New space race: Companies vie to transport tourists
So far, three tourists have paid a reported $20 million each for a space trip.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- If floating weightless and peering down on a shimmering-blue Earth sounds appealing, you might consider being a space tourist.
As long as you've got a fat wallet.
Two years after the first privately financed space flight jump-started a sleepy industry, more than a dozen companies are developing rocket planes to ferry ordinary rich people out of the atmosphere.
Several private companies will begin building their prototype vehicles this summer with plans to test-fly them as early as next year. If all goes well, the first tourist could hitch a galactic joy ride late next year or 2008 -- pending approval by federal regulators.
Unlike the Cold War space race between the United States and Soviet Union that sent satellites into orbit and astronauts to the moon, this competition is bankrolled by entrepreneurs whose competition could one day make a blast into space cheap enough for the average Joe.
"This time, it's personal. This space race is about getting 'us' into space," said space historian Andrew Chaikin.
For now, commercial space travel remains an exclusive club.
Three so far
Over the past few years, three tourists have paid a reported $20 million each to ride aboard a Russian rocket to the orbiting international space station.
A fourth would-be tourist -- Lance Bass from the former boy band *NSync -- did astronaut training, but failed to come up with money for the trip.
The three who made it spent about a week weightless and described the experience as "paradise" and "wondrous." The most thrilling part for millionaire U.S. scientist Gregory Olsen, who blasted off last year, was viewing the swirling Earth from the dark of space.
How much will it cost?
Prospective prices for the next round of personal space flights aren't so astronomical -- a seat aboard one of the yet-to-be-built commercial spaceships will fetch between $100,000 and $250,000. Space entrepreneurs expect the cost to drop once the market matures.
Tourists will get what they pay for.
Instead of days in space, the commercial spaceships under development will only reach suborbital space, a region about 60 miles up that is generally considered the beginning of the rest of the universe. Since the private spaceships lack the speed to go into orbit around Earth, the flights are essentially up and down experiences -- lasting about two hours with up to five minutes of weightlessness.
It's more of a ride than those offered by several companies that use Boeing 727s to produce a half-minute of weightlessness through a series of maneuvers about 25,000 feet up. Those flights, which generally sell for about $3,000, never reach space.
"It's like an upside-down bungee jump," said John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. "There'll be a few moments to view the Earth and then you come right back down."
Ready and willing
Some market studies have shown the public has an attitude of "If you build it, we will come." Futron, a Bethesda, Md.-based aerospace consulting firm, estimated that revenues in the infant space tourism industry could exceed $1 billion a year by 2021 with the greatest demand in suborbital flights in which passengers spend mere minutes in space.
Before tourists can lift off, several federal hurdles must be cleared. Federal regulations that will govern human space travel and spell out safety and training requirements are expected to be wrapped up this summer.
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta told a gathering of space entrepreneurs last month that the government would move swiftly to grant space travel licenses to companies that can prove they can operate safely.
That's good news for people such as Chaikin, the space historian.
"I've been hoping and dreaming all my life to go into space. Now I actually have a shot of doing it."
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