Coming attractions in space
Posted: Friday, May 25, 2007 7:50 PM by Alan Boyle
When space entrepreneurs get together, rumblings of future announcements fill the air: about takers for multimillion-dollar flights to the international space station or around the moon, about the competitors for NASA's lunar lander contest, about what the operators of future spaceships are up to. Here's a quick preview of what's just over the horizon for private-sector spaceflight, based on what people have been talking about at the International Space Development Conference in Dallas:
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Armadillo Aerospace, the Texas-based volunteer venture headed by millionaire video-game programmer John Carmack, is gearing up for October's running of the
Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge at the
Wirefly X Prize Cup in New Mexico. Last year, Armadillo
came close to winning a $350,000 prize, and this year it's already flown its Pixel quad-engine prototype for longer than it would have to go to win the big $1 million prize. "It will take very bad luck for us not to win," Carmack said.
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Armadillo is also working on its next-generation launch concept, which involves building modular rocket engines that can be bolted together easily. Carmack will be entering a single-module rocket in the Lunar Lander Challenge's Level 1 concept, with the $350,000 prize at stake. But Armadillo won't be the only team in the hunt. The X Prize Cup has already accepted nine applications from would-be competitors, with a 10th team under consideration, said Marc Shulman, the X Prize Cup's vice president for partnerships and marketing. Not all those teams will make it to the October contest, but you can probably count on two or three to give Armadillo a run for its money.
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Looking beyond the Lunar Lander Challenge, Carmack said Armadillo already
has received a military contract for rocket-powered vehicle development, and three major aerospace companies are interested in flying their sensor systems on Armadillo's rockets for testing. Next year, the modular rocket system could be used to fly a skydiver, equipped with a parachute as well as an
Orbital Outfitters spacesuit, up to an altitude high enough to challenge a
47-year-old skydiving record. Such a feat could usher in a new breed of adventure dubbed space diving, Carmack said.
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Orbital Outfitters' Rick Tumlinson said the space diving venture would use Armadillo's rockets to send "adrenaline junkies" up to an altitude of about 120,000 feet, so they can jump into a freefall like no other. "We're going to be there before anybody else goes up into that domain," Tumlinson said. Expect to hear more in the weeks to come.
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Back to Armadillo: Looking even further ahead, Carmack said the modular rockets could be combined to create suborbital launch vehicles, and something even bigger. "I do think we've got a credible, legitimate path all the way up to orbit," he said. He said Armadillo just might start turning an operating profit in the next year, thus beginning to recoup the $3 million he's paid to keep the rocket effort going.
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Meanwhile, Jim Benson of Benson Space Company provided a few more details relating to his
revamped Dream Chaser spaceship design. He said the bullet-shaped craft would be powered by six clustered hybrid rockets - the same type of engine that was used in the historic
SpaceShipOne rocket plane. He cautioned that the design was still being evaluated by the engineers, and that he's not yet showing the "real" spaceship design because of concerns about competitors. "We don't want to give 'em any ideas," he said.
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Space Adventures' Eric Anderson showed off photos and videos from last month's
flight of the world's first spacefaring billionaire, software executive Charles Simonyi. Anderson said the next client due for a $25 million ride to the international space station would be announced in the next few weeks. He declined to name names, but said the flier would be an American male - and "it'll be another first."
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Anderson said "we've made a lot of progress" on an even bigger venture, aimed at
sending passengers around the moon in a beefed-up Soyuz craft. The fare for that ride is $100 million per seat. "I have a few people who are interested," he said, and over the next few months Space Adventures will be sifting through the prospects.
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Space Adventures' other big project - the development of a
new suborbital spaceship in cooperation with the Russians - is moving ahead more slowly, Anderson said. "We are still working on it ... [but] everything costs more and takes longer," he said. One of the partners in the spaceship venture, Iranian-American entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari,
told me last year that she was hoping the craft might make its debut sometime in the next two or three years. Anderson, however, declined to set any timetable.
When it comes to big ideas, there's much more to come this weekend at the International Space Development Conference. For the full details, check out the conference Web site.
