It's Over Your Head (2006)

070704.doc Private spaceflights Page 1 of 5

From Celestial North, this is IT’S OVER YOUR HEAD for the week of July

4th, 2007, a look at what’s up in the sky over Puget Sound.

Vacation flights for the summer are filling up. But depending on your

destination, flights may be booked through 2009.

There is currently a two-year waiting list to get a seat on a private flight to

space. And it comes with a hefty price tag - $20 million dollars.

However, space travel technology is evolving quickly and with growing

competition in the emerging space tourism industry, the price of a private space

trip should drop in just a few years.

Since 2001 five private “space tourists” have flown to the International

Space Station via the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Some of the space tourists

were merely guests, while others assisted with scientific research experiments

while in orbit. Either way, each had to pay a multi-million dollar fee for the 10-day

trip.

The most recent space tourist to the International Space Station was

Charles Simonyi. The Hungarian-born space tourist traveled to the International

Space Station this past April. If his name rings a bell, it might be because

Simonyi is a Puget Sound regular. He worked at Microsoft until 2002 and is now the owner of the Bellevue-based Intentional Software Corporation. Simonyi paid

$25 million dollars for the trip.

So what are the odds that you can take a trip to space? Better than ever.

Several commercial space flight firms have set up shop and will begin offering flights to the public as soon as 2008. Some of these firms include Virgin-

Galactic, Space Adventures, Star Chaser, Blue Origin and Rocketplane Limited.

Most of the new commercial space flight firms will offer suborbital trips to heights of 100-160 kilometers. A suborbital flight is one where the spacecraft reaches a height of at least 100 km above sea level - yet the spacecraft does not stay in orbit. At a height of 100 km, space flight passengers would be able to see the curved Earth below, get clear views of the stars beyond and experience up to 6 minutes of weightlessness. A two-and-a-half hour suborbital flight is expected to cost $200,000, or about one-tenth the cost of previous space tourist opportunities.

For space explorers that reach 100 km, that is high enough to meet the

Fédération Aéronautique Internationale’s definition for an astronaut. So far, 460 people from 39 countries have been recognized as international astronauts. In the United States, professional, military and commercial astronauts that travel 80 km above sea level are awarded astronaut wings. NASA and the Russian

Federal Space Agency have agreed to use the term “spaceflight participant” for space tourists. This new term was created to distinguish space tourists from the professional astronauts on those same missions.

One of the up and coming space flight tourism firms is Virgin-Galactic. This company has based its six-passenger commercial spacecraft, called

SpaceShipTwo, on the same technology that won the Ansari X PRIZE competition.

The $10 million dollar Ansari X PRIZE was offered as a reward for the first

non-government team that could successfully launch a reusable spacecraft to a

height of 100 km above the Earth. The spacecraft had to reach this height twice

within a 2-week period. The Ansari X PRIZE was awarded in 2004 to a winning

spaceplane design called SpaceShipOne. Virgin Galactic has based its new

commercial spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo, on a design created by the same

aerospace engineer who created SpaceShipOne, Burt Rutan.

The Ansari X PRIZE is named after Anousheh Ansari. In September 2006,

Ansari became the fourth space tourist - and first female space tourist - to visit

the International Space Station.

Another space tourism company called Space Adventures Limited is currently working on setting up circumlunar flights. The first private flights to the far side of the moon are scheduled for 2009. Two commercial seats for the ½ million-mile roundtrip are available. The seats are being sold for $100 million dollars apiece. That’s just $200 dollars per mile!

In case you were wondering, the Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA, will oversee the safety of commercial space flights. The FAA’s Office of

Commercial Space Transportation is charged with issuing licenses to companies that wish to launch space vehicles carrying paying passengers.

Of course, as a space tourist (or space explorer, if you prefer that term)

you’ll have to undergo rigorous training beforehand. To travel to the International

Space Station, space tourists are required to pass rigorous physicals and

undergo months of training. For the forthcoming Virgin Galactic suborbital flights,

passengers must pass a physical and undergo three days of flight training

immediately preceding the flight.

If you’re interested in learning more about the future of private space travel, there are eight space flight conferences across the U.S. in the next six months.

Check out the nonprofit Space Tourism Society website to learn more about the growing space tourism industry. The web address is www.spacetourismsociety.org.

We’re on the web at CelestialNorth.org. Until next time, this is ______and ______, with a reminder that the night is large and full of wonders.

REFERENCES: 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tourism#Commercial_space_flights 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Galactic 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Simonyi 4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anousheh_Ansari 5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Adventures 6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_spaceflight 7. http://www.spacetourismsociety.org/Home.html 8. http://space.xprize.org/x-prize-cup/events/ISPS/ 9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronaut 10. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6529149.stm