Space Odyssey

Posted on 08. Feb, 2009 by Kerry Banks in Destinations

The countdown has begun. Some day soon, perhaps within a year, Virgin Galactic, the private space tourism company founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, will rocket its first paying customers into sub-orbital space. The narrow-nosed spacecraft, with cushioned, reclining seats for six passengers and portholes for easy viewing, is attached to a larger plane for takeoff and then detaches at 50,000 feet from the carrier aircraft before accelerating rapidly and entering sub-orbital space. As Branson said in a recent interview: “You’ll go up under the mother ship, attached to it; you’ll be dropped away and then you’ll have the rush of your life as the craft goes from zero miles an hour to 4,000 miles an hour, taking you into space where you will be able to unfasten your seatbelt and enjoy weightlessness, see the curve of the earth and see the atmosphere.”

Although Virgin is not the only company vying to gain a foothold in the space tourism industry, at this point it appears to be in the lead. Virgin Galactic will offer space flights for $200,000, and says it has already received more than 200 firm reservations and collected more than $17 million in deposits. To date, some 45,000 people have expressed an interest in the trips, a remarkable number considering that customers will linger only 15 minutes in space, including five minutes of weightlessness. That is considerably less time in the inky void and far less money than was spent by American billionaire Dennis Tito, who became the world’s first paying space tourist in 2001, when he forked over $20 million for an eight-day holiday aboard the International Space Station.

According to Virgin Galactic’s website www.virgingalactic.com, its customers will prepare for their flights with three days of training. Launches will first occur at the Mojave Spaceport in California, and will then be moved to the permanent spaceport (Spaceport America) in New Mexico, near the town of Truth or Consequences. Another launch site is being built for European customers in Kiruna, Sweden. Its spaceships will blast up to 109 kilometres (68 miles) high; beyond the height of 100 kilometres, which is the internationally defined boundary between Earth and space. Flights will last 2.5 hours and reach a speed of Mach 3. SpaceShipTwo will not require a heat shield for atmospheric re-entry as it will not experience the extreme aerodynamic heating experienced during re-entry with orbital velocities. The glider will employ a “feathering” technique to reduce drag during the unpowered descent and landing. Branson notes that safety is of paramount importance to the venture. “We have to launch this on the basis that we’re giving people a return ticket. We have the best safety record in transportation of any group of companies in the world.”

One of Virgin’s main competitors in this new space race is Space Adventures, a U.S.-based company that has already sent several space tourists on a Russian Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station for $20 million each. Space Adventures says it plans to “fly tens of thousands of people into space over the next 10 to 15 years and beyond, both orbital and suborbital, around the moon, and back, from spaceports both on Earth and in space, to and from private space stations, and aboard dozens of different vehicles.” Space Adventures intends to build a ring-shaped, rotating “commercial space infrastructure” that will resemble the Discovery spacecraft in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, and place it 644 kilometres above Earth. The space city will rotate once per minute to create a gravitational pull one-third as strong as Earth’s. The company envisions having 20,000 people on its “space island” by 2020, with the number of people doubling for each decade.

Eccentric Las Vegas zillionaire Robert T. Bigelow, who made his fortune in the real estate industry, has already successfully launched two inflatable habitats into space, Genesis I and Genesis II. As early as 2010, Bigelow Aerospace plans to launch the Sundancer, a crew-capable inflatable module. If tests prove successful, the company will launch the first of what will be its standard, six-person module. This will link up with Sundancer to form the nucleus of the first space complex. Subsequent modules can be ganged together; the idea ultimately is to have multiple stations that can hold anywhere from six people to several dozen. These space habitats will be more comfortable than the International Space Station, with private sleeping quarters, plenty of windows and better food. The price for staying in the floating complex? About $12 million for transportation, training and four weeks of “hang time.” Lower rates will be available for longer bookings. Bigelow is offering a $50 million prize to the first company that creates a reusable spacecraft capable of carrying passengers to his space station.

Two other companies heavily invested in the spacecraft field are SpaceX and Excalibur Almaz. SpaceX is a private space company that has developed its own rocket family called Falcon and a capsule named Dragon, capable of sending up to seven people to any space station. The Falcon 1 made its first successful flight on September 28, 2008, and the large EELV class Falcon 9 is scheduled to have its initial launch in 2009. The Dragon capsule is set to enter service in 2009.

Excalibur Almaz, a private company headquartered on the Isle of Man, plans to use modernized TKS space capsules and Almaz space stations, derived from the formerly secret Soviet space program. Their space capsules resemble American Gemini capsules, but unlike the two-person Gemini, they are reusable, and can carry three passengers or operate autonomously. They can launch atop any of several rockets of various spacefaring countries, and they use parachutes and retrorockets to return to Earth, touching down on land or on water.

Meanwhile, Richard Branson says he expects Virgin Galactic to eventually make space travel accessible to millions of people. Virgin hopes to transport 50,000 travellers into space in its first 10 years of operation, and Branson insists that as technology progresses and competition increases, space flights will become much more affordable. Will his prediction pan out? The commercial viability of the enterprise has yet to be proven, but there is no denying that concept has long since left the hazy realm of science fiction and edged tantalizingly close to reality.

Photo Credits:

#1: osmoothie.com

#2: theregister.co.uk

#3: newscientist.com

Tags: Space Travel