Next-gen space awaits its 'Netscape moment'

Customer demand
Esther Dyson, who heads EDventure Holdings in New York, said in a Nov. 16 e-mail response to questions that greater funding for entrepreneurial space activities is likely to occur in 2008. "And at the same time, we'll see progress in actually building and testing spacecraft and components," she said.

Dyson, who has made investments in several entrepreneurial space firms, including XCOR Aerospace, Space Adventures, Constellation Services  and Zero Gravity Corp., said that with luck there will also be more visible customer demand, perhaps more announcements of firm plans for competition with Virgin Galactic and Rocketplane Global in the budding suborbital passenger flight market.

Dyson agreed that a "killer application" or "Netscape moment" would be just as valid within the entrepreneurial space community.

"There's often something that catches the popular imagination," Dyson said. This can occur because of either public use or people seeing movie stars utilize it, as the characters did in "You've Got Mail" — the romantic comedy film released in 1998 that chronicled the spreading  use of e-mail, she said.

In a similar vein, Dyson said that perhaps "viral videos" stemming from next year's flight to the International Space Station of Richard Garriott, a game developer and son of a former NASA astronaut, could boost public space travel interest. A viral video is video content that escalates in popularity through Internet e-mail messaging or media sharing Web sites.

Dyson also said having Virgin Galactic persuade some television show to have part of an episode in suborbital space also would stir popular imagination.

Critical path
Alex Tai, chief operating officer of Virgin Galactic and chairman of the Washington-based Personal Spaceflight Federation, said a number of topics need to be addressed in the next year or so to get the industry adequately prepared for the first commercial suborbital space tourism flights.

The membership of the Personal Spaceflight Federation includes operators of spaceships, spaceports and orbital spaceflight facilities. The group was organized to promote the development of commercial human spaceflight, pursue ever-higher levels of safety, and share best practices and expertise throughout the industry.

The topics the organization intends to address include legislative, regulatory and insurance issues — particularly third-party liability and insurance for the pilots and passengers of commercial spaceships, Tai told Space News in an Oct. 28 interview.

Over the next year in particular, Tai said, the Personal Spaceflight Federation intends to build upon the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004, the legislation that put the regulatory framework in place for commercial human spaceflight.

"We need to make sure, as we become smarter, we know what some of the issues are and how that legislation may or may not need to be changed" Tai said.

Technological readiness
Virgin Galactic itself is continuing its work with Scaled Composites of Mojave, Calif., to design a huge carrier drop plane, the White Knight 2, and SpaceShipTwo, the suborbital craft that will transport paying passengers into suborbital space.

The July accident in Mojave that occurred during engine component testing for SpaceShipTwo was a setback that still needs to be fully analyzed, Tai said. "It will go to market when it's ready ... and not before," Tai said.

One of the big steps forward for Virgin Galactic this year, Tai said, was the contract the company signed in August with the National Aerospace Training and Research Center in Southampton, Pa., to provide training for Virgin Galactic's suborbital space travelers.

Making use of a high-tech centrifuge at the center, for example, customers can be taken on a simulated, but accurate, flight profile of a SpaceShipTwo suborbital hop, he said.

Tai said Virgin Galactic has collected $31 million in deposits from future suborbital space travelers. "One of the shocks," Tai noted, "is that a lot of people just want to go ... and they don't care what it's like. They'll go in a brown paper bag because they just want to go into space."

Nevertheless, he said the company is sensitive to passenger expectations about space travel and is paying close attention to detail about such things as the type of view of the Earth passengers will have from suborbital altitude and  making sure hotel accommodations for flight training are top-notch.

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