Space Adventures: Tours around the Moon: $150 Million

Space tours will soon be a reality with the announcement of the Virginia-based Space Adventures of their plants to offer trips around the moon to space tourists five years from now.

Space Adventures, a private space exploration company, it expect to begin launching their trips around the moon in February 2017, which is the 50th anniversary of the start of the Apollo program.

For a price of $150 million, a space tourist would be launched into space aboard a three-seat Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

The vehicle would then rendezvous with an unmanned rocket that would take the spacecraft to the moon and encircle the moon at an altitude of 62 miles.

Space Adventures has reportedly sold one of the two tickets available, and is negotiating with the second space tourist.

A number of startup companies have sprung up in recent years, hoping to create a space tourism industry. However, orbital space tourism opportunities have been limited and expensive.

Some of space tourists have signed contracts with third parties to conduct certain research activities while in orbit.

Space Tourism: An Update

With the age of suborbital tourism beckoning, hundreds of wealthy people have signed up to take rides to the edge of space, a trip that will end almost as soon as it begins, but should confer serious bragging rights when the talk turns to summer vacations.

Of course, if just experiencing weightlessness is your goal, you can already do it for far less than Virgin Galactic’s $200,000 ticket price—but only in 30-second bursts.

Inside a modified Boeing 727 operated by Zero Gravity Corporation, adventure tourists can spend a few thousand dollars to get a taste of weightlessness and sample lunar and Martian gravity as the airplane flies repeated roller-coaster-like parabolas.

During their half-minutes of reduced gravity they can float, tumble, even get married. But there’s no view of Earth, and it’s more like an amusement park ride than a rocket launch.

The suborbital spaceships now on the drawing boards will carry tourists to the edge of space (traditionally set at 100 kilometers, or 62 miles altitude), but not so high or fast that they go into orbit.

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo will provide up to six minutes of weightlessness, while Armadillo Aerospace, XCOR, and various other companies will make you feel weightless for about three minutes.

Since XCOR’s Lynx spacecraft holds just a pilot and one passenger in a tiny side-by-side cockpit, the company has decided that passengers will remain strapped in for the whole trip—just as Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom did during their 15-minute suborbital missions to test out NASA’s new Mercury spacecraft in 1961.

Other companies have released animations showing passengers unstrapping from their couches, floating around in weightlessness, then returning to their couches before atmospheric reentry.

XCOR thinks that’s a bad idea.

“Unstrapping and re-strapping in such a short time frame would be a risky endeavour,” says the company’s communications representative, Mike Masse. He believes that passengers will be so engrossed by the spectacular view that they won’t mind being confined to their couches.

Read More here: AirSpaceMag

Space beer is Rocket Fuel for space tourists

This latest experiment in beer and space comes from Astronauts4hire, a non-profit founded this year by a group of space enthusiasts whose goal is to provide trained astronauts for researchers who are conducting experiments in sub-orbital (and eventually orbital) space.

Testing space beer — which will be produced by a joint venture between the 4-Pines Brewing Company and Saber Aeronautics Australia — is Astronauts4hire’s first job.

The tests will start next month aboard a modified Boeing 727 operated by Zero G, a space entertainment company that offers to fly you on a series of parabolic arcs so you can experience weightlessness without leaving Earth — “flip, float and soar as if you were in space.”

Are you nauseated yet? If so, maybe you’re not astronaut material. From Astronauts4hire:

Sampling the beer during weightless parabolas, the flight researcher will record both qualitative data on beverage taste and drinkability and biometric data on body temperature, heart rate, and blood alcohol content.

This is the first of a series of flights that will be funded by sales of space beer on Earth, according to Astronauts4hire. Exactly what makes this beer “space beer” remains to be seen.

NASA doesn’t allow its astronauts to drink beer or any other alcoholic beverage before or during flights — the space agency doesn’t want astronauts’ senses dulled or their reactions slowed. It has advised against giving alcohol to the miners trapped underground in Chile for the same reasons.

Back in 2001, however, NASA did experiment with brewing beer in space — along with Coors, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Coca-Cola, which were helping NASA commercialize “the space frontier…one of the greatest opportunities facing America,” NASA said at the time.

One experiment showed that fermentation was more efficient and happened faster in space — the picture is of a Coke-dispensing machine that Coca Cola developed for the space shuttle.

Boeing To Offer Rides Into Orbit By 2015

The same company that makes many of the airliners carrying passengers around the world will now be carrying passengers to low earth orbit. Boeing announced today they have signed a memorandum of agreement with Space Adventures to develop and market the private space rides.

Space Adventures is the company that has put together several orbital trips for private individuals to the International Space Station. The companies have not announced what the cost of a ride to orbit will be or when the first rides will occur. Trips could include visits to the ISS or to other orbital stations to be built in the future. Boeing is already partnering with Bigelow Aerospace on a commercial space station program to be built later in the decade.

The passenger flights will take place on commercial trips aboard the Boeing Crew Space Transportation-100 spacecraft to low earth orbit. In addition to individuals with enough money, rides will also be offered to companies, non-governmental organizations and federal agencies besides NASA. The seven passenger spacecraft is expected to be operational by 2015.

The announcement from Boeing is the first from one of the existing, large space contractor companies to offer transportation to space for private individuals. Space Adventures has previously contracted with the Russian space agency to offer rides to orbit. Those rides started at $20 million, but costs have climbed to as high as $40 million for a single passenger.

The agreement with Boeing is likely to create some competition for the Russians and may help keep costs down for cargo and passengers.

Upstart space launch company SpaceX has also talked about delivering passengers to low earth orbit. In the near future the company is focused on delivering cargo payloads to the ISS, but SpaceX’s Dragon capsule is expected to carry passengers to orbit as well.

For suborbital passenger flights, Virgin Galactic released a new video today with information about the company’s space flights aboard VSS Enterprise (aka SpaceShipTwo). Several hundred people have already signed up for the flights which will include several minutes of weightlessness and views of earth from more than 65 miles above the surface.

Weightless Wedding in Zero Gravity flight

Erin Finnegan and Noah Fulmor get married in zero gravity over Florida, USA.

Space tourist Richard Garriott officiated, and the bride found she could eat all the cake she wanted and still be weightless

Picture: WENN

Re-usable Launch Vehicles: Promised but not Delivered

There is a large up-front investment needed to develop and test any new launch system and companies either cannot raise enough money or are unwilling to take the risks associated with investing the needed funds.

The market for a reusable system is still immature, i.e., demand for launch services is in the embryonic stages, even though we have been launching satellites for over 50 years

Launch vehicle prices are sky high and they have been for a long time. This has presented a very high hurdle to space access for many potential space applications. There are literally tens of thousands of university experiments awaiting flight opportunities, but the cost is too high for students and faculty.

Hundreds of private-sector entrepreneurs have waited years for a chance to try new ideas and applications. Even large, established companies would like to stretch product lines through space experimentation, but have been frustrated by the high cost of launching trial products.

The promise of reusable space launch systems is dramatically lower costs to orbit. An ideal, fully-reusable system would be highly reliable, readily available and could cut costs by a factor of 10 or more. The introduction of such a system would open space access to thousands of denied users. So, why don't we have one?

There are several reasons. Technologies for fully-reusable orbital launch systems still evade the many companies that have attempted to design and build them.

There is a large up-front investment needed to develop and test any new launch system and companies either cannot raise enough money or are unwilling to take the risks associated with investing the needed funds. The market for a reusable system is still immature, i.e., demand for launch services is in the embryonic stages, even though we have been launching satellites for over 50 years.

Elusive technologies include truly reusable cryogenic tanks, low-maintenance thermal shielding, ultra-lightweight structures and advanced avionics. Financing such projects has been problematic, thanks to the many failures and overly-optimistic cost and revenue projections.

However, these hurdles will be overcome as the market matures. The one missing ingredient that would truly make reusable vehicles come to life is a "killer application" that would create a strong market demand for low-Earth-orbit flights.

There seem to be two possible business activities that might generate the needed market demand. One is the eventual human-tourism market that is just getting started with sub-orbital flights.

The other is the creation of a large, distributed space infrastructure of low-orbiting satellites that must be maintained over a long period of time. There is little doubt that the day will come when reusable systems are indeed a reality. The only question is: How soon?

If you want to know more about the design and technologies of launch vehicles register for a special session of the internationally popular course: Launch Vehicle Systems Design and Engineering, to be presented in Cocoa Beach on December 14-16, 2009.

Virgin Galactic takes Abu Dhabi oil money

It is certainly a case of the rich getting richer and a sign of the only way these space tourism companies will ever get off the ground but either way Mr Branson pockets another profit for himself.

Today Virgin Galactic today sold a 32% stake of the company, which is valued at about $900 million, to an Abu Dhabi-based investor raising $280 million to help fund future test-flight program.

Bailed out

Virgin Galactic stated that it expects the capital infusion to fully fund the company to its commencement of commercial operations. The Virgin Group has spent over $100 million on its space flight venture since forming it in 2004.

Aabar Group

With the investment Abu Dhabi's Aabar Group gets exclusive rights to host Virgin space tourist and scientific flights. The group also said it wants to pay an extra $100 million to fund a program to launch small satellites of its own into orbit, and will build spaceport facilities in Abu Dhabi. US regulators and others must approve the deal.

Space Ship One

Virgin Galactic claims it is in the final stages of developing and testing commercial sub-orbital space vehicles based on the prototype SpaceShipOne. The current launch aircraft, WhiteKnightTwo, made a splash this week by flying at the Experimental Aircraft Association's annual AirVenture air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Space Ship Two

WhiteKnightTwo will carry the pressurized spacecraft SpaceShipTwo to about 50,000ft, where SpaceShipTwo will release and fire a rocket taking it to about 360,000ft at speeds over Mach 3, Virgin says. SpaceShipTwo then glides back to a runway landing. More than 300 people have paid almost $40 million in ticket deposits to get on the flights, according to London-based Virgin.

Test Flights

SpaceShipTwo will begin test flights before the end of 2009. Both vehicles offer a unique environment for space tourism and a wide range of science research applications as well as a platform for small satellite launch, Virgin stated.

First Private Sector Launch

"We are building a great partnership for the development of the world's first private sector integrated human and payload space launch system," said Patrick McCall, Virgin Group Commercial Director in a statement.

Forbes Comment

According to Forbes.com, this may not be the last big financial splash the space company makes: "The aim over a bit of time is to try to IPO the business," said a spokesman for Virgin Group. He said the procedure would follow a similar template seen at

• Virgin Blue, the Australian airline floated in 2003;
  
• Virgin Mobile UK, floated in 2004;
  
• Virgin Mobile USA, floated in 2007.

Sold out
The entire Virgin Group even went public in 1986, but was bought back by Virgin's billionaire owner, Richard Branson. Such a move by Virgin Galactic would be a couple years away at least, observers said but Mr Branson must be wringing his hands with glee at this deal. Looks like he is off the hook again.