Private Spacefarers Have Increasingly Affordable Ways to Go Weightless

By Cheryl Pellerin

Washington - Space travel is nothing new. Governments have been launching satellites since 1957 and sending people into space since 1961. The novelty is in the growing shift from government to private ownership and operation of everything from rockets and spacecraft to spaceports and tourist trips.

In the United States, a handful of federal agencies lead the effort to promote commercialization of critical space services.

At NASA, whose 1958 legislation authorizes the agency to promote commercial space activities, partnerships under the Commercial Crew/Cargo Program challenge industry to demonstrate a range of space transportation capabilities.

At the Department of Transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation ensures public safety during commercial launch and re-entry activities and encourages the growth of a space transportation industry. (See "U.S. Agencies, Companies Work to Commercialize Space Travel ( http://www.america.gov/st/scitech-english/2009/May/20090529163746lcnirellep0.2032587.html?CP.rss=true ).")

At the Department of Commerce, the Office of Space Commercialization was established in 1988 to help fledgling space companies find their way through tricky but critical government regulations. But Acting Director Charles Baker says the office has done something more.

"The office has advocated the growth of a new class of industries in the space world," he told America.gov. "In the old model, the government went out and awarded a contract to a company and bought a satellite or a launch vehicle, and then the government launched it or operated it after launch."

Today, he said, one company might buy a satellite from another company, operate the satellite and, in the case of the remote-sensing industry, sell the imagery to the government.

"This class of industries is one that has evolved within the lifetime of the Office of Space Commercialization," Baker said, "and we've been an advocate for their growth."

The office's space commercialization function is broad and includes everything from space launch and satellite communications to satellite-based position, navigation and tracking systems like the U.S. Global Positioning System, remote-sensing and earth observations.

SPACE TOURISM

In 2001, American businessman and Earth's first private space traveler Dennis Tito paid $20 million to fly to space on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and spend six days at the International Space Station. Virginia-based Space Adventures, established in 1998, arranged the flight with the Russian federal space agency Roscosmos and has since arranged six more private missions.

"By showing there's a market, we inspire private investment in technologies that will one day make it less expensive," Space Adventures founder Eric Anderson said.

He told America.gov, "People say [the cost of private space travel] is $40 million or $50 million, so when will it ever be $5,000? The answer is, I don't know. But it will never be $5,000 if it doesn't start off at $50 million."

Space Adventures also offers $102,000 seats on suborbital space flights that take participants 100 kilometers above Earth where they can see the sights, experience weightlessness and "participate in the birth of the space travel industry and inspire future generations of explorers," the Space Adventures Web site says.

In 2008 the company acquired Zero Gravity Corporation, which for $5,000 per person takes passengers on commercial parabolic flights that allow them to experience weightlessness. In development is a lunar mission that for $100 million each will take two passengers around the moon and to within about 80 kilometers of its surface before returning to Earth.

"The company just had its 10-year anniversary last year," Anderson said, "so over the next 10 years I would hope that instead of flying five or six people in space, we will have flown 1,000 people in space, and that the numbers of people who are able to experience space flight will go up dramatically." Anderson has yet to fly in space himself.

INTO THE FUTURE

No matter what the cost per passenger is, there is an enthusiastic market for commercial human space flight. One company is part of Richard Branson's Virgin Group. Virgin Galactic plans to provide suborbital and eventually orbital space flights for $200,000 a seat.

The company tested its rocket motor in Mojave, California, in May and will test its suborbital spacecraft SpaceShipTwo later this year. In January, Virgin Galactic signed a 20-year lease at Spaceport America, New Mexico's commercial spaceport.

Another company, Blue Origin, established by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, is developing New Shepard - a vertical-take off, vertical-landing vehicle designed to take a small number of astronauts on a suborbital journey into space. In 2006 the company launched and landed a development vehicle in that program.

"In this office right now we are talking with about a half a dozen companies, each of which is in the process of designing, building and testing vehicles that can take people up to the edge of space," George Nield, the Federal Aviation Administration's associate administrator for commercial space transportation, told America.gov. "We expect operations from at least some of those companies to start in just the next couple of years. I think that's really going to change how we think about spaceflight."

One company is working on a place to stay in space. Bigelow Aerospace in Las Vegas, Nevada, founded by hotelier Robert Bigelow, is pioneering work on expandable space station modules.

Bigelow "has two subscale modules on orbit right now that were launched on Russian rockets to test out the systems, and they're working just fine," Nield said. "They've been on orbit for several years now, and he has plans to build bigger modules and connect them together and, potentially as early as 2012 or shortly thereafter, have a place where individuals or companies or countries can send their own astronauts or space tourists."

More information about space commercialization is available at the following Web sites: NASA Commercial Crew and Cargo Program ( http://www.nasa.gov/offices/c3po/home/ ), FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation ( http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/ ), Department of Commerce Office of Space Commercialization ( http://www.space.commerce.gov/ ), Space Adventures ( http://spaceadventures.com/ ), Zero Gravity Corporation ( http://www.gozerog.com/ ), Virgin Galactic ( http://www.virgingalactic.com/ ), Blue Origin ( http://public.blueorigin.com/index.html ) and Bigelow Aerospace ( http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/ ).

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)