XCOR Aerospace Announces a New Spacecraft

Second among the juicy tidbits of space tourism news this week was the significant announcement by XCOR Aerospace of the Lynx spacecraft.

XCOR is a rocket engine development company based in the Mojave Airport. It was founded in September of 1999 by former members of the Rotary Rocket rocket engine development team, and they have long had aspirations of creating a commercial spacecraft. Their accomplishments have included their 5M15 Methane Rocket Engine, which was one the Time Inventions of the Year in 2007. One of the concepts behind the methane rocket engine relies on the fact that methane is abundant in space. In theory, a spacecraft powered by these engines could refuel en-route while on long distance voyages. Rocket engines like these may be used in some fashion for Nasa's next generation Crew Exploration Vehicle.

But back to today's news. The announcement of the Lynx is a great step toward the developement of a tourist spacecraft.

Wait, didn't I say it is a spacecraft?

Well, XCOR is calling it a "spaceship", but technically, it isn't a spacecraft. XCOR is very careful to say that it will take passengers to the edge of space, but in truth, it will only carry passengers a little higher than 60km, where the US gives astronaut wings to anyone reaching 80km, and Europe's standard is 100km. So, you may ask, if it won't take you to space, what will it do?

The Lynx is a small spacecraft with only a rocket engine; it will launch that rocket from the ground. It will use this engine to take one pilot and one passenger up past 60km a few times per day. It won't be space, but the sky will turn black and passengers will get a few minutes of weightlessness, and that will likely be good enough for some.

Once the Lynx is constructed, it will undergo more than 50 test flights before tourist flights begin, and that is expected to happen in 2010. Also of interest is the price; flights are expected to cost around $100,000, which could attract those not interested in spending twice as much just to say that they've technically been in space.

Personally, however, I'm holding out for true space flight. I want my astronaut wings, damn it!

Just sayin'.

Oh yeah, and here's some pictures (credit XCOR):

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Rocketplane Acquires a New Test Pilot

Wow, what a week for space tourism!

And what a week to not have time to write about it!

Seriously, folks, I feel kind of pinned down here! This week has been a treasure-trove of news about space tourism, but at the same time, I have a new roommate moving in, I'm in the beginning stages of starting a new business, and several other changes have been occurring with my life (more on all those later), and I have had no time to write about any of this! But I intend to turn that around, one piece of news at a time. I'll start with a bit of news I learned about Sunday; Rocketplane Global has made some organizational changes, including having Paul Metz join the company as Vice President and Chief Test Pilot.

Rocketplane Global was founded in 2001 in Oklahoma City, OK, and they opened their first office in May 2004. Since then, they have grown to over 60 people, mainly designing the planned Rocketplane XP spacecraft. If you think that's not enough people, I would remind you that SpaceShipOne was designed and built by around 120 people, so it's definitely possible.

Rocketplane's immediate plans are the design of the XP, but their long-term plans involve the development of a fleet of various vehicles for suborbital and orbital tourism, and also ultrafast point-to-point travel. The XP itself is expected to be a single craft design, with jet engines that allow it to take off and climb into the atmosphere, and a rocket engine to allow it to climb into space.

Rocketplane is also in development of Spaceport Oklahoma, located near the town of Clinton. Spaceport Oklahoma, located on the Clinton-Sherman air force base, includes the third longest runway in North America and serves as an alternate landing site for the space shuttle.

Paul Metz, before becoming Rocketplane's test pilot, was a test pilot for Lockheed Martin, and earlier in his career, he was a US Air Force fighter pilot.

Beyond these items, information about the company's progress in developing of their space program is sparse, but it appears to be active and advancing, so I'll keep an ear out for more!

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On My Own

Well, I believe we are way overdue for more of my reflections on how I got to where I am, so I think I'll bore you just a little more.

When we left off, my roommate was moving out! I finally had a job, though at the time it was a temp job, and I wasn't making enough to pay rent on my own. I needed a new roommate, or I'd have to move out too.

I had at least three friends who were still living with their parents, so I went to them first. One was making payments on his car and didn't want to make rent payments as well, so that was a no-go. The other two didn't want to move out either, but didn't care to explain why. I'm sure they had their reasons, and I don't fault them for that. For the record though, two of those three still live with their parents to this day. Anyway, with my acquaintances exhausted, I was forced to resort to (duh duh duh) Craigslist. Actually, I had had good experiences with Craigslist before. I don't think I've mentioned it, but I actually found my job on that site, so I was willing to give it a try for a roommate too. Several people called me saying they were interested (it was actually good timing; this was a month or two before classes started at the nearby university). I eventually settled on a guy who was moving in to town from Chicago, and already had a job in the area.

Rule 4: Stay Vigilant.

My fourth rule for getting into space stems from my experience with this guy. Looking back, yeah I was naive, but I like to give people the benefit of the doubt when they run into tough times. To cut a long, depressing story short, he disappeared without a trace five months after he moved in. He had only paid rent once, he used my social security number to open a credit card to which he charged $500, He stole a collection of rare items that I had been working on for ten years and that was worth at least another $500, and he left his room in shambles. Two weeks after he disappeared, my friends and I decided he probably wasn't coming back, and we went into his room to clean it out. A glance inside is all it took for us to realize that we needed to go buy some thick rubber gloves and one of those long trash-grabber things. A few minutes inside was all it took for us to realize we needed to call the police.

Here is an abridged list of items that we found inside his room: at least twenty drug needles, two social security cards (neither of which were his), criminal conviction paperwork from at least two states, a stained blanket that my mother had given me (that alone was worse than the drug needles), an autographed copy of Lies and the Lying Liars that Tell Them by Al Franken that my brother had given me (throughly stained with something red), a stack of my bank statements, various other ruined posessions of mine, various other drug paraphernalia, at least a hundred used Q-Tips scattered on the floor, at least five sets of womens' clothing (most of them stained), and the list goes on.

Yeah. It was bad. And it was really sad too; the guy was a damn good cook. He could have opened his own restaurant based purely on his handiwork with pasta and his social skills. Looking back on it, I saw the warning signs, and decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I should have kicked him out at least two months prior. So remember Rule 4: always be vigilant! You don't have to be an ass; just pay attention to warning signs and investigate. If I had done the slightest bit of digging when I saw those warning signs, I would likely have uncovered all of this and saved myself a boatload of trouble. But it could have been a whole lot worse for me if he had been out to do more than just finance his drug habits.

So I'm going to skip about a year here. My parents bailed me out of my rent issues caused by that incident, and I never had any more trouble with that, because I soon got hired on at my work and got a big raise. I used some of that raise to (finally) start my space tourism savings, and my retirement savings. I convinced one of my friends to move out of his parents' and move in with me, but we weren't really compatible as roommates so he moved out a few months later.

I started the hunt for a new roommate a third time, but then I realized that that huge raise had left me with a ton of extra money that I wasn't using. I was sticking a lot of it in my space tourism savings, but I thought to myself, why can't I ditch the apartment altogether and find myself a house?

So the next (and final) installment of my personal story will detail the Quest for the House! I'm sure you're looking forward to that.

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Space Adventures acquires Zero Gravity

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days. I just got a new roommate, and I have a few other changes going on, so posting may be spotty for a few more days. Anywho, on to the news of the day!

Space Adventures Ltd. announced today that they have acquired Zero Gravity Corporation. Zero Gravity is the U.S. company that provides weightless parabolic flights to the general public at the cost of a few thousand dollars. This isn't altogether a huge shift, since Space Adventures already had a sizable stake in Zero Gravity, and the two companies share a co-founder, Peter Diamandis. Basically, this helps fill out Space Adventures' portfolio of, well, space adventures. Space Adventures Ltd, in case you are unaware, is the company that facilitates tourist trips to the International Space Station aboard Russian Soyuz craft.

I've been tempted over the years to save some money and blow it on one of these weightless parabolic flights. So tempted. Stephen Hawking did this recently. But, as you are probably aware by now, I'm holding out for the real deal.

That's all for now!

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EADS Releases Space Plane Project Details

The Chief Technical Officer of EADS, Robert Laine, was recently interviewed by the BBC concerning EADS Astrium's space tourism plans, and he actually went into quite a bit of detail about how the project is going to work.

EADS is a large European aerospace company that resulted from the 2000 merging of DaimlerChrysler Aerospace AG of Germany, Aerospatiale Matra of France, and CASA of Spain. They are responsible for creating everything from Airbus aircraft to military helicopters. The EADS Astrium division was created to encompass the space portion of EADS' Aerospace goals, and today, they have 12,000 employees in five European countries.

EADS Astrium is split into three principal roles. Astrium Services sells services that require complex or multiple-satelite setups, such as communications or navigation. Astrium Satellites designs and manufactures satellites, and Astrium Space Transportation supports manned space activities, and researches and develops space vehicles. Astrium Space Transportation has been responsible for such systems as the Columbus module, currently part of the International Space Station, and the European Space Agency's automated transfer vehicle, now in a parking orbit near the International Space Station, waiting for the space shuttle to leave so that it can dock.

Astrium Space Transportation is now in development of a space plane, intended to be used for tourism purposes. In his interview with the BBC, Robert Laine provided several new details concerning the program.

The expected cost of a trip on one of these space planes is €200,000. Astrium's studies of the potential space tourism market suggest that as many as 15,000 people would be willing to shell out this kind of cash every year for a ride on one of its planes. To facilitate that, Astrium plans to manufacture 10 space planes per year once they are in full production. Also, it was revealed that Astrium has no intention to provide the tourist flights itself; it will just sell the planes to others who will.

The plane will operate by using conventional jet engines to fly 12 km into the atmosphere, where it will ignite its rocket. The plane's liquid oxygen-methane rocket engine has been successfully tested for thirty-one seconds at a stretch, and the form of the plane itself has successfully passed initial wind tunnel tests. The plane will be able to carry five people into space (four tourists and one pilot), and the trip will take about an hour and a half.

And here are some pictures! The The first is credited to EADS, and the second to Marc Newson, the designer of the interior. Enjoy!

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SpaceShipTwo May Fly by the End of 2008

Sir Richard Branson, founder and CEO of Virgin Galactic, suggested this week on the Indian television network NDTV that the first SpaceShipTwo craft (the VSS Enterprise) will be ready for flight tests by the end of the year. And that isn't the only thing he mentioned. He also suggested that the flight testing will take about nine months, after which he hopes that he and his family will be on the first flight. Notably, he said that he won't put the family on the spacecraft until he is sure that is safe, perhaps in an attempt to reassure others that if they want to go up on SpaceShipTwo, they will come back down! You can read a mediocre translation of the interview here. The interview was mostly about India's economy and the Virgin group's plans for expansion in Indian markets, but on space tourism, Branson mentions these and a few other things that are too poorly translated in this transcript to understand. I prefer not to speculate on those, so I recommend reading it for yourself.

This is exciting stuff, though! Before the year is out, we may very well see the Enterprise launched toward space for the first time! And I imagine before then, we'll see Eve (the first WhiteKnightTwo) perform various flight tests. It's shaping up to be a very exciting year!

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A Few More Space Tourism Companies

Well, I've done it again! In the process of researching for these posts, I've run across a few more potential space tourism companies that I neglected in my previous lists. So here are three more!

SpaceDev
SpaceDev has the stated goal of building a private affordable space program, and they're doing it incrementally by working on designing and constructing various systems and satellites for use in space. They were founded in 1997 by Jim Benson, and started by creating thermal actuator technologies. It has since specialized in (among other things) the design and construction of very small satellites, and it is credited with the design and construction of SpaceShipOne's rocket engine. SpaceDev is currently designing the Dream Chaser spacecraft, which may be used by the Benson Space company for orbital tourist flights. For the record, I have been aware of this company for a long time, but I didn't include them among my space tourism company lists until now because I was not aware that they are the people who are designing the Dream Chaser.

SPACEHAB
SPACEHAB was founded in 1984, and has specialized since then in many spaceflight-related services. Notably, they have designed and constructed pressurized and non-pressurized cargo containers that have flown on nineteen shuttle missions. They have also provided services that facilitated the launch of over 200 commercial satellites, and they provide many other services and technologies to NASA and other government organizations. They are currently designing a module for the International Space Station, named (of course) Enterprise, with plans of potentially selling its use to miscellaneous interests. These are expected to be mainly scientific interests, but this could potentially open up the International Space Station for more tourism. Yeah, I know, it's a really slim possibility, but it gives me an excuse to fill out the list with one more company.

t/Space
t/Space (or Transformational Space) was founded specifically to facilitate NASA's needs concerning the President's Vision in Space Exploration. Already, they have competed and become finalists in NASA's COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) program to determine who will provide International Space Station transportation services when the space shuttle is retired. Also, they were one of eight winners in NASA's "Concept Exploration and Refinement" competition to advise them on the best method of getting back to the moon and going on to Mars. They are currently in the process of designing a "Crew Transfer Vehicle" (CXV) to get people to low earth orbit, and potentially the International Space Station. Also, the t/Space website states that the CXV will aid in "opening the public to space for the first time" which suggests space tourism uses.

By my count, those three additions bring the list up to a whopping 31 companies that will potentially be involved in facilitating space tourism! I'm having trouble finding any more though, so maybe I've found most of them? Maybe?

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