subject: Flying To Space Soon? Lets Look At The Primary Companies And Developers Of Commercial Space Craft [print this page] Very soon you can take a flight on a vehicle that can fly you by yourself or with others to the edge of space. Below we will take a look at whom some of the prime developers and entrepreneurs in the new space tourism industry are and their accomplishments.
In 1984 Charles Walkes became the first non-government Astronaut to fly the space shuttle paid for by his employer McDonnell Douglas. In 2001, Dennis Tito became known as the first fee paying space tourist.
In the fall of 2004, Scaled Composites, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman, operating in Mojave California under the direction of Burt Rutan, won the $10 Million Dollar Ansari X-Prize with their SpaceShipOne vehicle. The vehicle, piloted by Brian Binnie and Mike Melvill successfully flew several times into suborbital space and thus began the new era of civilian space flight.
Soon thereafter, Sir Richard Branson of Virgin America Fame, and Burt Rutan, under an agreement with Paul Allen, formally of Microsoft, formed The SpaceShip Company and Richard Branson then formed Virgin Galactic to contract the building of The White Knight mother craft and five SpaceShipTwo vehicles, which are released at 50,000 feet below the mother craft, for private space flights and thus began the worlds first commercial spaceship company. A few years later Branson sold 30% of Virgin Galactic for $280 Million Dollars to the Al Qusabi Group from Dubai. Virgin Galactic, since 2005, has already registered over 400 future participants at a cost of $200,000 each with its first planed civilian space flights to begin from its SpacePort America facility in New Mexico early 2012.
XCOR Aerospace, founded in 1999 by Jeff Greason, who was appointed by the President to the advisory committee on manned space flight, is currently developing its Lynx space plane. The Lynx is the forerunner of the EZ Rocket plane which had flown successfully over two dozen times. In 2008 XCOR entered into an exclusive agent agreement with RocketShip Tours, under the direction of Jules Klar who has over 40 years of successful travel experience partnering with the noted Arthur Frommer and thus XCOR now entered into the private suborbital space race. Priced at $95,000 XCOR plans to begin its flight testing of Lynx in the summer of 2011 followed by commercial flights in early 2012. Unlike SpaceShipTwo, which has two pilots and carries six passengers, Lynx carries only one passenger seated next to the pilot, Col. Rick Searfoss former NASA shuttle commander and will take off and land horizontally from the Air and SpacePort in Mojave California.
Space Adventures, under the direction of its CEO Eric Anderson, also President of the Commercial Space federation, has already sent seven people since 2001 on the Russian Soyev rocket into orbit and visited the International Space Station. However at a current cost of over $35 Million dollars it has few takers. More recently in May 2010, Anderson entered into an agreement with John Carmack of Armadillo Aerospace to exclusively represent their new vehicle which will both takeoff and land vertically. Space flights are priced at $102,000. Additionally, Anderson has also entered into an association with Boeing in their development of a suborbital passenger vehicle planned by 2015.
Blue Origin founded by Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com fame, is developing his own space vehicle for suborbital flights under their New Shepard program.Many details have not yet been released. Even though they are in competition with other developers no announcements as to when their commercial operations will begin have been released. Their vehicle will both take off and land vertically.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp, known as SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, who started and sold Paypal and recently began the new electric car company, Testla Motors, is also developing their Falcon manned space rocket. The Falcon will both take off and land vertically. Planned for both suborbital and orbital capabilities, the Falcon Dragon Spaceplanes for civilian space flight are expected to begin their operations by 2013.
Others in development include John Masten of Masten Aerospace, the Canadian Arrow, Planet Space, EADS, the Europeans and a few in different parts of the world. Billionaire Robert Bigalow, of Budget Suite Hotels fame, has already placed the foundations of his Sundancer space hotels in orbit. Although they won't open until 2012-14 and will need a dependable orbital vehicle to get there, they will most certainly be a welcome place for orbital space travelers.
No matter which vehicle participants fly within they all will experience G-Forces, weightlessness, the thrust of Rockets and amazing views of Earth from the edge of space. Very soon private space travel will be taking passengers from all over the world to the edge of space.
