Private spaceflight sees progress ahead

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Rocket City
Spaceport America also will be the site for UP Aerospace’s return to flight following the Sept. 25 mishap that led to the crash of its SpaceLoft XL suborbital rocket. In the inaugural flight for the spaceport, the SpaceLoft XL rocket dove into the remote desert after 90 seconds of flight, destroying customer payloads.

UP Aerospace, with its primary business office in Highlands Ranch, Colo., is developing the SpaceLoft XL to carry scientific, educational and entrepreneurial payloads into suborbital space. The firm now is targeting its next launch from the site in April if it wins FAA approval for another launch. UP Aerospace also is working on a multiyear lease agreement with New Mexico Spaceport America officials.

Starchaser Industries of the United Kingdom also is eyeing New Mexico as a center for its operations. The group intends to open the first phase of its New Mexico-based Starchaser Rocket City resort in 2007, said Steven Bennett, chief executive officer of the rocket company.

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Starchaser is developing the Thunderstar, passenger-carrying space ship. Bennett said that flights aboard the Thunderstar/Starchaser 5 rocket vehicles could take place from Spaceport America as early as 2009.

According to Patricia Grace Smith, the FAA’s associate administrator for Commercial Space Transportation, 2007 is the “bridge year” for private human spaceflight — from business plans to start up to bending metal to firm and projected dates for initial operations.

“By year’s end, I expect a substantially increased number of tests and experimentally permitted flights on the path to piloted flights in the foreseeable future,” Smith said.

“The vital ingredient in all this is scrupulous adherence to the safest possible operations,” she said. Smith said safety is the goal that all agree is imperative. “To the extent that all parties accept no substitutes for safety, private human spaceflight will grow in public acceptance and esteem to a point in time when it will be a routine form of transportation. That’s why testing is vital, and that’s why I expect to see more of it in 2007,” she concluded.

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