Some reaction (and clarification) on the EADS Astrium announcement this week about its plans to develop a suborbital vehicle for space tourism markets:

Burt Rutan, contacted by SPACE.com, doesn’t think much of the plan. He thinks it, and other rocket-powered aircraft that take off from a runway under rocket or jet power, will be more expensive to develop and operate, and also have greater operational risks. “The non-recurring development cost of a suborbital spaceship that has rocket and jet engines — both of which leave the atmosphere and experience reentry — will be far more than our SpaceShipTwo program,” he said.

The vice president of the European Commission, Guenter Verheugen, is also dissatisfied with the Astrium proposal, but for very different reasons: “It’s only for the super rich, which is against my social convictions,” he told Reuters. (One wonders what he thinks of the many terrestrial luxury items and resorts that are also affordable only by the “super rich” in Europe or elsewhere.) The article also notes that an Airbus official “declined to answer a question on the apparent paradox of a company trying to cut emissions in one area while investing in a project to blast rich travellers into space.” Perhaps because the paradox wasn’t apparent to him or others.

Also, thanks to a few readers that helped alleviate my ignorance about the seating inside Astrium’s “space jet”. It turns out the seats are hinged on each end, allowing the seats to rotate into the proper position during ascent so that the g-forces are aligned on the G_x vector through the body. It turns out there’s an illustration in a brochure about the vehicle, although, curiously, no matching image in a photo gallery. In any case, it makes much more sense to me now.

Yesterday the European aerospace company EADS Astrium announced its proposal to develop a suborbital vehicle to serve the space tourism market. While this is a new design, the concept of operations is almost identical to what Rocketplane Global has been developing for several years: a vehicle the size of a business jet that takes off under jet power, ignites a rocket engine at altitude to fly a suborbital trajectory, then land again under jet power. If nothing else, the Rocketplane people should feel pleased that concept has been “borrowed” by a big aerospace company (even though Astrium’s actual vehicle design is somewhat different from the Rocketplane XP.) It also appears that those earlier reports about the use of an A380F as a carrier aircraft turned out to be unfounded.

EADS didn’t release a lot of technical details about the vehicle design, but one thing about it struck me as odd. Look at the seating design of the cabin:

I can understand why the designed put the seats sideways: it makes it easy for passengers to look out windows, and may allow for a shorter passenger cabin. However, during ascent, this design means that the g-forces experienced by passengers will be on the G_y vector: across the body from left to right (or right to left, depending on how you’re oriented), which doesn’t seem as preferable as taking the g-forced through the body on the G_x vector. One of the features of the SpaceShipTwo cabin, for example, is the movable seat, so that the g-forces go through the G_x vector on both launch and reentry.

So what does Astrium’s entry into the market mean for space tourism in general, and other companies in the market? The endorsement of the suborbital space tourism concept by one of the world’s largest aerospace companies does certainly give industry an additional air of legitimacy, although it’s not clear just how important or necessary that endorsement is (except, perhaps, in the eyes of some contrarians.) And the addition of new ventures may increase the likelihood that one or more of them are eventually successful.

However, how seriously should this proposal be taken? According to the BBC Astrium estimates that it will cost €1 billion (US$1.3 billion) to develop the vehicle, and that the company will seek additional investment. They plan to charge €150,000-200,000 (US$195,000-265,000) per ticket, which puts them on the high end of known prices, particularly compared to Virgin’s $200,000 list price. It’s tough to see how the business plan for this would close, given the huge investment required: at the €200K ticket price, that means a revenue per flight of €800K. That would mean Astrium would have to fly the vehicle 1,250 times to recoup their investment—and that assumes a marginal cost per flight of zero! That’s sharply different from other companies, which require anywhere from five to 20 times less money to develop their vehicles, making it much more likely they can fly enough to pay off the investment.

A conspiratorially-minded person might wonder if this is an example of what’s known in the computer industry as FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt): by playing up their experience and putting such a high price tag on the venture, it could create uncertainty in the market that smaller, less experienced companies can pull off their plans. That may not be an intentional effect, but it is something to look out for in the months to come.

An article in the Sunday Times of London reports that EADS Astrium will announce this week plans to provide suborbital space tourism services. The article is short on details, although EADS is apparently looking at a suborbital vehicle that would reach 100 kilometers altitude, with a per-ticket cost similar to Virgin Galactic’s going rate of $200,000. One possibility is that EADS will offer an air-launched solution using the freighter variant of the A380 super jumbo jet as the carrier aircraft, something reported back in April by Flightglobal.com and this month by Engineering News.

The Times article breathlessly claims that “Europe is to enter manned space travel for the first time” because of this project, but that’s a debatable claim. Even if EADS does go ahead with this venture, there are already ventures at least partially based in Europe that may get there first: besides Virgin Galactic (which eventually plans to operate out of Kiruna, Sweden), of course, there’s Starchaser, which is based in the UK although with growing operations in the US. There’s also ARCA, the Romanian effort that competed for the X Prize and continues work at some level; it even calls itself “The European Private Manned Space Program”. There have also been a number of other European proposals and studies in recent years. The advantage EADS has, though, is that it has financial resources that no one else save Virgin can bring to bear on this, if it chooses to do so.

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.

I’m in Dallas right now for this year’s International Space Development Conference, which gets underway today with the Space Venture Finance Symposium, featuring a number of companies in the personal spaceflight or related fields. Some highlights from the rest of the conference, which runs through Monday morning:

• Alex Tai of Virgin Galactic will speak during a plenary session on Friday morning;
• Eric Anderson of Space Adventures will be the luncheon speaker on Friday, talking about his company’s proposal for circumlunar spaceflights for tourists;
• A “Space Business” track Friday afternoon features, among others, John Carmack of Armadillo Aerospace, Jim Benson of Benson Space Company, Chuck Lauer of Rocketplane, David Gump of t/Space, and Rick Tumlinson of Orbital Outfitters;
• A “Frontier Transport” track, also Friday afternoon, includes talks about space tourism and spaceports;
• Another Friday afternoon track on “Spaceflight Law and Insurance” covers some related issues, including “Insuring Space Tourism: It Isn’t Rocket Science - Is It?”;
• There will be a session on NASA’s COTS effort Saturday afternoon, with speakers from NASA, Rocketplane Kistler, and SpaceX;
• The COTS session will be followed by talks by Brett Alexander of the Personal Spaceflight Federation and Rick Homans of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority;
• A session Sunday afternoon will be devoted to NASA’s Centennial Challenges program and the X Prize Foundation;
• There will be two space medicine tracks, on Sunday afternoon and Monday morning, with a particular focus on space tourism medical issues.

There’s actually a lot more, but those are (some of) the highlights. I’ll post updates from these sessions as time permits. There will be plenty of other reports from other outlets, as well: Alan Boyle of MSNBC has already posted a preview article about the conference with a nice overview of the status of a number of companies in the field.

Jeff Greason of XCOR Aerospace gave an overview of his company’s work at Space Access this morning. He noted that the company actually turned a profit last year, with revenues of approximately $3.8 million; the profit was an artifact of the timing of the contracts it was working on, and he said he doesn’t anticipate being profitable again this year, although revenues should be similar to 2006. Because XCOR doesn’t have an independently wealthy founder or patron, “we have to flip burgers for a living”: doing developmental work for a number of government and commercial customers. XCOR selects that work based on the problems XCOR is facing for its own projects, thus in effect getting a customer to pay for XCOR’s R&D. “We have turned R&D from a cost center to a profit center,” he said.

XCOR is working on three engine projects: a 50-lbf engine for RCS applications, a 1,500-lbf engine for the Rocket Racing League (RRL), and a 7,500-lbf engine with ATK for NASA. The efforts are all going well, and Greason said that the RRL engine work, which had been going slowly at the request of the customer, is now ready to go back into high gear. XCOR is also still developing its own suborbital vehicle design, although Greason gave few specific details about the project, and no development schedule or funding information (although he did say later that have not finished raising all the money they need for the effort, but are close.) He did say that XCOR will, in the future, offer more details about its long-term roadmap, in much the same way Masten Space Systems does. “Suborbital is not the last step on our road.”

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.”

Last February Space Adventures made a big push to develop a suborbital spacecraft that would compete with Virgin Galactic, Rocketplane, and others in the suborbital space tourism arena. The Explorer vehicle would be based on a vehicle designed by Myasishchev Design Bureau in Russia to compete for the Ansari X Prize; the Russian space agency Roskosmos would be involved as well as Prodea, the company founded by Amir, Anousheh, and Hamir Ansari. Around the same time as this announcement Space Adventures also announced that it was involved in spaceport development efforts in the UAE and Singapore. Those announcements, along with Space Adventures’ track record in orbital space tourism, immediately put the company among the leading contenders to develop a successful suborbital space tourism business.

Since those announcements, though, there has been virtually no news about the effort coming out of Space Adventures and its partners. In an article published online on Friday, Flight International reports that those plans “hang in the balance”, following the completion of a feasibility study that had been in the works for months. Space Adventures will make a decision to proceed or not in the next couple of months, according to the article, but Roskosmos has already indicated that they are no longer involved with the effort.

My own angle on this: I spoke very briefly with Anousheh Ansari about this when she attended the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Conference last month. Her keynote address focused completely on her trip to the ISS, with no mention of any suborbital plans, so I asked her about it during one of the breaks. (To her credit, she didn’t leave after giving her speech, but in fact stayed the entire day, and could be seen leafing through some of the reports distributed at the conference during the sessions.) She said that the feasibility studies were ongoing, and that Prodea had not made a decision whether and how to proceed, nor did she give a timetable for any decisionmaking.

Space Adventures has a very strong brand in the space tourism field because of their work getting various clients to the ISS, so it would seem natural that they would also get involved in the suborbital field as well. It remains to be seen, though, whether they have the ability and interest in continuing with the development of a new vehicle, instead of perhaps partnering with one or more of the existing suborbital players (as they had previously indicated), helping shape the customer experience, selling tickets, and getting a cut of the revenues.

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.

The Anglo-American space tourism venture Starchaser is asking people to full out a space tourism survey. The survey consists of a little over 30 questions that attempt to gauge interest in suborbital space tourism among potential customers. The survey, primarily multiple choice but with a few questions that have free-form answers (”Please list the training activities that you would expect space tourists to undertake”) on topics like cost, training, flight experience, and related issues. According to an article in the Las Cruces Sun-News, the survey is linked to the ESA award Starchaser received earlier this month, which requires the company “to analyze the sustainability of commercial space tourism”.

It’s always good to see new efforts to gauge the potential size of the space tourism market. However, there are a few issues with the survey. One problem is that some of the questions are a little too vague to be useful. An example is this:

How much would you be willing to pay for a sub-orbital trip into space?

• Up to 3 months income
• Up to 6 months income
• Up to 1 years income
• More than 1 years income
• Not interested

The problem is that these figures are not defined; the survey does not ask the respondent to provide his/her income. Three months’ income for a minimum-wage worker is very different than three months’ income for a CEO, making it impossible to translate those estimates into dollar figures. If, hypothetically, a majority of respondents say that they would be willing to pay up to six months’ income for a trip, that provides no guidance to the company regarding what prices it should charge.

A bigger issue is the fact that this is a non-scientific survey: the sample will consist of people interested enough to seek out and take the survey, rather than a controlled sample. Worse, Starchaser is incentivizing potential respondents by offering them a chance to win an iPod if they complete the survey, potentially further skewing the sample pool to include those who take the survey solely to qualify to win the prize, giving little real thought to the questions. I can understand why they’re doing this—performing a more rigorous study would have cost Starchaser a significant fraction of the money they received from ESA—but in doing so they risk running afoul of the old programmer’s mantra: garbage in, garbage out.