, alongside his sponsors is planning on executing the first history making stock market trade in SPACE.