X marks the spot market?
While ticket-in-hand traffic may be waiting in the wings, commercial sub-orbital passenger space travel still remains grounded.
Busy trying to make private spaceships real is the
X Prize Foundation, based in St. Louis, Missouri. They are taking to heart a historical fact that more than 100 aviation prizes offered between 1905 and 1935 helped create today's multi-hundred billion-dollar air transportation business.
The X Prize Foundation is offering a $10 million purse to stimulate competition among entrepreneurs and rocket experts to fabricate vehicles that haul people up to sub-orbital heights. To win the X Prize, a team must privately build and fly a spaceship capable of carrying three adults to an altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers) on two consecutive flights within two weeks.
Groups from around the world are vying for the X Prize money.
For instance, one X Prize competitor is Russian entry, Cosmopolis XXI. Members of that team include engineers who worked on the Apollo-Soyuz project and the
Buran - Russia's version of a space shuttle-like craft. In their approach, a carrier aircraft hauls a module high above Earth. Once released from the aircraft, the rocket-propelled module climbs to a peak altitude, then deploys a separate passenger capsule that arcs back to terra firma for a soft touchdown.
Price point
The new Space Adventures survey bolsters the results of earlier public polls, said Greg Maryniak, Executive Director of the X Prize Foundation.
Every single survey taken throughout the developed world has been remarkably consistent, Maryniak told SPACE.com. "Seven out of 10 people say, if you could buy a ticket to take a ride into space, they'd buy one. And they would do it in a heart beat," he said.
Maryniak said that surveys must dive into the details of a key question: What is the price point? That is, just how much money are people willing to spend for sub-orbital and orbital trips.
"Everybody knows what that demand curve is going to look like. More people will fly if it costs less money," Maryniak said. "For basically the price of a new car, there will be tens of millions of people willing to spend that kind of money to take a ride."
The good news about sub-orbital flight, Maryniak said, is that it's 25 times easier than climbing into Earth orbit. "Development and operation costs are pretty much proportional to the gross liftoff weight of the vehicle. If the vehicle taking a person up is 25 times smaller, it's more than 25 times cheaper. And that's good news," he said.
Smaller spaceships to tote travelers up to sub-orbital altitude are more like the size of a passenger van, or a very small corporate jet, Maryniak said.
Up and up studies
Starchaser Industries Limited, based in the United Kingdom, is also chasing the X Prize. Its Thunderbird reusable launch vehicle is expected to take to the skies in August 2003, said Paul Young, director of the rocket group.
"I believe a good scientific survey is necessary in order to persuade institutional investors to take part in space tourism activities. I have seen several survey reports and the indications are that a sizeable market seems to exist for sub-orbital and, eventually, orbital flights. But this needs substantiating," Young told SPACE.com.
Young's group has provided seed monies to help collect "objective data" with respect to space tourism. He believes having non-space organizations carry out marketing studies is important. That way, the results will be up and up and independent of groups that have a vested interest in a positive outcome.
Young hopes that X Prize entrants and others pool their money to fund market research. "The results will be made available to all, including governments," he said.
One of the main stumbling blocks to space tourism will be the regulatory issues, Young said. "This is a new area for governments and they are nervous. It will be helpful for them to see that there is a demand for ordinary people to go into space and the market survey will underpin this," he said.
"We see good market research as a cornerstone to our investment. Others in the X Prize, reusable launch vehicle and tourism industry would reap benefits, we hope, from its results," Young said.
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