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by Kenny Liimata
What would you do for $10 million? More than 20 teams from around the world are building spaceships in a race for the $10 million X-Prize, a reward for the first team to create a suborbital vehicle that can carry three people to the edge of the earth’s atmosphere (62.5 miles above the surface), return to land safely, and repeat the trip two weeks later.
| A team from Ontario is already
looking for pilots to test their Canadian
Arrow, a 54-foot, two-stage reusable
spacecraft that launches vertically
and lands parachuting into water.
Other entrants have pursued a less
standard approach, launching from
water, a runway, the back of a carrier
airplane, or behind a tow plane. Perhaps
the most intriguing is the other
Canadian team, the da Vinci Project.
Their submarine-shaped "Wild Fire"
will be lifted to 80,000 feet by a 25-
story helium balloon before firing its
rockets.
There is more at stake than $10 million. The prize is merely a booster for the commercialization of space travel. Creating a viable reusable spacecraft will lower the cost of the space travel, which is vital to the creation of a space industry. The XPrize --funded in 1996 by donations from businesses in St. Louis-- has provided the motivation to kindle a healthy competition in the reusable vehicle "race to space." This competition is similar to that created among pilots in the early 20th century by the $25,000 Orteig prize, which was awarded to the first pilot to fly an airplane from New York to Paris. (Minnesota native Charles Lindberg won that award with his plane "Spirit of St. Louis," but the X-Prize competitor closest to Minnesota is an unnamed rocket under construction in Bath, Michigan.) By spurring the development of airplanes, the Orteig award helped air travel grow into a $250 billion industry. Backers of the X-Prize hope it will do the same for the space travel industry. Another step toward this new reality is space tourism. The first space tourist was businessman Dennis Tito, who paid the Russian Space Program $20 million for an eight-day stay in space aboard the International Space Station. Opposed to bringing civilians into space, NASA officials initially refused to let Tito enter the U.S. part of the station. Tito told MSNBC News that he hoped that he could convince NASA officials to "think a little bit differently" because he thought it unwise to not invest in space commercialism. |
The "Canadian Arrow" |
At a conference over the summer Walt Anderson, founder of venture capital company Gold & Appel, also criticized NASA for hindering the growth of a space industry.
"As long as NASA competes politically by giving some people access to space and others not at a lower than actual commercial cost, it will continue to damage the commercial space industry in the United States," he said.
Part of the reason for NASA’s resistance to the commercialization of space travel is their current monopoly over the space travel in the U.S. If private companies begin to make trips into space, NASA is sure to lose some funding.
But NASA could have a lot to gain in suborbital vehicles promoted by the X-Prize. By providing their own commercial flights to space with reusable spacecrafts, NASA could become more self-sufficient, relying less on tax money.
NASA missed out on another opportunity to be a part of commercial space travel later in the year, when Mark Shuttleworth of South Africa took a trip similar to Tito’s. The Russian space program received another $20 million for transporting Shuttleworth to the International Space Station. These two trips show how much some are willing to pay for the opportunity to take a trip to space.
Of course, the average American can’t afford the $20 million price tag on a trip into space, but as with any other new commodity, the retail price begins high and decreases when it adjusts to the market. DVD players, for a simple example, cost about $400 when they first came out a few years ago but now go for less $50.
Competition will help bring the price down, and there already is private- sector competition for the space travel industry. Xcor Aerospace, for example, created the first low-cost, reusable rocket engines, and has its sights set on space tourism. They have used these engines for over a year on their EZ-Rocket prototype, Time magazine’s 2001 Transportation Invention of the Year. Now they are in the process of creating Xerus, a reusable suborbital spacecraft.
Like most of the other suborbital vehicles in development, the Xerus would only give its passengers a few minutes of zero gravity, but it promises spectacular views of earth and the black, star-filled sky. They estimate customers will be able to begin rides on the Xerus in the next four years.
With the technology of suborbital vehicles almost here, other features of the space travel industry are falling into place. Space Adventures, the company that facilitated Tito and Shuttleworth’s trips to the International Space station, is ready to become a booking agency for suborbital flights. They have contracted with Xcor for flights on Xerus and are already reserving tickets. They anticipate flights beginning before 2006, and "flights are filling up at a steady pace," even at $98,000 per person.
This is still out of reach for the average American, but it looks like a bargain compared to the $20 million Tito and Shuttleworth paid for their trips. And knowing our appetite for adventure and extreme experiences, the market will doubtless continue to grow and drive the price lower. Spring break in space may be just a few years away.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
www.xprize.org
www.xcor.com
www.spaceadventures.com
