New space race for tourists
By Chris Isidore, CNN/Money senior writer
The two-and-a-half years since the last manned NASA flight have seen great efforts by entrepreneurs who want to start providing flights for wealthy space tourists. (Click here for CNN.com's coverage of the postponement Wednesday of NASA's resumption of space shuttle flights.)
Virgin Atlantic won't be flying into space, but a sister company, Virgin Galactic appears to have an early lead, and hopes to offer sub-orbital flights as soon as 2008.
The company has a licensing agreement with aircraft designer Burt Rutan and Microsoft co-founder
Virgin Galactic is now spending $21.5 million for use of the technology, and plans to spend $100 million to build five of a new version of the space craft, which should each be able to carry six or seven passengers, plus crew, into space.
The flights will be sub-orbital, only giving the passengers about seven minutes of weightlessness and the ability to see the darkness of space and the curve of the earth. The cost for the flight, along with several days of training before takeoff, is estimated to be $200,000.
The fact that the space craft is carried into the air underneath another plane before being launched in mid-air gives it cost savings and safety that can't be accomplished in a traditional ground-launched rocket, said Will Whitehorn, the president of Virgin Galactic.
Whitehorn said it should allow for a successful business model, with about 460 passengers the first year of operation, or about the number of people who have traveled in space since the first manned fight more than 40 years ago.
"We've now signed up 100 pioneer launch customers," said Whitehorn. "We have another 35,000 have registered who said they want to take a flight. We're going to take an entirely different view of leaving the planet's surface."
Competition
But Whitehorn acknowledges his firm isn't the only one making such an effort. Jeff Bezos, founder of online retailer Amazon.com, has formed Blue Origin LLC, which is also working on the design of a spacecraft and has already bought 165,000 acres of land in
Elon Musk, who created the online payment system PayPal, formed Space Exploration Technologies, which is now working on unmanned rocket launches as a way to eventually carry people into space for a fraction of current costs.
Musk and Whitehorn both believe that private competition will bring down the cost of space flight to the point where it is soon affordable for folks who can't spend six figures.
"It is despairing to consider that the cost and reliability of access to space have barely changed since the Apollo era over three decades ago. Yet in virtually every other field of technology, we have made great strides in reducing cost and increasing capability," said Musk in testimony before Congress. He blamed lack of new entrants into the field of space flight for the current high costs.
But Musk's firm, known as SpaceX, is concentrating now on achieving unmanned missions carrying commercial payloads into orbit. Once it has a track record, it hopes to be able to carry as many as five passengers into orbit on a rocket it is now developing. But it has no time frame for those flights.
Whitehorn is careful not to directly criticize NASA for the lack of commercial flights, but he believes the agency's structure has stuck it with old and very expensive spacecraft.
"[The shuttle] is technologically a very 70s and 80s product," he said. "Things have come along leaps and bounds since then."
Space travel agency
So far the only space tourists have been American Dennis Tito and South African Mark Shuttleworth. Both underwent six months of training and paid $20 million to ride in Russian-built Soyuz rockets to the International Space Station. Those trips were arranged by
It has also started to accept deposits from potential customers who want to pay just over $100,000 for a sub-orbital flight.
"Virgin will spend hundreds of millions to build SpaceShipTwo," he said. "We plan to have more than one kind of sub-orbital vehicle. We've got agreements with several different vehicles. I think over the next five to 10 years there will be many different choices."
But
"Once the price is above $100,000, it's for the elite affluent," said
One of
"There's always a premium to pay to be a first," he said. "I'd get out tomorrow if I could."