快猫短视频

PICTURE yourself on the moon, watching Earthrise over an eerie landscape of lunar craters and peaks. It鈥檚 just a fantasy, surely? Perhaps you shouldn鈥檛 be so sceptical. For the first time, the Federal Aviation Administration 鈥� which regulates commercial space flight in the US 鈥� is having to consider drafting formal guidelines for private-passenger space travel.

鈥淭he demand for public space travel is real, robust, [and] will eventually make someone very wealthy,鈥� Philip McAlister, director of the Maryland-based company Futron, told the US Congress science committee late last month. Congress wants to know about the emerging industry鈥檚 regulatory and investment needs, and had called McAlister to testify because his firm of technology consultants commissioned a survey of selected Americans last year. Some 20 per cent of those questioned said they were 鈥渄efinitely likely鈥� or 鈥渧ery likely鈥� to take advantage of sub-orbital flights to the edge of space if they become available at a realistic price. Space tourism is now the one ray of hope for the languishing launch industry.

Futron鈥檚 survey was based on interviews with 450 millionaires, so what is 鈥渞ealistic鈥� for them may overstretch your budget. The chances are they will beat most 快猫短视频 readers into space. But despite the likely ticket prices, space tourism is now taken seriously by regulators as a maturing sector.

Of course, the idea itself has been around for decades. It is now 35 years since Pan American Airlines began taking reservations for commercial space flights to the moon. The company that had pioneered transoceanic passenger air travel claimed that it would be flying paying passengers to the moon before the turn of the century. By the time it closed the list in 1971, more than 90,000 people had made a reservation 鈥� among them an ex-film star turned California state governor named Ronald Reagan.

Pan Am鈥檚 space flight promotion was largely a marketing gimmick 鈥� the company was capitalising on the tremendous buzz that had been created by the Pan Am 鈥渟paceliner鈥� featured in 2001: A Space Odyssey, which hit cinemas in 1968. In those heady days of the space race, many people thought they might soon be able to blast to an orbiting Hilton on a Pan Am spacecraft, just like in the movie. 快猫短视频s were doing little to dispel the hype. Selling the space shuttle to the US Congress, rocket designer Wernher von Braun boasted: 鈥淭oward the end of the seventies you will no longer have to go through gruelling years of astronaut training if you want to go into orbit. A reusable space shuttle will take you up there in the comfort of an airliner.鈥�

But while NASA鈥檚 shuttle is no longer the greatest advertisement for human space flight, its grounded status certainly shouldn鈥檛 stand in the way of paying passengers going into space, says Jeffrey Manber, president of Netherlands-based space tourism company MirCorp. 鈥淭here are no technological hurdles to the growth of the non-professional market for space,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e鈥檝e been going into space for more than 40 years. It is a matter of lowering the cost, through economics.鈥�

Economics is a relatively new burden for human space flight, however, and it will take time to adjust. Passenger aviation 鈥� the model that space tourism companies are now desperate to emulate 鈥� was born in the private sector and its early practitioners focused not only on improving technology but also on attaining the reliability and economy that ultimately made air travel affordable. By contrast, the builders of Vostok and Apollo were bankrolled out of government coffers and given a win-at-any-cost wartime mandate. With a blank cheque to create vehicles tailored to individual missions, the pioneers of the space age never worried about being economical. The result of these divergent philosophies is that millions of people and tonnes of cargo fly around the world for dollars or even cents per kilogram, depending on the destination and class of service, while nothing goes into space these days for less than about $6000 per kilo. And sending people into space costs several times more.

That鈥檚 why space tourism is, for now, strictly for multimillionaires like the businessman and former NASA scientist Dennis Tito. In April 2001, 40 years after Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, Tito paid $20 million to fly to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a Soyuz. Last year, South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth made a similar trip at a similar cost.

There have been no space tourists since then, but Futron鈥檚 survey suggests that non-professional space travel could attract more than 15,000 customers, generating $1 billion a year by 2021 (see 鈥淯p, up and away鈥�).

Acceptable costs for recreational space travel vary widely. Few people are prepared to consider a luxurious stay at an orbiting space facility at a cost of many millions, but it seems plenty would settle for a 鈥渟ub-orbital hop鈥� 鈥� a few minutes of microgravity thrills costing between $50,000 and $100,000.

And thanks to the X prize, a $10 million lure modelled on the prize that inspired Charles Lindbergh鈥檚 solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, private sub-orbital space flight may be closer than ever (see 鈥淓yes on the prize鈥�). At the end of last month, for instance, Starchaser Industries of Manchester, UK, completed two parachute-drop tests of its NOVA 2 rocket capsule. Shoved out of the back of a cargo plane 3000 metres above the Arizona desert, the manned capsule was steered with a parachute and landed safely.

Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites says his company might even claim the money before the end of the year. Rutan is famous for designing Voyager, the first powered aircraft to fly around the world non-stop without refuelling, and he is no stranger to spacecraft design. Scaled Composites worked not only on the most prominent private spacecraft project of recent years, Rotary Rocket鈥檚 propeller-crowned Roton, but also on the DC-X, a reusable spaceship prototype initially designed for the US military and later transferred to NASA.

Rutan鈥檚 X prize vehicle is a high-altitude aeroplane carrying a single-engine rocket plane on its belly (快猫短视频, 10 May, p 12). It conducted a milestone flight on 7 August, when the piloted rocket plane flew for the first time. It was dropped from the carrier aircraft at 47,000 feet and glided to a smooth landing in the Mojave desert. Rutan has said he might try for the X prize on or before 17 December 鈥� 100 years to the day after the Wright Flyer made its historic flight from Kitty Hawk.

It is largely the X prize competitors who are causing the FAA to begin considering regulations for private passenger space travel. But none of them will take you to the ISS 鈥� for that, you will still need something like the Soyuz capsule that currently services the station. And that鈥檚 what Virginia-based Space Adventures, the company at the forefront of attempts to create a space tourism industry, is aiming to provide. Space Adventures 鈥� which arranged both Tito鈥檚 and Shuttleworth鈥檚 ISS trips 鈥� announced last month that it was in talks to get a Soyuz craft purpose-built for would-be customers. The company has also secured two seats aboard a Soyuz flight to the ISS, probably by early 2005. They are expensive seats 鈥� $20 million apiece 鈥� but a dedicated space tourism craft will bring the cost down, says Eric Anderson, head of Space Adventures.

That may prove to be wishful thinking: the Russians want the money up front. But Anderson is undaunted, and is currently wooing mega-rich potential investors at a series of soir茅es in the UK, Germany, the US and Brazil. If Space Adventures manages to get a Soyuz built to order, he believes there will be plenty of takers 鈥� and that his company will easily make back its investment.

But it鈥檚 probably just as well the only space flights for a while will be straight up and down, as plans for space hotels are rather less advanced than the plans for getting to them. Among the most ambitious are those of MirCorp, which was formed in 2000 to commercialise the Mir space station. Now that Mir is languishing beneath the Pacific, MirCorp has struck a deal with Russian aerospace giant RSC Energia to build a smaller, cheaper orbital facility. The proposed Mini Station-1 鈥� based largely on technology used for Mir 鈥� would accommodate three visitors for up to 20 days at a time. The facility would be tailor-made for the kind of commercial research and leisure activities that lend themselves to a microgravity environment.

Energia also has an agreement with the American company Spacehab to develop a small, commercially oriented module for the ISS. Much like the Mini Station-1, the Energia/Spacehab module, appropriately called Enterprise, could also serve as a destination for paying visitors. Bigelow Aerospace of Nevada is also in the running to develop a private orbital facility. In doing so, the company鈥檚 colourful founder, motel magnate Robert Bigelow, follows in the large footsteps of Barron Hilton, who in the 1960s and 1970s spent big money planning an orbiting version of his terrestrial hotel chain. Hilton, too, still has designs on the space hotel market (See 鈥淲elcome to the Hilton Intergalactic鈥�).

High profits

But if Bigelow, Anderson or somebody else is going to make a lot of money out of space tourism, as McAlister鈥檚 testimony to Congress suggests, should broadening the possibilities of human space travel be left to investors and entrepreneurs? Not at all, says Alan Ladwig, a former NASA associate administrator who helped develop the shuttle payload and 鈥渢eacher in space鈥� programmes. Since, to all intents and purposes, government agencies currently have a monopoly on human space-flight activities, they should at least make their expertise more readily available. After all, it was gained at the taxpayer鈥檚 expense. 鈥淕overnment agencies could help the situation by adopting a more supportive stance towards the goal of public space travel,鈥� Ladwig says. 鈥淯nfortunately, even when individuals within NASA have tried to move in this direction, their efforts have been devalued. Policy makers and NASA managers have never considered space travel for the general public as a worthy goal.鈥�

Like more than one former NASA executive, Ladwig has joined the private space sector, hoping to do what NASA seemingly won鈥檛. He is now a senior executive with a new company called Zero Gravity, which plans to begin offering commercial 鈥減arabolic flights鈥� 鈥� the chance to experience microgravity in free fall 鈥� in the US this year. 鈥淲e hope that the customers for our parabolic services will serve as the foundation for space tourism as capabilities come online,鈥� Ladwig says.

Indeed, until sub-orbital tourism takes off, anyone with an ambition to get into space (and who lacks the requisite $20 million) will have to content themselves with terrestrial training exercises. And until Ladwig鈥檚 company opens for business, these are only available in Russia. Space Adventures and another American company, Incredible Adventures, have cornered the market for offering virtual space thrills in anticipation of the real thing. Around $3000, for instance, gets you a day鈥檚 worth of training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonauts Training Center outside Moscow, the highlight of which is a dip in the centre鈥檚 neutral-buoyancy tank for a simulated space walk around a full-scale mock-up of the ISS.

For about double that price, you can board a Russian cargo plane that flies a parabolic trajectory allowing you to experience near-weightlessness for up to 30 seconds at a time (the plane鈥檚 cargo bay has been transformed into an oblong padded cell so that customers can 鈥渇loat鈥� without fear of injury). At the top of the thrill list, a wallet-cleaning $12,000 earns you a joyride in a Russian MiG-25 fighter jet, where you鈥檒l fly to an altitude of over 25,000 metres 鈥� 鈥渢o the edge of space, where the sky is black above and blue below鈥�, claims the Incredible Adventures website.

If a few thousand dollars per ticket is still out of your price range, you might still have a chance to get into space. Anderson says the company is in discussions with 鈥渟everal networks in the US, UK and elsewhere鈥� about a reality TV show where the winner gets a Soyuz ride to the ISS. A Russian television station has also proposed such a show in recent months. No less an eminence than Buzz Aldrin, the second human to walk on the moon, has suggested selling lottery tickets with the lucky winner getting a jaunt into space. Space Adventures is also considering this idea.

Anderson鈥檚 company is investigating another route into space: through China. The US and Russia may be the only players in human space flight at present, but that may be about to change. For several years now, China has been slowly building its manned space flight capabilities, and its Shenzhou (鈥渄ivine vessel鈥�) has made a number of successful unmanned flights into orbit and back. The Shenzhou programme has been closely guarded and it is unclear when the first manned Shenzhou launch will take place, but some are betting on early October 鈥� partly because it would coincide with China鈥檚 national holiday on 1 October.

If a manned Shenzhou flight is successful, the Chinese will become only the third nation capable of sending humans into space. This explains why, with NASA reeling from its shuttle and ISS problems and the Russian space programme struggling to make ends meet, Anderson is planning to begin talks with the Chinese about private passenger flights on the Shenzhou, whose design is largely based on the Russian Soyuz. 鈥淲e鈥檙e interested in working with anyone who can help make our customers鈥� dreams come true,鈥� Anderson says.

It may seem like a big leap from a first flight to carrying paying passengers into space, particularly for a secretive nation like China. Yet it wasn鈥檛 so long ago that Russia 鈥� currently the only nation providing such a service 鈥� was just as silent about its space programme. Already the Chinese have proven their skill at marrying disparate political and economic philosophies: their fearsome Long March rocket, developed as a military counterweight to the west, has quickly taken a place among the world鈥檚 commercially competitive launch vehicles. Who knows, instead of booking your orbital vacation on Pan Am, in a decade or so you could find yourself flying Air China. In any event, you should start saving now. You may be able to book a space flight ticket sooner than you think.