For Space Tourism, Race Is On

Companies Developing Rockets; Tourists Could Travel To Moon By 2008

(AP) 
Virgin Galactic plans to fly the first passengers for $200,000 apiece by late 2008 or early 2009, with the first leaving from California's Mojave Desert and later flights from a proposed spaceport in New Mexico. The maiden flight would carry Branson and Rutan, among others, Whitehorn said.

"This is a project not without risk," Whitehorn said recently. "It's our goal to be the first ones to do it safely."

Oklahoma-based Rocketplane Kistler is one of Virgin Galactic's biggest competitors. Rocketplane Kistler, whose main investor is American businessman George French, hopes to start test flights next January and fly commercially by next summer. French owns several businesses including a space education company in Wisconsin.

The company is building a souped-up, 42-foot-long suborbital Lear jet that can seat three passengers and a pilot. Unlike SpaceShipTwo, which would piggyback atop a mothership to a certain height, the Rocketplane XP would take off and land-like an airplane using turbojets and rockets.

"It's the beginning of a whole new era of commercial space travel. Someone's got to do it and we want to be the first," said vice president John Herrington, a former NASA astronaut who will perform the suborbital test flights.

Space Adventures, an Arlington, Va., space travel agency best known for brokering three tourists to the international space station, is the latest entrant.

Last month, Space Adventures announced a partnership with members of the Ansari family, the major funders of the $10 million X Prize won by SpaceShipOne, to develop Russian-designed suborbital rockets that would launch from a proposed spaceport in the United Arab Emirates by 2008.

Space tourism companies hope wary investors will provide financial backing once they can establish a safety record and prove there is sufficient demand.

"It's changed from being a giggle factor to being heralded as a new business," said Geoff Sheerin, president and chief executive of Canada-based PlanetSpace. Sheerin also founded Canadian Arrow, a private rocket company that unsuccessfully competed for the X Prize in 2004.

PlanetSpace, backed by American businessman Chirinjeev Kathuria, is building a 54-foot-long, three-seat suborbital rocket that would launch from somewhere in the Great Lakes region and re-enter Earth by splashing into the water. It hopes to fly 2,000 passengers in the first five years, beginning in 2008.

Some market studies have shown the public has an attitude of "If you build it, we will come." Futron, a Bethesda, Md.-based aerospace consulting firm, estimated that revenues in the infant space tourism industry could exceed $1 billion a year by 2021 with the greatest demand in suborbital flights in which passengers spend mere minutes in space.

Before tourists can lift off, several federal hurdles must be cleared. Federal regulations that will govern human space travel and spell out safety and training requirements are expected to be wrapped up this summer.

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta last month told a gathering of space entrepreneurs that the government would move swiftly to grant space travel licenses to companies that can prove they can operate safely.

That's good news for people like Chaikin, the space historian.

"I've been hoping and dreaming all my life to go into space. Now I actually have a shot of doing it."