by Steve Jones
IN APRIL 1961, Russian pilot and cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin became the first person to experience that ultimate of birds’ eye views. On board the spacecraft Vostok 1, he peered down on planet Earth from the dark void of space.
Gagarin’s 108-minute flight, during which he travelled at 27,400km an hour, was a breakthrough in space exploration. Yet since then, only 550 people – a surprisingly low number – have ventured beyond the earth’s atmosphere and witnessed the wonders first described by Gagarin 55 years ago.
Depending on your levels of scepticism – and how much credence you give Richard Branson – that number could rocket over the next few years.
If Branson has his way, and if his assumptions are correct, “millions” of people will, in time, be queuing up to emulate Gagarin and those who followed the Russian trailblazer.
And the Virgin entrepreneur is not alone in his quest to open up new frontiers of travel. Paypal and Tesla Motors mastermind Elon Musk has set his lofty sights on inhabiting other planets, while Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is also plotting a business based on giving the masses – albeit extremely wealthy masses – a space adventure.
Bezos and his Blue Origin operation has yet to release pricing but with Virgin Galactic, if you can stump up $250,000, you’ve got yourself a ticket. Another operator, Xcor Space Expeditions, could be regarded as the budget carrier. It has tickets on sale for a mere $150,000.
While there is no official boundary between our atmosphere and space, the commonly accepted view is that it begins 100km above the earth’s surface, at what is known as the Kármán line.
Named after 19th Century Hungarian engineer and physicist Theodore Von Kármán, it has been accepted as the virtual boundary by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, a world air sport body and international standard-setting organisation for aeronautics.
To put that into some sort of perspective, travel eight times beyond the 43,000ft cruising altitude of an Emirates A380 and you won’t be too far off astronaut status.
Branson’s Virgin Galactic has, of course, been the most high profile of the space projects and initially hoped to launch passenger flights in 2007. It was an ambitious target and, as it transpired, hopelessly optimistic.
Despite the endless delays, he remained – at least publicly – unshakeable in his resolve.
That was until October 2014 when Branson’s dream appeared to lay strewn across California’s Mojave Desert following the crash of the VSS Enterprise, and the death of its co-pilot, Michael Alsbury.
Aside from the tragic loss of life – chief pilot Peter Siebold miraculously survived after ejecting from the stricken Enterprise and parachuting 10 miles to earth – it was a devastating set-back for a program already years behind schedule.
But after a year-long probe, investigators concluded the crash was the result of pilot error on the part of Alsbury, rather than any fundamental flaw with the Enterprise itself.
Branson was back in business.
Virgin Galactic failed to respond to travelBulletin emails to discuss the progress of the operation, but at an event in April to unveil its new SpaceShipTwo craft, VSS Unity, Branson told UK media he would be “astounded” if the first flight does not take place within two years.
Furthermore, Branson believes his venture has the backing of “millions and millions of people who would love to become astronauts”. “If we can make it environmentally friendly, if we can make it affordable and if we can make it safe, then in time your children and my grandchildren will all have the chance to go to space,” he told The Guardian newspaper.
To date, Virgin Galactic has taken around 700 bookings. According to its Australian accredited space agents, not all have come from wealthy individuals, however counterintuitive that may seem given the exorbitant price tag.
Gil McLachlan Travel Group said it has two paid-up passengers and “15 maybes of varying degrees of enthusiasm”.
“Most are in wait and see mode but I would expect action as soon as the routine commercial flights commence,” chief executive Gil McLachlan told travelbulletin. “It has appealed to a very broad group and not all are wealthy. They run from young trendy rich folk who I suspect are just doing it as it will be a good dinner conversation, to solid business people who can manage the cost, to people who have borrowed the money.
“People in their 80s have made bookings and they are definitely fit enough. I think that’s important as in the past the only people in space were as fit as Olympians.”
Penny Spencer, founder of Spencer Travel in Sydney, said its four bookings, and general interest in the space program, have come from “all walks of life”.
“We have an orthodontist, an ex-Qantas steward, an adrenaline junkie and a husband buying it for his wife’s 50th birthday,” she said.
So, apart from the “I’ve been to space” brag, what exactly do you get for your $250,000?
The core package is three-days accommodation, training at the purpose-built Spaceport America facility in New Mexico and, of course, the flight itself.
The training is designed to mentally and physically prepare customers so they can “savor every second of the spaceflight”, with basic emergency response training also a critical part of the pre-flight preparation.
As for the flight, Virgin Galactic’s dualfuselage an altitude of 50,000ft before the attached SpaceShipTwo spacecraft is released.
The rocket motor then clicks into gear, with the craft accelerating to more than 1,000 metres per second, or three and a half times the speed of sound.
After 60-seconds of this mach three speed, the motor shuts down and the spacecraft “coasts into space where astronauts will leave their seats and experience true, unencumbered weightlessness” while viewing the earth through 12 cabin windows.
This centre-piece of the trip lasts for “several minutes”, Virgin Galactic states on its website, after which the spacecraft returns to earth.
Spencer said the art of selling such a unique product requires “patience and persistence”.
“This is a big ticket item so people do want a lot of information, reassurance, help and confidence in the product,” she said. That confidence took a battering after the 2014 crash, with Branson himself wondering if it signaled the end.
Globally, around 25 would-be space tourists withdrew from the program, but Spencer said they saw no cancellations. Unlike Branson, “it didn’t shake our confidence,” she insisted, adding that while no launch date has been set, “it is going to happen”.
“I think everyone dreams of going to space and what Richard has created is curiosity. My kids will probably go to space. Once this takes off I think we will be surprised how many people will want to do it.”
Worryingly for agents however, Spencer said Virgin Galactic has adopted a more direct, reactive and application-based sales process since the accident, although Spencer Travel remains an accredited space agent.
Spencer’s prediction that demand will increase was supported by McLachlan, who also voiced confidence in the project and suggested the demise of the Enterprise would not have unnerved too many prospective space travellers.
“These people are well informed and in this case understand the crash was pilot error, not a problem with the craft,” he said. “I also understand that the ability of the pilots to make the error [that led to the crash] has been addressed.
“I thi
nk space tourism will become mega popular once the price drops to that of a car.” Prices will fall to $40,000, McLachlan estimated, which raises the very legitimate question of why pay $250,000 now if you’ll be able to pick up a space mission for the fraction of the cost further down the track?
“I just say that someone has to fund the beginning and that someone is them,” he said. “They always accept this.
“But one of the biggest barriers is a concern that other family members will object, in part because of the cost, so the price can be factor. It’s not that the prospective astronaut thinks it expensive but because the family think the money is better spent elsewhere. Some passengers have not told anyone they have booked a space flight.”
Nor are customers expressing much frustration at the delays, said McLachlan. “They understand the reasons. As we like to say, ‘it’s a safe race, not a space race’.”
But in effect, a space race is exactly what it is. While hardly on the scale of the US-USSR rivalry during the second half of the 20th Century, Branson faces competition from Jeff Bezos, and others, in his bid to create a space tourism industry.
That said, there is an argument to say Branson and Bezos have been beaten to it. US-based Space Adventures has already sent eight civilians to the International Space Station (ISS) over the past 15 years.
After protracted negotiations amid a refusal by the US to sanction his eight-day visit, American engineer and multimillionaire Dennis Tito went down in history as the first space tourist when, with help from the Russians, he blasted off in 2001.
“I think Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos… wouldn’t be in this industry if it wasn’t for what Dennis originally did,” Space Adventures president Tom Shelley has said. These trips to the ISS are, however, on a different scale to the product being spruiked by Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and Xcor Space Expeditions.
As with Branson, passengers who choose the Amazon founder’s company will receive intensive training before boarding the New Shepard spacecraft, a more conventionally designed rocket that departs in more conventional rocket fashion – from a launch pad.
A capsule with a maximum of six astronauts then separates from the rocket after a vertical journey of 150 seconds and glides into space, offering spectacular views from 43-inch windows.
The reusable mother ship returns to earth, followed later by the capsule which descends with parachutes and thrusters.
Bezos, who until recently kept his plans remarkably low profile, hopes to operate the first piloted test flights next year, with ticketed passengers travelling into space by 2018. For the time being however, reservations remain closed and ticket prices remain under wraps. Equally unclear is whether Blue Origin will adopt a similar approach to Virgin Galactic and hand pick a few travel agents to sell the product.
“I wanted to start a space company from when I was a little kid, but I never expected to have the resources to do so,” Bezos told The Washington Post – a newspaper he owns – on a tour of Blue Origin’s facility in Kent, Washington. “Then I won this lottery ticket called amazon.com. And so when Amazon became a successful company I realised, ‘Hey, I can fulfil my childhood dreams of starting a space company’, and that’s what I did.”
McLachlan recognised the emergence of Blue Origin describing it as “credible”.
“But that’s not to comment on success,” he said. “It depends how determined they are and how deep their pockets are.
“I would expect the commercialisation of space travel is currently in the hands of Branson, but once it starts to commence regular flights it will be like breaking the four minute mile and lots of others will step in.
“The commission is token, but if we were in it for the money we would never have bothered. You don’t get a lot of products that are this interesting and gratifying to sell and the Galactic model is important to the industry because it represents proof of feasibility.”
Spencer also foreshadowed new entrants. “Watch this space,” she said.
Xcor Space Expeditions, meanwhile, was formed by career rocket scientist Jeff Greason in 1999, the year Branson registered Virgin Galactic.
The US firm has several products on sale. These include a Pioneer program, where passengers will travel 60km above the surface of the earth on the two-seater Lynx Mark 1, and the sold out Founder Astronaut program, which is reserved for the first 100 astronauts, of which Bob Geldof is one. This involves a journey above the Kármán line on a spacecraft called Lynx Mark II, also designed for just the pilot and one paying passenger.
“You are in the best seat, up front with the action, watching every moment of the spaceflight unfold,” Xcor says on its website, while flagging the near 360-degree view from the cockpit canopy.
“We know you did not travel this far to look at the earth through a tiny airline window,” it adds.
In similar vein to its competitors, the spacecraft rapidly accelerates to supersonic speed within one minute and mach three in three minutes, before gliding above the virtual space boundary for several minutes of weightlessness.
Xcor has a number of other options including an Advanced Astronaut program for $185,000, with “an array of training mission and events”, and the $235,000 Iconic program where the space traveller appears in a “personalised documentary”.
Those not on the founding astronaut program can sign on as a Future Astronaut, again at a cost of $150,000.
Xcor has not specified a launch date but, if and when flights begin, it anticipates each of its two spacecrafts will operate four flights per day.
Beware however, the Lynx crafts are not designed to take people taller than 6ft 9 or heavier than 113kg.
As for Elon Musk and SpaceX, a venture which started two years before Blue Origin, in 2002, it has steered clear from pure space tourism.
While its extraordinary long term goal is to “enable people to live on other planets”.
SpaceX is predominantly focused on supply cargo missions to the ISS.
While companies are clearly making progress with their technology, space travel has been on the agenda for years, and several launch dates have come and gone.
It is tempting, therefore, to suggest it may never happen. That would be the pessimists’ viewpoint.
But those behind the various operators are anything but pessimistic, Branson in particular who, unsurprisingly, suggests it will become big business.
“I think it would be very sad for anybody to not want to go to space,” he says. “If you are inquisitive about life and inquisitive about the world around us, to be able to look back at our fragile earth from space and see the beauty of it, I am sure every single one of us would love to do it if given the opportunity.”
It remains to be seen if he will be the first to provide such an opportunity.
