Space travel dreams get a reality check

Wanted: Smiling customers
Keeping the customer satisfied — not only in terms of space travel safety — but also making the spaceflight experience enjoyable is a high priority.

"People that I've come across that want to consider spending a big part of their net worth to go to orbit ... they want to know that they are coming back," said Eric Anderson, president and chief executive officer of Space Adventures, headquartered in Vienna, Va. That firm has handled five private space trips to the international space station, with each client shelling out in the range of $20 million to $25 million for their flight.

"Whether or not the windows are 18 inches or 20 inches across is of secondary importance to being secure in the system," Anderson said. "Safety first and, of course, great customer service," he added.

Paying attention to those "little details" is part of good customer relations, said Jane Reifert, president of Incredible Adventures, based in Sarasota, Fla. While spotlighting the risk associated with adventure tourism, she added that operators can't forget that they are in the business of making dreams come true, "and that's a huge responsibility."

Waiting for the 'Netscape moment'
Work is under way to build SpaceShipTwo — a passenger-carrying vehicle now under construction at Scaled Composites in Mojave.

"Safety is our No. 1 priority," said Alex Tai, chief operating officer for Virgin Galactic, a spaceline operator bankrolled by British billionaire Richard Branson that will utilize a SpaceShipTwo fleet to boost paying tourists on suborbital flings in the near future.

The initial cost is pegged at $200,000 a seat. "We're not here to do this for free, but we are here to react to our customers," he said.

Tai said he's looking for that "Netscape moment" when the public space travel business rockets to stardom — just like the Internet browser did when it kick-started the dot-com boom of the mid-1990s.

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"We have taken in $25 million from an interest of 80,000 people ... with our tiny sales force," Tai told Space.com. "There's a huge appetite for this offering once we get out there ... once we prove that it's something that's going to be safe, really fun to do, and is repeatable. What will happen then is that, suddenly, everyone will see Virgin Galactic making an awful lot of money. And that is the next 'go' moment."

Tai speculated that when Richard Branson decides to fund his next big venture, and he sells 10 percent of Virgin Galactic for $100 million, people will hunger to be part of the public space travel business.

"But at the moment, these guys don't want to invest because there hasn't been that Netscape moment," Tai continued. "It is being held up because Virgin Galactic is the gorilla in the room. Who is going to take Virgin on? That's a shame because I believe it's a massive market. I would much rather there's competition getting ready now."

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