A company offering a training regimen for would-be space tourists that the proprietor describes as "Space Camp on steroids"
opened for business May 1 at the Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport in
Tampa Bay, Fla.
Aurora Aerospace offers enhanced gravity and microgravity
aircraft flights and other astronaut training services for paying customers,
who would then be prepared for more expensive suborbital or even orbital flights. About a
dozen clients have sampled the services to date, although none has signed up
for the full training regimen, Howard Chipman, Aurora's founder, president and
chief executive, said May 27 here at Space Investment Summit 6.
The complete program includes an aerobatic ride in an L-39
trainer, a two-seat aircraft built in the Czech Republic that is the same type of aircraft used by Russian
cosmonauts in their training. The aircraft performs various aerobatic and
high G-force maneuvers, according to Aurora's Web site.
It is "a fantastic aircraft — it's easy to fly, but not too
easy. I've never had anyone pass out on me. I can fly as smooth as an airliner
or I can make you pass out," says Chipman, a medical doctor and certified pilot
who flew the aircraft in air shows before starting the company. He also owns a Rockwell twin-engine propeller plane, which provides customers with periods of weightlessness lasting about 15 seconds in a
cabin big enough to float around in.
Other elements of training include flying a ground-based
simulator that can be programmed for several different types of aircraft and
spacecraft, experiencing a multiaxis disorientation device, and a unique exposure to the effects of hypoxia — or oxygen deprivation — with a breathing
apparatus of Chipman's own invention. The Reduced Oxygen Breathing Device
allows Chipman to gradually substitute nitrogen for oxygen in the breathing mix
to simulate the lack of oxygen at high altitudes. The customers can fly the
simulator while breathing through the device, and experience how oxygen
starvation affects their performance.
Chipman, an aspiring space
tourist who has gone through cosmonaut training in Russia, says the $8,000 price tag of his complete two-day course compares very favorably with
the much higher cost of that overseas training. Although the U.S. Federal
Aviation Administration has no formal certification for physiological readiness
for spaceflight, Chipman says his course should qualify his customers for
suborbital flight. Most people will have no problem with the physical
requirements, he says. He has been able to take children as young as 10 years
old for flights in the L-39, he said.
According to the company's Web site, Aurora has
less-expensive offerings including the so-called Full Package minus the L-39
flight, which costs $5,000, and various a la carte activities ranging in cost
from $1,500 to $3,500.
Chipman said he financed the company's infrastructure out of
his own pocket, which is one financing solution in a capital market that one of
the other panelists at the summit described as "economy reset."
Entrepreneurs who cannot afford to self-finance are finding
it much more difficult to get access to capital this year. "You have to have a very, very, very compelling case to get a hearing today," said
Bernie McShea, vice president for business development at Space Florida, a
government-sponsored organization that promotes aerospace activities in the
state.
McShea pointed to deficits ranging from $450 million to $6
billion in the budgets of all the states with spaceport operations during the next two years, and told the audience that cash incentives from state governments
are out of the picture for the time being. Space Florida had championed a space
business incentive package built around tax credits that failed to pass the
Florida legislature this year, but the organization has hopes for it next year. Tax credits may be possible because they have no upfront costs
to state government, McShea said.
Financing is not the only problem space tourism start-ups face, said Steven Blum, senior vice president for engineering at Universal Creative,
Universal Parks and Resorts. The generation raised on "Star Wars" and other
such science fiction movies "has a perception of reality that's not constrained
by physics. They have an expectation that is pretty much separated from reality,"
he said.
William Moore, chief operating officer of the NASA Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, noted that while people of his generation
all wanted to grow up to be astronauts, "they [young people] don't say that
today. They don't say it at all. That's a problem for our industry."
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