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© International Space University. All Rights Reserved. The MSc2011 Program of the International Space University was completed at the ISU Central Campus in Illkirch-Graffenstaden, France. Graphic design of the cover by Raul Polit Casillas. While all care has been taken in the preparation of this report, it should not be relied on, and ISU does not take any responsibility for the accuracy of its content. The Executive Summary and the Final report may be found on the ISU website at http://www.isunet.edu/ in the “Publication/Student Reports” section. Paper copies of the Executive Summary and the Final Report may also be requested, while supplies last, from: International Space University Strasbourg Central Campus Attention: Publications/Library Parc d’Innovation 1 rue Jean-Dominique Cassini 67400 Illkirch-Graffenstaden France Pubications: Tel: +33 (0) 3 88 65 54 32 Fax: +33 (0) 3 88 65 54 47 E-mail: [email protected] The Kourou Vision 2030 Team would like to acknowledge and extend its heartfelt gratitude to all the ISU faculty and staff for their dedicated time to help and encourage the team throughout this project. In particular, the team would like to express its sincere thanks to the following faculty and staff members: Aliakbar Ebrahimi For his support in using ISU utilities Anaïs Lion For her willingness to stay long hours keeping the library open Christine Barber For her support keeping ISU’s facilities and services available to the team Emmanouil Detsis For his support in technical as well as managerial aspects Gilles Clément For his support in space life sciences research Hideto Suzuki For his support as Faculty Advisor Hugh Hill For his support as coordinator of the Team Project assignment Joel Hermann For his technical support in printing and IT issues Muriel Riester For her help using the library to find valuable resources Nicolas Moncussi For his help resolving any IT related problems Nikolai Tolyarenko For his support with technical information Philippe Achilleas For his support with the legal issues Vasilis Zervos For his help in the economic and strategic aspects Walter Peeters For his critical advices on business, economics, and legal aspects This project could not have been written and completed without the support and assistance from the advisors and external sources: Alain Wagner For his support in technical issues and public private partnership concepts Fabian Eilingsfeld For his support by providing new ideas in marketing aspects Juan de Dalmau For his support in outreach and entertainment ideas Philippe Clerc For his support with legal and policy issues René Oosterlinck For his support in giving the team useful ideas in legal issues Many people contributed with their time, effort and ideas to completing this project; therefore the team is truly indebted and thankful for all this great support. TP Kourou Members Through a set of innovative principles, “Kourou, a Vision beyond 2030” hopes to communicate a realistic picture of Kourou outlining the tools, techniques, and procedures required to materialize sustainable European human spaceflight from Europe’s spaceport. All factors and elements of the Vision when put together act as dots drawing a realistic picture of a truly brilliant future. A future that holds immense promise for the private sector, addressing not only a growing personal spaceflight market but establishing a permanent presence in the spaceport through their involvement in entertainment, training, and security, for example. The government’s cost and risk-sharing partnership with the private investors might be the missing piece of the puzzle to bring all ESA and EU partners together towards a single worthy goal. This document commences by describing the vision through generic forward-looking principles to then address their implementation in the Kourou spaceport. This implementation is classified into three categories. First, the underlying factors which have an overall impact to all facilities and operations. For instance, construction methods or energy production and utilization affect all activities. Second, the spaceport’s constituent elements related to every specific activity required for HSF are presented. For example, transport to Kourou, training of astronauts, integration, and aborting are various examples of these steps. Finally, the strategy frameworks indispensable to this endeavor such as policy, legal, and collaboration are critically analyzed. For each of these topics, the discussion the discussion does not go as far as suggesting ideal detailed scenarios but does present an accessible review of the required developments and options available to Europe. 50 years ago, the first human space flight was achieved by Yuri Gagarin. Since then more than 500 humans have been launched into Earth orbit and beyond. Surprisingly, they have been launched only from four launch sites; Baikonur in Kazakhstan, Cape Canaveral and Kennedy in USA, and Jiuquan in China. Despite the past European attempts to realize human space flight, Kourou, the Europe’s spaceport and the best launch site in the world, has not yet had the honor of being a human-rated launch site. This year, ISU’s Masters Candidates were offered a choice of two team projects: “Human space flights from the Kourou spaceport” and “Space applications within the future E-Health environment.” The former project team, which is composed of 21 courageous students, has worked on the task to illustrate the possibility of the human-rated flights from the Kourou spaceport. They have successfully completed this report, which presents a vision for Kourou in 2030 where a public-private-partnership hosts a successful European human space flight program. The team projects (TPs) are an important part of ISU’s twelve-month, Master of Science (M.Sc.) programs. Students from different professional and educational backgrounds work intensively during a dedicated time period on a topical theme, which is interdisciplinary in nature. It has been our honor to be involved with the “TP-Kourou” project, which is composed men and woman from 16 different countries – with diverse academic backgrounds, skills and cultures. The ISU faculty provides guidance, but the members themselves determine the team structure, project schedule and the final direction, and worked really hard according to their code of conduct. We sincerely hope that this report inspires European industry and governments to make the future steps to realize the human space flight from Kourou spaceport. We also hope that this work inspires some members of this team to continue human space flight research and contribute to its realization in Kourou. The journey of this team will certainly be an inspiration to these students after they leave ISU. They have faced all their problems head on with great dignity and they have emerged at the end as a strong and unified team. We hope that they will reflect on what they have achieved here and be proud. Finally, we wish to acknowledge all the experts who assisted the team, as well as ISU resident faculty who provided students with help and feedback all along this project. Hideto Suzuki Emmanouil Detsis On behalf of ISU’s Resident Faculty and TAs April 12th, 2011 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the first human space flight, by Russian Cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin. During the past 50 years, Russia (the former Soviet Union) and the United States developed and conducted human spaceflight programs. Finally after long time of this duopoly, China entered as a player in the human spaceflight field with the successful launch of the Shenzhou 5 in 2003. Human spaceflight has been making us enthused about space for as long as most of us can remember. Now, we believe that we are approaching a new era of human spaceflight that involves new players; and Europe is one of them. The European Space Agency has its own spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, which is currently utilized for non- human-rated spaceflight activities. We see the spaceport at Kourou to be a potential launch site for future European human space flight. Beginning with a literature review on European human spaceflight and the spaceport in Kourou, we identified the gaps and realized that a clear future vision from various perspectives is needed. We, Team Kourou, consist of 21 students of the International Space University (ISU) 2011 Masters class. We all have different academic backgrounds and represent 16 nations across the world. Our unique and diverse individual heritages have allowed us to view this topic with an interdisciplinary approach. This final report, Kourou Vision 2030, is filled with our numerous ideas of what future human spaceflight could look like from Kourou. Within a limited time of less than two months, we enjoyed this team project and learned a lot about human spaceflight. Through this project, we attained a great experience of international, intercultural and interdisciplinary team building. We are proud of our hard work and the contributions from each of us. We certainly appreciate this unique opportunity that the ISU has given us, in this year of the 50th anniversary of human spaceflight. In conclusion, we acknowledge ISU faculty members and external personnel who supported us and gave us advice. All the members of the ISU 2011 Masters Class Team Project Kourou hope that you enjoy reading this. Human spaceflight opened humanity to a new perspective of the world and the universe, and Team Project Kourou wishes that this report will help bring some new perspectives to the beginning