Entrepreneurs put space tickets on sale

What Aera still has to do
On the logistical front, Aera has reached a preliminary agreement with the U.S. Air Force's 45th Space Wing for launches from Cape Canaveral. But it hasn't yet struck a follow-up deal for use of the Florida Space Authority's launch facility there — and although Sprague said Aera has had discussions with the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation, the company was still a long way from getting FAA clearance.

"Because we're using a federal launch range, the FAA is very tightly integrated with the 45th Space Wing, so we see that as one activity rather than two separate ones," he said.

Sprague said Aera was on the verge of making a deal for a rocket manufacturing facility in Florida, but was not yet ready to announce details.

Once all those arrangements are in place, Sprague's timetable calls for the Altairis propulson system, powered by liquid oxygen and kerosene, to undergo firing tests starting in the first half of 2006. "We're using such plain-vanilla technology that very little detailed testing is required," Sprague said.

Flown by computer
Three unmanned test flights would be conducted in the latter half of 2006, leading up to the manned flights.

The Altairis is designed to be flown automatically, with double-redundancy and triple-redundancy built into the computerized control systems, Sprague said. Each flight would carry six passengers, plus a mission commander who would guide the riders through the trip and deal with any emergencies.

It may sound a bit daunting to blast off on a rocket with a computer in charge, but Sprague said Aera planned to implement stringent safety requirements. "I suspect that our requirements internally are somewhat more severe than what the FAA would require," Sprague said.

Raising the company's profile
Aera's plan calls for 30 tourist launches during 2007. But can the company really deliver on that plan? Other players in the suborbital spaceflight industry indicated that Aera still had to raise its profile in the marketplace.

"I haven't talked to them in well over a year," said Gregg Maryniak, executive director of the St. Louis-based X Prize Foundation, which awarded a $10 million prize to the SpaceShipOne team for last year's historic private-sector spaceflights. "It's no slam on them at all, I just haven't heard from them."

Meanwhile, Stacey Tearne, a spokeswoman for Space Adventures, said her company has been engaged in talks with at least a half-dozen suborbital spaceship developers, but has had "no interaction" with Aera.

Sprague isn't fazed by the crowded marketplace. In fact, he expects aerospace giants such as the Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin to join the fray eventually. So why haven't they done so already?

Sprague, who has had 30 years of experience working at Boeing, Lockheed Martin and other well-established firms, said that "society needed to mature a bit" to make space tourism a reality.

"If someone had tried to do this 20 years ago, it would never have been possible from a social standpoint," he said. "It's still a bold idea, so it's met with skepticism."

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