Jan. 2, 2007 — It's been more than two years since the first and so far only private spaceship flew beyond Earth's atmosphere. But the growing cadre of space entrepreneurs has hardly been idle.
The Spaceship Company, a joint venture of Richard Branson's Virgin Group of London and Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites of Mojave, Calif., plans to begin test flights of its first suborbital passenger ship
this year. The vehicle is based on Rutan's SpaceShipOne, which made three piloted flights to suborbital space in 2004.
The stunts earned Rutan, and his partner Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, a $10 million prize for the first private piloted spaceflights. SpaceShipOne won a spot in the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC.
The flights captivated Branson. He hired Rutan to design a fleet of ships for commercial suborbital spaceflights and began taking reservations and deposits through a Virgin Atlantic Airways offshoot, Virgin Galactic.
So far, the company has taken more than $20 million in deposits from customers willing to pay $200,000 to experience a few moments of weightlessness and take in the view from 360,000 feet, or 68 miles.
At that altitude, the curvature of the Earth against the blackness of space is visible.
Like its predecessor, SpaceShipTwo's development is taking place under a cloak of secrecy at Rutan's Mojave Desert base. Scaled Composites also is building a new jet carrier that will carry the spaceship to an altitude of about 60,000 feet before it will be dropped so its booster rocket can ignite, in the same way SpaceShipOne was launched.
In September, Branson unveiled a full-size model of the interior of SpaceShipTwo, which will hold two pilots and six passengers. Travelers will have plenty of legroom — Rutan wants passengers to be
able to float around a bit — and large windows to soak up the view.
Rutan is building five spaceships and two jet carriers for Virgin Galactic, which has an 18-month exclusivity contract. After that, The Spaceship Company plans to sell its vehicles to other spaceflight service providers.
Work also is under way on a $225-million space launch complex north of Las Cruces, New Mexico, which will become Virgin Galactic's U.S. base.
Virgin expects its first commercial spaceflights will take place from Mojave, where SpaceShipOne flew, in late 2008 or early 2009. Operations will transfer to New Mexico when spaceport construction is finished. The firm also is looking at sites in other countries.
The company, which plans to fly about 50,000 people over the next 10 years, selected its first group of astronaut-pilots in 2006, choosing three men who are currently Virgin airline captains. Next year, as
Virgin Galactic ramps up for routine flight service, about 30 astronaut pilots will be recruited for training.
Black Skies for Blue Origin?
Rutan and Branson are far from the only entrepreneurs pursuing dreams of spaceflight. Amazon.com's founder Jeff Bezos is keeping a tight lid on his project, called Blue Origin. The firm conducted its first test-flight of its New Shepard rocket in November, but released no results.
The rocket is believed to be based on technology developed in the early 1990s for the McDonnell Douglas Delta Clipper, which took off and landed vertically.
Another businessman-turned-rocketeer is Robert Bigelow, founder of the Budget Suites hotel chain. True to his heritage in hospitality, Bigelow's focus is not on getting to space, but where people will stay once they arrive. In 2006, Bigelow successful flew a subscale prototype of an inflatable space habitat based on a design originally developed for the International Space Station.
A second prototype is scheduled to be launched early this year. Bigelow also announced plans in 2006 to work with Lockheed Martin on a study to use an Atlas 5 rocket to launch people. The heavy-lift booster is currently used only for unmanned spacecraft.
