There wasn’t much joy to be found in the summary report, the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, released Tuesday. But as people continue poring over the details some in the industry see a bright side.
The report (.pdf) — issued by a panel better known as the Augustine committee after the name of its chairman, former Lockheed Martin exec Norm Augustine — made it clear NASA’s manned space flight has a bleak future unless it gets significantly more money. But where some see tough times ahead for NASA, others see a bright future for private ventures and space tourism.
One high note within the report is the suggestion private space companies such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX could be viable alternatives to NASA in delivering people and cargo to space (specifically LEO, or low-earth orbit, for the acronym-happy space folks), including missions to the International Space Station.
“At SpaceX we feel pretty confident in being able to do it for about $20 million per seat,” Elon Musk said in a conference call with reporters. That’s about 40 percent of what it would cost to ride along with the Russian Space Agency, he said. His numbers are based on a minimum contract of four flights per year with seven passengers on board SpaceX’s Dragon capsule.
Musk and others are talking about fulfilling contracts from NASA to deliver astronauts to the space station, but people like Space Adventures CEO Eric Anderson see new possibilities for space tourism.
“A commercial program may have requirements that are more favorable to commercial passengers, with regard to training and language requirements,” Anderson said, referring to his company’s current deals with the Russian space program. Space tourists such as Charles Simonyi (he’s been twice) and Anousheh Ansari (pictured above) have had to travel to Russia to undergo extensive training before their launches into orbit. Anderson believes commercial carriers could create a more favorable training experience for those willing to put up the $20 million.
“I think that would actually drastically increase the market size of potential candidates,” he said.
Of course, if there is a rush of passengers because of cheaper (a relative term in space flight) and more favorable commercial transportation options to LEO, there probably will have to be more destinations than the International Space Station. Anderson says there’s no reason space hotels won’t fill that need.
“It’s very feasible over the next few years to start small and grow bigger as soon as the transportation problem is solved,” he said.
Meanwhile, for those of us without the extra seven or eight zeros at the end of their checkbook balance, Virgin Galactic is moving full speed ahead in suborbital space-tourism plans. Its mothership, White Knight Two, has undergone initial flight testing and is awaiting its cargo, SpaceShipTwo. That craft is expected to be unveiled in December. The 60-foot long space craft is slated for initial glide flights next year, and could be carrying passengers into space as soon as 2011. The new spacecraft retains many of the design features found in SpaceShipOne, though it is much larger. Jim Tighe, chief project engineer on SpaceShipTwo, told Aviation Week that SS2 has all the design features you’d be expect in “an aircraft that goes Mach 3 and folds in half.”
The rides won’t take passengers to orbit, but they also won’t cost $20 million. Tickets are $200,000 for a ride to an altitude of more than 100 kilometers (328,000 feet) that will include several minutes of weightlessness. Virgin Galactic already has collected more than $40 million in deposits from 300 passengers. The good news for the rest of us is the company has said since the beginning that they believe the price will drop rapidly as the system is refined and launch frequency grows from the initial one launch per week to around one per day.
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