Space Tourism Program Still Ticking

April 03, 2009

Space Adventures, the Virginia-based firm that so far has cornered the market on commercial spaceflight, isn't letting a little thing like no more flight opportunities spoil its business plans.

In a conference call with reporters, company president Eric Anderson said the ongoing flight of space tourist Charles Simonyi (they prefer the term "spaceflight participant") shouldn't be its last. 

Simonyi, who is flying for the second time, is among six wealthy business people who have ventured into orbit thanks to Space Adventures' business ties with Russian space officials. NASA won't fly anyone other than professional astronauts, in case you're wondering.

Space Adventures has been selling spare seats on the Russian Soyuz capsules traveling to the International Space Station to swap out crews. But beginning in May, when the live-aboard crew size doubles to six, there aren't going to be any spare seats available, barring last-minute hiccups. That's one of Space Adventures' business models: Be prepared to pounce if something opens up. Anderson said the company is keeping a close watch on a potential issue that may free a seat on the Soyuz slated to fly on September 30 with a flier from Kazakhstan, which is paying Russia directly for the venture.

Space Adventures also is trying to put together dedicated commercial Soyuz flights, though the capsule manufacturer, which already has to double production to handle the extra flights to ferry the station's larger crews, may find it impossible to crank out more vehicles. Also, there's limited parking space at the station -- assuming that's still the tourist destination of choice. Two of the station's docking ports will be filled with Soyuz craft serving as the crew's lifeboats. The leaves just one port free for either a third Soyuz, a Russian Progress cargo ship, or Europe's ATV cargo ship, which docks at the Russian side of the station. 

Still, there's reason to hope, Anderson said. The world economic situation apparently hasn't hit his clientele (Simonyi paid $35 million for his flight) as much as other industries.

"The kind of person … who has indicated an interest in going to space is a long-term thinker. Someone who has had a life dream of going to space is not going to let an economic downturn -- even if it’s a longer one than we would have hoped -- change their objective," Anderson said.

That's a load off. 

(Caption: Charles Simonyi in space. Courtesy: NASA) 

Guess Who's Coming to Visit?

July 14, 2008

There’s a long list of topics to discuss at the big International Space Station partners meeting in France this week: payloads for the shuttle's last nine flights to the outpost; two mini-research modules Russia wants to attach; bunking arrangements for when the crew size doubles next year -- and my personal favorite: what to do about uninvited guests.

Now I’m being blatantly ethnocentric here and looking at the prospect of visitors solely from NASA’s point of view, which seems a bit like the proverbial housewife putting up with the husband’s relatives. Sure, NASA needs her Russian hubby, particularly since he’s got the only car service running after the shuttle retires, but just how far does this arranged marriage bend?

Russia, which has embraced capitalism as no entity in the U.S. government  has dared, has cut a deal with a Virginia-based firm to supply spaceships and pilots to ferry paying passengers to the station. Russia has been running a small-scale tourist transport service since Dennis Tito forked over $20-plus million for run to the ISS in 2001.

NASA was none-to-pleased with the stunt and begrudgingly “allowed” access to the ISS only when it became apparent that it had no choice. But Tito and the handful of entrepreneurs who followed his footsteps (Skylab astronaut Owen Garriott’s son Richard, millionaire computer game developer, is set to become tourist space flight participant No. 6 in October) hitched rides on Soyuz capsules that were needed to change out resident space station crewmembers. The new gig would add three folks at a time for independent research, educational, commercial or other programs.

Space Adventures CEO Eric Anderson tells me he’d like to fly a commercial Soyuz once a year beginning in 2011. (He declined to reveal a target price for each excursion.)

NASA learned of the plan last month the same way most folks did: from a press conference. The initial response was polite, but muted. One program manager did let slip that he thought commercial Soyuz trips marked “a radically different” way of operating.

I’m sure they’ll work things out though, for in this world of uncertainty, NASA has indeed staked a claim in at least one final frontier: There’s no divorce in space.

Caption: Dennis Tito suiting up to become the first fare-paying passenger in space. (Photo: Space Adventures.)

Let's Steal the Soyuz

June 11, 2008

Well not “steal” it exactly, just do what Japan has done to our automobile industry, China to textiles and India to tech support. Import it, then re-label ‘Made in America.’ It’d be a neat way around the prohibition against buying Soyuz from the Russians, who are being punished -- not really -- for providing technology and dangerous ideas widely available on the internet to Iran, which is next door to Iraq and probably what the Bush Administration was really aiming for when they got us embroiled in the bruhaha over there.

And the U.S. really needs a spaceship because we can’t afford to fly the shuttles and simultaneously develop safer ships that can transport people to the space station as well as beyond low-Earth orbit, which we’ve been going ‘round and ‘round in since 1972, the last moon landing.

Unfortunately it took a national tragedy to buck up to the fact that the shuttles are too expensive and risky to fly forever, wonderful machines that they are. Problem is, it’s going to take five or six years to get the new crafts flying after the shuttles are retired. NASA has taken to calling this period “the gap.”

Leaving aside the fact that right now NASA is banned from purchasing Soyuz after its current exemption expires in 2011, the United State’s plan for staffing the space station during the gap is to get another exemption to buy more Soyuz. We’ll need twice as many as before, in fact because next year the size of the space station’s crew doubles to six. The Soyuz can hold three people.

Now comes the news today that Google co-founder Sergey Brin has plunked down $5 million for his own Soyuz so that he and another tourist can go visit space. (Apparently the Congressional ban doesn’t apply to private companies.) The firm arranging the jaunt will even hire a full-fledged Russian cosmonaut to pilot the rocketeers.

Which brings me to this: Why not import the Soyuz or get a license to manufacture them here? Florida, which just lost out to Virginia to be the launch site for a proposed commercially developed station cargo hauler, would be game. Might even get our Congressional delegation focused on an issue they need to be concerned with, like trade, economics and foreign affairs, rather than deciding if an Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer dark matter device should fly on the shuttle or not.

Just a thought ….