Space Tourist

The XCOR Lynx rocket plane was recently announced in Beverly Hills, California by CEO Jeff Greason. For a mere $100,000 a single passenger will be able to sit next to the pilot and fly around 200,000 feet above sea level, look at the stars, float weightless for around 90 seconds and then come back to Earth.

The whole experience is said to last around ½ hour from takeoff at an airstrip as would a regular jet plane and glide back upon the same landing strip similar to what one has come to expect from the Space Shuttle. The Lynx flight will be well below the 62-mile low Earth orbit barrier (327,000 ft.) of other proposed tourist spacecraft, but it is also half the price or more of other competitors.

The XCOR Lynx is small, light and does not need to be piggybacked up to 40,000 feet or so like the Rocketplane XP space plane before it ascends further. The XCOR Lynx has a pressurized cabin and both pilot and tourist will be wearing a pressurized space suit as well.

There are two concerns, that Xcor will need to address at some point about the Lynx. First is that there are no ejector seats (but they say they have other ‘safety features’ in place). Second, is the issue of incapacitation of the pilot. What if the pilot were to have a heart attack or brain aneurism, for instance, during the flight?

Other spacecraft are known for their redundancy of equipment along with personnel. Will this flight be so automated that an actual copilot instead of a tourist copilot is not necessary? So, far Xcor hasn’t spoken about this point, but expect to see more information coming in the days and weeks ahead.

Andrew Mealey is currently researching the field of Space Tourism for a paper for the University of Surrey in England. The space tourism survey is aimed at getting the general public’s perception of the subject of space tourism, as well as using the results from some of the questions to plot the likely market make-up and size.

The survey is also designed to gather views and opinions of the general public and will be presented in a final paper titled “Entrepreneur’s influence on Space Travel.”

When I asked Andrew about his personal interest in the subject of space tourism, he replied, “I have kept an eye on its progress and had found the subject highly interesting, therefore when in May of last year when I was on secondment with a Applied Materials (a semiconductor company) I spoke to the head of research projects and discussed this project on space tourism with him and he allowed me to go forward with it, and in September last year after I filed my initial report and project method I was given permission to carry out this research project by the University.”

If you would like to take the Space Tourism Survey and contribute your insight and opinion to this exciting and developing field, Andrew and the University of Surrey in England will indeed appreciate it.

Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic and Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites showed off SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo to the media today. According to the dynamic duo, who are about the set the space tourism industry on fire, SpaceShipTwo is about 60-percent complete and WhiteKnightTwo is approximately 70-percent complete.

WhiteKnightTwo (WK2), which will be the largest commercial aircraft made from composite materials, will carry SpaceShipTwo (SS2) up to 60,000 before SS2 will ascend into suborbital space.

Both WK2 and SS2 are being built so that they may accommodate two flights per day. SpaceShipTwo is being designed so that it can tolerate the worst case scenario upon reentry into the atmosphere, meaning nose first, belly first or even upside down. Branson is not claiming that WhiteKnightTwo will be as safe as modern day aircraft, however, as he likens the flight upon SS2 to aircraft in the 1920s when the industry was just getting started.

Both SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo will be ready later this year for their first test flights and are expected to be available for public flights are early as 2009. Branson says the two aircraft will have open architecture in that those who wish help in developing other commercial spacecraft based upon WK2 or SS2 will be welcomed.

Branson’s ambition is to build 40 to 50 such aircraft, which will be able to accommodate over 100,000 passengers.

With the space tourism industry gearing up for flight within the next two years, accredited space travel agents are also getting ready to pitch the wonderment to potential space tourists. According to press.co.nz, Virgin Galactic employee Carolyn Wincer is just such a space travel agent.

Wincer is selling tickets at $200,000 a pop aboard the Virgin Galactic / Scaled Composites SpaceShipTwo, which is a far cry below the $20 million ride currently offered by Space Adventures to the International Space Station.

SpaceShipTwo is a collaboration between Virgin Galactic’s rogue CEO Sir Richard Branson and maverick builder and CEO of Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan. The building of SpaceShipTwo piggybacks off the success of SpaceShipOne winning the Anasari X-Prize in 2004 for suborbital space flight.

As part of Carolyn Wincer’s training as a space travel agent, she has experienced zero gravity, which will help her better sell the low orbit earth experience to clients. Flights will take off from the Scaled Composites Mojave Desert Compound in California, stay aloft for 2 ½ hours, then land at the Spaceport America airfield in New Mexico.

Wincer says it is easier to sell high-end customers on the idea of a vacation on a private island or upon a game reserve since the idea of space travel is still quite a bit out there and scary to many. But, as the field matures and people start to go up and come down safely, space travel agents will start to routinely ask, “Would you like to travel to Europe, the Caribbean or Low Earth Orbit this year?”

Space Access, out of Miami, Florida aims to make space travel affordable for the tourism industry. If they have their way, space tourists will be able to ascend into Low Earth Orbit for as little as the price to travel aboard a cruise ship or charter a business jet.

Space Access is betting that they will be able to accomplish this feat because of the design of the aircraft that will take off and land at a typical airport and the special Ejector Ramjet engines (not to be confused with the Roger Ramjet engines).

The body is designed to be 23-percent lighter than other comparable spaceplanes and inhibit ice build up and are capable of dealing with reentry heat. The air-breathing ramjet engines are similar to the ones used in the past on classified hypersonic aircraft.

From January 6-11, 2008 Space Access will be offering its SpaceGateway Experience to the public at an exclusive resort in Key Largo, Florida. According to Space Access they will be lifting the veil of secrecy for this event and letting the public interact with personal and have a say in the development of low cost space flight.

It is assumed that when the space tourism industry finally takes off there will be legal issues that will need to be addressed first. Disclaimers and releases will need to be signed by participants deciding to hurl themselves into space.

But, there is also a question of law in outer space, such as if someone breaks the law or is thought to have broken the law, who decides guilt or innocence? There is an interesting article about astronauts on the International Space Station following the laws of the nation that owns certain parts of the station or breaking the laws of a nation that the ISS happens to be flying over at the moment.

These issues also will have to be addressed for the space tourism industry as well. For instance, if a Russian spacecraft is passing over the United States when an alleged crime occurs, whose jurisdiction is it? If a spaceplane collides with a satellite who has the right of way?

Since space tourism is such a new endeavor, these international legal questions regarding the proliferation of humans in space have not yet been worked out. But, they will need to be worked out since the space tourism is set to commence in a couple of short years.

Hey, all you space buffs, and in particular all of you who would like to be a tourist in space, now is your chance. Space Adventures is now seeking a backup space tourist to take the place of the next designated cosmonaut Richard Garriott, in case something happens and he can’t make the trip.

The understudy will go into training and experience the process that crew members have to go through in order to get ready for spaceflights. The backup space tourist will even assist with Gariott’s mission when he flies to the International Space Station in October 2008.

The understudy will be given the distinction of being a fully-trained cosmonaut and will be named as an official part of the crew. For those who have $3 million to spend for cosmonaut training and a trip to Star City, Russia this may be the event of a lifetime.

And, if you think as a backup to the main space tourist, you don’t have a shot at going into space yourself, you would be wrong. It has already happened. The first female in space, Anousheh Ansari was a backup to Daisuke Enomoto who had to bow out for medical reasons.

Richard Garriott, son of former NASA Skylab and Spacelab-1 astronaut, Owen Garriott, will become the sixth space tourist when he flies a mission this month with Space Adventures. Richard Garriott will fly a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station where he will conduct experiments in engineering, science and education.

Some of the experiments Garriott will conduct will involve protein crystallization as they relate to human diseases. Space Adventures is also seeking other commercial experiments for Gariott to conduct as well.

Garriott is well-known as a video game pioneer, programmer and designer and early investor in the Zero G Corporation that has flown over 2,500 private citizen at high altitude to experience zero gravity. Richard Garriott is also a self-admitted adventure junkie who has taken a submersible to the Titanic, tracked down mountain gorillas in Africa and traveled the Antarctic.

Richard has started a blog on his website, which he will presumable update with his adventures. You can also ask Richard a question about his mission and perhaps even win a free Space Tourists Handbook just for filling out a short survey. Good luck and Godspeed, Richard Garriott.

It is heading into the 3-month mark when a tragic accident claimed three lives at the Scaled Composites facility in Mojave, California. Glen May, Eric Blackwell and Todd Ivens were killed and three others were injured when an explosion happened during a nitrous oxide injector cold flow test.

The injured and deceased were working at Burt Rutan’s Mojave Spaceport at the time on SpaceShipTwo, which is scheduled to bring tourists to space as early as 2009. Rutan’s company has set up a Scaled Family Support Fund to funnel generous contributions from the public to the affected families. The Scaled Composites employees were the first fatalities in the burgeoning space tourism industry.

This is the first post in the wonderful and sometimes wacky Space Tourist blog. Hopefully, many more posts will follow over the years. This blog is about space travel in general and space tourism in specific.

Space tourists will be covered first as the rich and notable who can afford the multimillion dollar trip, and then as prices come down as those brave souls who wish to take a peak at Earth from low earth orbit. Sit back and enjoy the ride!