Businessman to Fly African Flags On Space Trip

by Staff Writers
Nairobi (AFP) Feb 9, 2010

A Dubai-based businessman who has signed up to be a spacetourist said Tuesday he planned to fly the flags of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda on his out-of-world journey in honour of his childhood in Africa.

Real estate magnate Ashish Thakkar was in Nairobi to receive a Kenyan flag from Prime Minister Raila Odinga ahead of a space voyage expected next year.

"I feel honoured that I will be the first to take Kenya's flag into space," said Thakkar, 28.

"I believe Kenya can use this historic trip to market itself internationally. I want to boost Kenya's image abroad," he said.

Thakkar, co-founder of the international Kensington Group real estate agency, is among 40 people who have paid 200,000 dollars for a trip on Richard Branson'scommercial rocket plane SpaceShipTwo.

He was born in Britain but spent 15 years of his childhood in Africa before his family returned to Britain. He has been in Dubai for the past eight years.

Thakkar has already received the Tanzanian flag from President Jakaya Kikwete and is due to also meet Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who will hand him the country's flag.

Lost In Space Race: Female Pilots

By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY

Women had the "right stuff," too, back in the '60s. But the data on their performance tests were buried in the Mad Men era, and it was two decades before there was an American female astronaut.

A report in the current Advances in Physiology Education reveals that the "Mercury 13" members of the private Woman in Space Program of the early 1960s did about as well as, or better than, male candidates identically tested.

"Some of these women were told they were as good as men. The data show it was true," says lead author Kathy Ryan of the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.

But the 13 women who passed the astronaut tests at Lovelace saw their chance at "one giant step for womankind" canceled in 1961. "I quit my job teaching flight instruction, and … there I was, unemployed," says Gene Nora Jessen, 72, of Boise.

The push for female astronauts began in 1959 when clinic chief W. Randolph Lovelace II and Gen. Donald Flickinger of the U.S. Air Force began a program to test female pilots as astronaut candidates. "They reasoned women were smaller and breathed less oxygen," Ryan says. When the Air Force canceled the effort later that year, Lovelace's clinic took over privately, running the same physical tests on 19 female pilots that 32 male candidates underwent. Of the women, 13 passed (68%); of the men, 18 passed (56%).

The top four women tested as fit as the Mercury 7 astronauts, Ryan says. One in particular, Jerrie Cobb, "really had the right stuff." Cobb passed all tests and far exceeded Mercury 7's average in flight time and endurance.

Almost none of the data were published. But one of Ryan's co-authors, Jack Loeppsky of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Albuquerque, had studied with one of the testing physicians and kept the data on aerobic capacity. When Ryan became interested in the subject, Loeppsky produced the data.

"If we had access to the data, we'd have known they were quite capable," says Margaret Weitekamp of the National Air & Space Museum, author of Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: America's First Women In Space Program. It was never an official NASA program, but the agency embraced the Mercury 13, crediting them with paving the way for others.

Jessen, who is on a tour for her book, The Fabulous Flight of the Three Musketeers, harbors no grudges: "It was wonderful to be part of that time."

After 5 Years, Space Tourism A Work In Progress

By JOHN ANTCZAK and ALICIA CHANG, Associated Press Writers

LOS ANGELES – When a private spaceship soared over California to claim a $10 million prize, daredevil venture capitalist Alan Walton was 68 and thought he'd soon be on a rocket ride of his own.

Walton plunked down $200,000 to be among the first space tourists to make a suborbital thrill-ride high above the Earth aboard a Virgin Galactic spaceship.

Now he intends to ask for his deposit back if there's no fixed launch date by his 74th birthday next April.

"This was going to be the highlight of my old age," he said.

It has been five years since SpaceShipOne, the first privately financed manned spacecraft, captured the Ansari X Prize on Oct. 4, 2004, by demonstrating that a reusable rocket capable of carrying passengers could fly more than 62 miles high twice within two weeks — showing reliability and commercial viability.

Enthusiasm over SpaceShipOne's feats was so high that year that even before the prize-winning flight, British mogul Richard Branson announced an agreement to use the technology in a second-generation design, SpaceShipTwo, to fly commercial passengers into space under the Virgin Galactic banner by 2007.

It seemed that anyone who had the money would soon be experiencing what SpaceShipOne pilot Brian Binnie called "literally a rush — you light that motor off and the world wakes up around you." And then the sensation of weightlessness and the sight of the world far below.

Turning the dream into reality has taken longer than many expected in those days, and spaceflight remains the realm of government astronauts and a handful of extraordinarily wealthy people who have paid millions for rides on Russian rockets to the international space station.

X Prize founder Peter Diamandis says, however, that things have not been at a standstill.

More than $1 billion has been invested in the industry, regulatory roadblocks have been addressed and as many as three different passenger spaceships will emerge in the next 18 to 24 months and begin flying, he said.

"You'll get another large injection of excitement in public interest once those vehicles begin operating and the public starts getting flown," he said.

Freight business owner Edwin Sahakian has seen signs of progress. He and four other Virgin Galactic customers got a peek at SpaceShipTwo this summer during a visit to the Scaled Composites plant at the Mojave Airport, where it is being built by maverick aviation designer Burt Rutan.

At the time it was the color of carbon fiber — dark gray — and had not been painted. Its engine had not been assembled either, but Sahakian was impressed with one aspect: lots of big windows.
"This is not a grandiose mock-up. This is the real thing," said the 46-year-old Sahakian, who is a flight instructor in his spare time.

During the campaign to win the X Prize, Rutan had stressed that a tourism spacecraft would have to have big windows to give passengers a view and it would have to be at least 100 times safer than any spacecraft ever flown.

The project was dealt a setback two years ago when three technicians were killed in an explosion while testing SpaceShipTwo's propellant system. Scaled Composites, which was bought by Northrop Grumman Corp., was cited for five workplace violations and fined $28,870 in connection with the blast that also critically injured three men.

Like SpaceShipOne, its successor will be carried aloft by a special jet aircraft dubbed the WhiteKnightTwo. The rocketship will be released at high altitude before the pilot ignites its motor. After reaching the top of its trajectory, it will fall back into the atmosphere and glide to a landing.

Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn said testing of WhiteKnightTwo is in full swing, with flights above 52,000 feet.

The completed SpaceShipTwo is expected to be unveiled in December in Mojave and first test flights will begin next year, with full-fledged space launches to its maximum altitude by or during 2011, Whitehorn said.

But no timetable for the start of commercial operations is being released, he said.

Whitehorn said Virgin Galactic continues to hold $40 million in deposits by 300 customers.

X Prize Foundation President Robert K. Weiss acknowledged that "things are a few years behind what was originally anticipated" but said he is certain there will be commercial spaceflights within this decade and the interest of people will be reinvigorated.

"When the demand starts to ramp up, the price is going to come down and so it's not going to be a couple hundred thousand dollars, it's going to be the price of, let's say, an automobile," he said.

The foundation, meanwhile, has branched out with its concept of spurring innovation through monetary incentives. Multimillion-dollar X Prizes are being offered in competitions to send a privately funded robot to the moon, build production-capable cars with the equivalent of 100 mpg efficiency, and for developing technology to greatly reduce the time it takes to sequence human genomes.

Diamandis said that while 10 years ago, he found it hard to get anyone to listen to the concept of the X Prize until telecommunications millionaire Anousheh Ansari and her family funded the first one.

Now he says he is seeing a substantial increase in interest from philanthropists, corporations and government agencies in spurring innovation through incentives.

"In financial stress times, prizes really work very well because you only pay upon success," he said.

Ensuring U.S. Access to the International Space Station

Vincent Sabathier, G. Ryan Faith, and Alexandros Petersen
August 15, 2008

In his highly publicized July 24 speech in Berlin, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama struck a conciliatory chord in saying, “we must reject the Cold War mindset of the past and resolve to work with Russia when we can.” A few days later, Russia’s envoy to NATO, Dmitri Rogozin, raised the idea of a new security framework for Eurasia that would include the United States and Russia, as well as China and India. Skeptics’ views that this might be a ploy to undermine NATO were significantly reinforced on August 11, when Russia launched a punitive expedition against Georgia. Destruction of the U.S. ally’s prospects of joining the alliance is most certainly one of Russia’s objectives.

But, Russia’s invasion of its Western-leaning south Caucasus neighbor is not an isolated incident. It is part of a pervasive increase in tensions between Washington and Moscow. Just before Obama’s July 24 speech, the Kremlin leaked plans to deploy, for the first time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, strategic nuclear weapons and delivery systems in Cuba as a response to U.S. missile defense plans involving Poland and the Czech Republic. Russia’s new president Dmitri Medvedev has also followed in the footsteps of his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, in scuttling agreed UN Security Council plans for sanctions on Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe and in selling advanced air-defense units to Iran in the midst of international concerns over its uranium enrichment program.

It is contentious points like these that have led some commentators to speak of a new Cold War. Some policymakers argue that Europe and the United States should see things for what they are. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain has more than once called for Russia to be expelled from the G-8 as unqualified and uncooperative. He is also a strong supporter of U.S. efforts to bolster the NATO and EU membership aspirations of nascent democracies Ukraine and Georgia—even in the face of violent Russian opposition. Other potential flashpoints loom: Russia has made claims to the Arctic seabed, with its vast mineral and hydrocarbon deposits, while the United States and Europe look toward exploiting the same Caspian energy resources that Moscow covets.

Despite hopes for a new world order, tension is spreading into almost every realm of U.S.-Russia relations—except for that most visible of Cold War battlegrounds: space. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States and Russia have cooperated, along with Canada, Japan, and Europe, to build and operate the International Space Station (ISS), the most technologically complex and ambitious international project ever undertaken. From the first crew to take up residence in the ISS in October 2000, the station has been inhabited continuously, principally by U.S. and Russian crews, with additional visitors from Europe, Japan, Canada, and elsewhere. Currently, all station partners rely on the U.S. space shuttle and the Russian Soyuz capsule together as the only vehicles able to transport people to and from the space station. That is, until the 2010 retirement of the U.S. space shuttle. The retirement of the three-decade-old system will mark the beginning of a U.S. inability to send its own astronauts into space, a gap in capability that will last for at least five years, as well as the start of an absolute reliance on the Russian Soyuz.

However, even the U.S. ability to continue to purchase seats on the Soyuz capsule is now in jeopardy. The Iran, North Korea, and Syria Nonproliferation Act (PL 109–112) prevents the purchase, either in kind or in cash, of Russian space technology and services, so long as Russia remains viewed as a proliferation threat for nuclear and missile technology. Due to a 2005 congressional waiver of these restrictions for operating the ISS, the United States has been able to purchase seats on launches of the Soyuz spacecraft to augment U.S. space shuttle flights. Although the current purchase of Soyuz flights will extend through 2011, the manufacturer of the Soyuz has stated that there is a three-year lead time to manufacture new capsules. Therefore, the uncertain fate of a new waiver currently under discussion in Congress means that the United States would lose access to a key component of the station logistics and transport system, requiring it to radically restructure its ability to maintain a presence on the station. This already precarious situation could become disastrous when combined with the planned 2010 retirement of the aging U.S. space shuttle fleet.

Granted, the ISS is the most significant achievement remaining from the glory days of Russia’s space endeavors and remains both a potent symbol and a steady source of income for their cash-strapped program. Today, the Russian inclination to rely on the ISS as source of revenue may provide some reason to believe that Russia will continue to ensure access to the ISS. If recent Russian actions are any indicator, a technical excuse to completely block U.S. access to the ISS for geopolitical reasons would fit nicely into the Kremlin toolkit. Almost immediately after the Czech Republic signed an agreement with the United States to place a missile defense tracking radar in its territory, oil supplies through the Druzhba pipeline to the Central European country were reduced to a trickle. Lithuania, one of the Europeans Union’s most vocal critics of Moscow’s policies, has grappled with similar cuts to its energy supplies from Russia for years, ostensibly for technical reasons. Given the current tense climate between the United States and Russia, Moscow would have ample incentives to exert oblique leverage over Washington or other countries by restricting access to the ISS.

These vulnerabilities come at a particularly sensitive time for the United States and its allies in the area of space cooperation. The United States and its partners on the station will have spent more than $100 billion on the ISS by the time of its completion in 2010. Current U.S. spaceflight plans will effectively cede the control of the ISS to Russia on its 2010 completion by leaving with Russia a monopoly on the ability to transport crew—including U.S., European, and Japanese astronauts—to and from the station. Effectively, the United States will have worked at great length with its partners to give Russia the best space station money can buy. Beyond this, as we have seen with the aftermath of the 2003 Columbia disaster, logistical support for the ISS is always difficult, and without an alternate means to send crew and supplies to the station, continued operation of the ISS could be seen as too risky to continue. In the longer term, there are already significant doubts about the future of ISS after 2015, when the United States is planning to shift its focus to returning to the Moon before the 50th anniversary of the first 1969 Moon landing. However, these plans to return to the Moon are also somewhat shaky and reflect a lack of concrete international participation. This host of future uncertainties makes it clear that it is in the interest of the United States and other ISS partners to strongly consider other options for transporting astronauts to the station and space in general.

At first glance, the possibility of a U.S.-led joint effort with Europe and Japan to quickly develop a backup transportation system, perhaps a capsule that could make use of existing U.S., European, or Japanese launch technologies. A joint program would bring the original space station partners together, finally delivering on the more than 20-year-old promises of the space station. A joint effort would leverage resources and capabilities using the U.S., European, and Japanese common interest in succeeding on the ISS, even if only to declare the station a success and move forward. However, the lack of any discussions thus far—let alone any concrete planning along these lines—means that although such an approach might be most beneficial, such an outcome is by no means certain and will most certainly require a fair amount of time to implement.

It therefore behooves U.S. policymakers to explore other options for access, if nothing else to prevent the reintroduction of Cold War competition to space. Perhaps somewhat ironically, a more promising option may lie with the world’s fastest-growing space power: China. Since China generated great controversy with its unannounced and highly polluting antisatellite test in early 2007, the United States and other space-faring nations have been skeptical about the underlying nature of China’s space program. Although there is no real practical way for China to immediately step up as an alternate means of station access today, such an option could still prove to be a fairly quick remedy, despite the fact that the United States has substantially blocked any dialog on the subject. However, Chinese officials have for many years expressed a keen interest in joining the ISS and seem determined to push forward with ambitious objectives for a Chinese role in space. The United States’ space gap—the half-decade period in which it will not be able to launch its own astronauts into space—would seem an opportune time to attempt confidence-building measures with Beijing. Although China has seen Russia as its historical partner in developing much of its spaceflight infrastructure, an overture from Washington could serve to break down significant barriers on space policy.

After China’s antisatellite test, the strong world reaction led many analysts to speak anew about the weaponization of space. It was thought that Beijing was either testing its ability to counter the U.S. asymmetric advantage in networked warfighting prowess or was reacting to intelligence about U.S. plans for satellite defense mechanisms. However, there have been few notable incidents since, and details have emerged that suggest Chinese military planners may have overstepped their bounds in ordering the test. That said, although cooperation on specific military technology is unlikely between China and the United States, exploring synergies in the realm of commercial space activities and civil space exploration hold the potential to build confidence and reduce skepticism across the board.

With China rallying its growing resources to host the 2008 Olympic Games, the sensitivity of its decisionmakers to the advantages and ideals of international cooperation will be heightened. This presents an excellent opportunity for senior U.S. policymakers to begin a new era of space cooperation with the world’s fastest-growing major economy. Alternately, the United States could pursue cooperation with its traditional partners in space to find solutions to the problems it faces. Either option has the potential to not only provide much-needed international support for U.S. plans to return to the Moon but also to ensure access to the ISS for the foreseeable future, effectively isolating the United States from any potential new Cold War tensions. U.S. civil space activity should not become a hostage to Russian objections to Georgia’s NATO membership goals, U.S. missile defense plans, or any facets of new Cold War political maneuvering. In a time of increasing tensions, the International Space Station can now help to serve the mission for which it was undertaken: greater cooperation among all space-faring nations.

Vincent Sabathier is a senior fellow and the director of Human Space Exploration Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. G. Ryan Faith is a program manager with the CSIS Human Space Exploration Initiative, and Alexandros Petersen is an adjunct fellow with the CSIS Russia and Eurasia Program.

Next Space Tourist, Station Crew Eager to Fly

By Clara Moskowitz

Staff Writer

Originally Posted: 30 July 2008

6:10 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON - America's next space tourist and a new space station crew are gearing up for an October launch to the International Space Station (ISS).

Computer game developer Richard Garriott, along with U.S. astronaut Michael Fincke and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Lonchakov are slated to launch Oct. 12 aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome spaceport.

Garriott, the son of former NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, who flew aboard the U.S. Skylab station and a U.S. shuttle, is set to become the first second-generation U.S. spaceflyer. He is flying under a $30 million deal brokered with Russia's Federal Space Agency by the Virginia-based firm Space Adventures to visit the ISS for about a week.

"To be frank this price tag is the majority of my wealth, to be honest," Garriott said Wednesday at a NASA briefing in Houston. "The reason why it's worth that to me is that this is the goal I've been working toward for a significant portion of my adult life."

The Austin, Texas resident is famous for creating the "Ultima" series of online computer games. His latest release, "Tabula Rasa," is an online science fiction game chronicling humanity's exodus from Earth after a major cataclysm. He plans to carry a so-called "immortality drive," a flash drive repository of information, including digital versions of the DNA from some computer gamers, copies of the avatars in one of his games, as well as an archive of mankind's greatest achievements.

"Since I'm getting a chance to go to space myself, I would be remiss without finding a way to connect to the community of gamers from space," Garriot said.

Garriott will be the sixth space tourist to vacation at the ISS. He plans to devote his stay to research, including protein crystallization and Earth observation experiments, with his father serving as chief scientist. He is scheduled to return to Earth with Expedition 17 Commander Sergei Volkov, himself a second-generation cosmonaut, and flight engineer Oleg Kononenko on Oct. 23 in a Soyuz.

Fincke, who made one previous trip to the space station as a flight engineer on the Expedition 9 crew, is set to lead the new Expedition 18 crew as commander. Lonchakov will serve as flight engineer. The main goal of their mission is to outfit the ISS to host six-person crews, double the population of its current three-person capacity.

"It's going to take us a lot of work, but it's the next step in getting the space station fully operational and we've got the right crew for it," Fincke said. "We think of ourselves as a can-do crew."

Two other members of the Expedition 18 crew, NASA astronaut Sandra Magnus and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata, are scheduled to fly on later shuttle missions. Magnus plans to ride aboard the November STS-126mission to become a space station flight engineer, while Wakata intends to arrive on the STS-119 mission in early 2009 to relieve her.

One member of the Expedition 18 crew is already aboard the space station. NASA astronaut Gregory Chamitoff, who launched to the ISS in June, is currently serving as a flight engineer with the station's Expedition 17 crew. He plans to stay aboard with Fincke and Lonchakov for the first stage of Expedition 18 before turning his slot over to Magnus in November.

On the Net:

VIDEO: ISS Commander Peggy Whitson Takes Charge
Future of Flight: Space Tourism, Investment and Technology
VIDEO: ISS Commander Peggy Whitson Takes Charge

Virgin Galactic Shows Off Mothership Aircraft

Virgin Galactic unveils mothership for passenger rocket trips into space

By ALICIA CHANG AP Science Writer
MOJAVE, Calif. July 28, 2008 (AP) The Associated Press

Virgin Galactic give sneak peek at its secret space tourism program.

The space tourism race marked a milestone Monday as British mogul Sir Richard Branson and American aerospace designer Burt Rutan waved to a crowd from inside the cabin of an exotic jet that will carry a passenger spaceship to launch altitude.

The photo-op was the public unveiling of the White Knight Two mothership before a crowd of engineers, dignitaries and space enthusiasts at the Mojave Air & Space Port in the high desert north of Los Angeles.

The four-engine jet, with its 140-foot single wing, is an engineering marvel. The space between its twin fuselages is where SpaceShipTwo, the passenger rocket being built for Branson's Virgin Galactic, will be mounted.

White Knight Two, billed as the world's largest all-carbon-composite airplane, is "one of the most beautiful and extraordinary aviation vehicles ever developed," Branson proclaimed.

White Knight Two is the brainchild of Rutan, who made history in 2004 when his SpaceShipOne became the first private, manned craft to reach space. SpaceShipOne accomplished it with help from White Knight Two's smaller predecessor, White Knight. After winning $10 million for the feat, Rutan partnered with Branson, chairman of Virgin Group, to commercialize the prototype.

White Knight Two's long-awaited rollout, a year after a deadly explosion rocked Rutan's test site, is the first tangible sign of progress toward making space tourism a reality. Despite the glitz surrounding the event, significant hurdles remain.

The aircraft must undergo at least a year of rigorous flight tests starting in the fall. In addition, workers have to finish building SpaceShipTwo, which will be flown by two pilots and carry six passengers.

Matthew Upchurch, 46, who reserved a future flight, said he felt goosebumps when he saw White Knight Two.

"It was very emotional for me," said Upchurch, who heads a luxury travel company that works with Virgin Galactic. "I thought, `Oh my God, we're getting closer.'"

The mothership rollout also moved Rutan, who has made a career of designing unconventional aircraft.

"Even though this is a pretty weird airplane, we all expect it fly very well," said Rutan, who traded his usual leather jacket for a white button-down shirt with a Virgin Galactic logo.

Meanwhile, SpaceShipTwo, which is 70 percent complete, remained under wraps. It sat in a hangar several hundred feet away from White Knight Two shrouded in a black tarp. A sticker on it read "Coming Soon ... To A Spaceport Near You."

In the history of spaceflight, most astronauts have been in government programs. In recent years, a handful of wealthy people have paid about $20 million each to ride Russian rockets to the international space station.

Virgin Galactic envisions a future where space voyages will become as common as airplane travel. It wants to fly 500 people into space in the first year for $200,000 a head. If it succeeds, that would be on par with the same number of people who have gone up in 45 years of space travel.

So far, more than 250 wannabe astronauts have paid the full amount or put down a deposit to fly with Virgin Galactic, but when they will float in zero gravity is unknown. Rutan has declined to release a schedule. Virgin Galactic stopped predicting after it said in a 2004 press release that flights could begin in 2007.

Virgin Galactic renamed White Knight Two after Branson's mother, Eve. After the rollout, Branson and his mother popped open a bottle of Champagne next to the craft, which sports a decorative motif of a blond woman flying a Virgin flag.

White Knight Two has a wingspan of 140 feet, about the same as a World War II B-29 Superfortress bomber.

The mothership is designed to tuck SpaceShipTwo under the center of its wing and release it at 50,000 feet. After separation, SpaceShipTwo will fire its hybrid rocket and climb some 62 miles above Earth, the internationally recognized boundary of space.

The spaceflight — up and back down without circling the Earth — will include about five minutes of weightlessness. The total trip, from White Knight Two's takeoff to SpaceShipTwo's unpowered landing, will last about 2 1/2 hours.

Monday's unveiling was bittersweet for Rutan's company, Scaled Composites LLC. A year ago, three technicians were killed in an explosion while testing SpaceShipTwo's propellant system. Scaled, which was since bought by Northrop Grumman Corp., held a ceremony last week in honor of the fallen workers.

____________________

On the Net:

Virgin Galactic: http://www.virgingalactic.com
Scaled Composites: http://www.scaled.com

Air Hostess Picks Up Chocolate Bar, Wins Space Trip

I thought Willy Wonka only gave away tours of the Chocolate Factory - not space...

Wed Jul 16, 11:02 AM ET

PARIS (Reuters) - A French air hostess will become one of Europe's pioneer space tourists after picking a chocolate wrapper out of the rubbish and finding a winning number in a competition to fly to the upper reaches of the earth's atmosphere.

Mathilde Epron, 32, said she had bought a Kit Kat chocolate bar at her local supermarket but initially threw the wrapper in the bin, telling herself that "it's only others who win."

Two hours later, thinking back to the competition, she decided to try her luck and fished the wrapper out of the bin, only to find a code marked inside.

"For someone who works in air travel it's really a dream come true," she told France Info radio.
A spokeswoman for Nestle in France confirmed that Epron had won the prize to take a flight on a four-seater, fighter-sized aircraft built by Rocketplane, a company that builds aircraft intended to provide cheap flights into space.

She will receive four days of astronaut training in Oklahoma City in the United States before boarding the Rocketplane XP aircraft which will reach an altitude of 100 km (60 miles) and allow a five-minute experience of weightlessness.

Researchers Predict Tourism to the "Final Frontier"

February 25, 2008

Seeking an out-of-this-world travel destination?

Outer space will rocket into reality as "the" getaway of this century, according to researchers at the University of Delaware and the University of Rome La Sapienza.

In fact, the "final frontier" could begin showing up in travel guides by 2010, they predict.

"In the twenty-first century, space tourism could represent the most significant development experienced by the tourism industry," says Prof. Fred DeMicco, ARAMARK Chair, in UD's Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management program.

"With the Earth under attack from a myriad of environmental impacts, including climate change concerns and pollution, outer space is the next viable frontier to explore and make longtime plans for," he notes. "While there are global policies to be determined relating to private ventures in space, the technology to make space travel safer and cheaper is moving forward."
DeMicco and Silvia Ciccarelli, a geoeconomist who was a recent visiting scholar at UD, co-wrote "Outer Space as a New Frontier for Hospitality and Tourism," which is in review for an upcoming issue of the Hospitality Educator. Ciccarelli is a consultant to the Italian Association of Aerospace Industries.

What kind of person will be lured to space travel? Is it those of us who've loved "The Jetsons," "Star Trek," or peering at the heavens through a telescope?

"This is a destination for the 'extreme tourists'--tourists who want the ultimate new travel adventure and the thrill of outer space," DeMicco says. "They want something new and interesting--the room with the best view of Earth from space."

According to surveys of the demand for space tourism undertaken in 2001 and 2006 by Futron, a U.S. consulting company, the average age of the wannabe space tourist is 55 years old, 72% are males and 28% are females, 46% have above average or better fitness, 48% spend a month or more on vacation annually, and 41% work full-time and 23% are retired. The projected demand is 13,000 passengers in 2021, with the ability of the celestial industry to generate revenues of $700 million annually.

While only a few multimillionaires have been able to afford the current $20 million pricetag to go up in a Russian rocket for a two-week stay at the International Space Station, shorter, more affordable "suborbital" space flights, costing on the order of $80,000 per trip, likely will drive space tourism in the near term, according to Ciccarelli.

"During these flights, a spacecraft reaches space, but it does not enter Earth's orbit," she explains.

Suborbital trips are likely to become available to tourists by 2010-2015, Ciccarelli says, while tourism in space hotels is on a longer trajectory, predicted to become a reality in 2025.
So what will tourists in space do?

"Passengers will enter a world that only astronauts and cosmonauts have experienced--the acceleration of a rocket launch, weightlessness, and a spectacular view of the Earth," Ciccarelli says.

The low-gravity environment 600 to 2,000 kilometers above Earth would suddenly make Leonardo da Vinci's dreams and drawings of human-powered flight possible, using fabric wings attached to the arms, and tails attached to the ankles, according to Ciccarelli.

"Many recreational and sports activities also could exploit this possibility given a fairly large chamber," she notes.

A slowly rotating, cylindrical swimming chamber would enable people to become more like 'flying fish'-to swim in low gravity, but then propel themselves out of the water and 'fly' in a central air space, Ciccarelli says.

A safer, cheaper launch system is critical if space travel is to become more commonplace in the future. An elevator rising tens of thousands of miles into space is one possibility that scientists and entrepreneurs are considering.

"First envisioned some forty years ago, the space elevator will climb an enormous cable, like Jack up the beanstalk, to a terminal where passengers and cargo can board spacecraft for the trip farther out," Ciccarelli says.

"Until recently this was a fantasy because there were no materials strong enough to build such a cable," DeMicco notes. "Today, however, so-called carbon nanotubes up to twenty times stronger than steel are approaching mass production, and engineers say a space elevator could be completed within fifteen years."

The non-profit Spaceward Foundation was formed in 2004 and NASA established a competition in 2005 to accelerate research on the space elevator concept.

While short excursions into outer space may be on the itinerary in the near term, a "space port" currently is being built in Las Cruces, New Mexico, with support from Virgin Galactic and other companies, and hoteliers are scoping out new locations some 238,000 miles above--on the moon.

"Lunar hotels are now being planned," DeMicco says. "Galactic Suites is known as the first space hotel, and they promote delivering 15 sunrises and sunsets in a single day--for the adventure travelers who are willing to spend approximately $4 million for a three-day 'stay' in space," DeMicco says.

In 1967, in an address to the American Astronautical Society, Barron Hilton, then president of Hilton Hotels, described a "Lunar Hilton" with its entrance on the surface of the moon and most of its rooms located 20 to 30 feet below the surface. The hotel would have an aptly named "Galaxy Lounge."

More recently, companies such as Japan's Shimizu Corporation have focused on the design of an orbital hotel in space, with rotating rings to provide artificial gravity.

Who will run these space-age hotels?

DeMicco says UD's students will be up to the challenge.

"Our Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management students are taught the latest trends in strategic management and forecasting including land, sea, and space among them, and UD is not only a Land Grant, Sea Grant, and Urban Grant university, but also a Space Grant university," he notes.

"Indeed, they are the global travelers today through UD's study abroad programs, with aspirations for the stars in their hospitality and tourism careers of tomorrow."

NASA Engineers Work On Alternative Moon Rocket

By JAY REEVES, Associated Press Writer

Mon Jul 14, 4:13 PM ET

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - By day, the engineers work on NASA's new Ares moon rockets. By night, some go undercover to work on a competing design. These dissenting scientists and their backers insist they have created an alternative rocket that would be safer, cheaper and easier to build than the two Ares spacecraft that will replace the space shuttle.

They call their project Jupiter, and like Ares, it's a brainchild of workers at the Marshall Space Flight Center and other NASA facilities. The engineers involved are doing the work on their own time and mostly anonymously, with the help of retirees and other space enthusiasts.

A key Ares project manager dismisses their design as little more than a sketch on a napkin that won't work.

A spokesman for the competing effort, Ross Tierney, said concerned engineers at NASA and some contractors want a review of the Ares plans but can't speak out for fear of being demoted, transferred or fired.

The Jupiter design is being reviewed by a team of 57 volunteer engineers, from line engineers up to NASA middle managers, Tierney said. Those numbers are dwarfed by NASA's Ares workforce, which has thousands of government workers and contractors.

The head of the Ares office at Marshall said he can't rule out the possibility that some of his people are involved with the underground program.

"I don't know what people do on their own time," Steve Cook said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

But Cook said he is familiar with the Jupiter project, and he's not impressed. NASA informally reviewed plans for the rocket last fall and determined the idea to be a flawed scheme based on shaky numbers.

"It's not feasible. We said, 'It doesn't work' and moved on,'" Cook said.

Meanwhile, he said, work on the Ares I rocket is so far along that the first test flight is less than a year away.

"We're down to the nuts and bolts ... on this rocket. This is not a napkin drawing," he said.

The debate reflects disagreement over the direction of U.S. spaceflight as NASA prepares to retire the shuttle in 2010. By 2015, the agency plans to begin orbital flights with Ares I and a companion heavy-lift cargo rocket, Ares V. Officials hope to return astronauts to the moon by 2020.

Astronauts will ride into orbit in a capsule aboard the Ares I, which will have a modified shuttle booster rocket at its core. They will dock with a lunar stage that was carried aloft separately by an Ares V rocket and head to the moon.

The Jupiter design would also require two separate launches to get to the moon, but its rockets would both rely on a shuttle external tank at their center. Some of the design concepts go back to proposals floated at Marshall in the early 1980s. Others date to the early '90s, when Marshall worked on a new rocket system that never flew.

Besides being a simpler, more powerful system, backers say, the Jupiter rockets would save NASA $19 billion in development costs and another $16 billion in operating costs over two decades.

The Government Accountability Office last year raised questions about the cost of NASA's current plan for returning to the moon, which a report estimated at $230 billion over 20 years. NASA said it already has spent about $7 billion on Ares.

Steve Metschan, an engineer and former NASA contractor who supports the Jupiter team, said the upcoming presidential election could change NASA's plan. He accused NASA of suppressing information that shows Jupiter would perform better than Ares.

"Our concern is that by the time everyone figures this out, we will have destroyed our heavy-lift system," said Metschan, of Seattle. "At the end of the day, all we're asking for is an independent review of all this stuff."

Cook said all the estimates on Jupiter were preliminary, and he denied critics' claims that NASA did a full-fledged study of the Jupiter rocket or the engineers' alternate moon-mission program, which they call Direct 2.0.

NASA has looked at "all sorts" of proposed designs, he said, and none was as powerful or safe as Ares.
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ON THE WEB:

NASA Constellation: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/main/index.html
Direct 2.0: http://www.directlauncher.com

Russia Seals Agreement With Private Investor For Space Tourism

by Staff Writers
Moscow (AFP) July 2, 2008

The Russian space agency has sealed a deal with a private investor to build a Soyuz spacecraft specially for tourist hire and operational in 2011, a statement said Wednesday.

"We have concluded an agreement with an investor to begin financing such a Soyuz vessel with an anticipated launch date of 2011," the Roskosmos website stated.

The craft, piloted by a professional astronaut, is designed to carry two so-called space adventurers.

Quizzed by AFP, a Roskosmos spokesman refused to identify the investor despite the agency having signed a deal in June with private American company Space Adventures for a commercial flight to the International Space Station.

Set up in 2001, Space Adventures has already sent five tourists into space on board a Soyuz.
The firm has been in negotiations with Roskosmos to rent the third seat on board a ship which regularly ferries Russian and American astronauts to the ISS.

American Dennis Tito, South African Mark Shuttleworth, Greg Olsen of the United States, Iranian-born Anousheh Ansari and Hungarian-born Charles Simonyi are the five who have each paid up to 25 million dollars (16 million euros) for the thrill of a lifetime.

The next independent space traveller is Richard Garriott, an American electronic games entrepreneur and son of former astronaut Owen Garriott. His flight is due to take off in October.

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