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From: Stig Agermose <stig.agermose@get2net.dk>
Date: Sun, 2 May 1999 01:18:55 +0200 (MET DST)
Fwd Date: Sun, 02 May 1999 07:23:03 -0400
Subject: The Times: Space Holidays Becoming Reality
Source: The (London) Times.
Stig
***
Saturday May 1 1999
TRAVEL
Nick Nuttall discovers why we may soon be telling high street
travel agents: 'Fly me to the moon'
=A9
The Jetsons' cartoon world may before long become an accurate
depiction of the way we live
**
Space odyssey becomes reality
It is the ultimate holiday destination - yet it is less than 100
miles away. Space. The final frontier is opening up to tourists
in the same way that Antarctica and the Arctic, once the
exclusive preserve of the military and specialist shipping
companies, were opened up by modern cruise liners.
Experts predict that space cruises to the Moon may be possible
within 10 to 20 years, while several companies in America, Japan
and Europe have been competing to be the first to take
day-trippers to "astronaut altitude" - that is, space, 62 miles
above Earth. Richard Branson this week outlined his plans for
the new arm of his empire: Virgin Galactic Airways.
He said he expects to be able to take travellers on a two-hour
jaunt into space for =A350,000 to =A375,000 within eight years. And
he is in talks with several aerospace firms including one called
Rotary Rocket, whose backers include the writer Tom Clancy.
"Finally it's come to the stage that it's going to be possible
to look at taking people into space," Branson said.
Daimler Benz, working with the German space agency, disclosed
earlier this month plans to build and launch the =A310 million
Hotel Galactica, which will circle 300 miles above the Earth, by
2009.
It may sound like pie in the sky. But according to Arthur C.
Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the British
visionary who predicted satellites and mobile phones decades
before they emerged: "The idea is quite practical. I am sure
that space travel will be big business in the new millennium."
He believes space travel is at the stage aviation was at in
1910, when prizes were offered for the first non-stop solo
transatlantic flight. Charles Lindbergh achieved that feat in
1927, heralding the start of worldwide commercial aviation and
the dawn of the package holiday.
Robert Haltermann, a Washington DC-based space travel consultant
who worked on Nasa's space shuttle programme, has another
analogy: he believes the market is where the cruise ship
industry was soon after 1839.
This was when Sir Samuel Cunard launched a fortnightly crossing
between Liverpool and Boston with 63 fee-paying passengers.
Nowadays, 4.4 million people take cruises each year.
The idea of holidays in space is not new. Much of the technology
has existed for decades - after all, it is nearly 40 years since
Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space.
Indeed, in 1967, Barron Hilton, chairman of the US Hilton Hotels
Corporation, discussed the feasibility of an "Orbiter Hilton and
Lunar Hilton". He predicted: "There will be travellers in outer
space, and where there are travellers there must be Hiltons."
Now, more than three decades on, it looks as if Hilton's dream
is closer to coming true.
According to John Spencer, executive director of the Space
Tourism Society in Los Angeles: "A generation has grown up
watching films and television on space and living with space
missions. They want to go there too."
The race for space has prompted an unlikely union between
tourism and science. Since the end of the Cold War, many
engineers and aerospace companies, deprived of military
contracts, have been focusing on designs for commerical space
planes.
Another incentive is the Ten-Million-Dollar-X-Prize - an award
offered by a consortium of interested businessmen to the
first-privately funded team to take three people 62 miles or
higher and back twice in a week.
Sixteen aerospace and holiday companies - 12 in America and four
elsewhere, including Britain - are competing.
They are being sponsored by travel companies such as Space
Adventures in Virginia. WildWings, a travel agent based in
Bristol, is acting as UK agent for the company, which is backing
several of the competitors. These include Bristol Space Planes
of Bristol, set up by David Ashford, formerly with Hawker
Siddeley, who has worked on projects including Concorde and the
military Skylark rocket.
His Ascender space plane is designed to take off from an
airstrip before switching to a rocket motor five miles up. The
rocket then propels the small plane and its four passengers at
nearly three times the speed of sound to an altitude of 62
miles.
Ascender then returns to the airfield about one hour later.
Tourists get two minutes of weightlessness and "superb views of
the Earth", according to the WildWings brochure.
Other designs nearing completion include the Eclipse Astroliner
from Californian company Kelly. This is a space plane that is
towed like a glider behind a Boeing 747 until, at 20,000ft, its
three Russian-made RD-120 engines ignite, hurtling the craft and
its passengers 100 miles up.
Another project is Pathfinder, from the Pioneer Rocketplane
company in Colorado. It takes off like a high performance jet
fighter, reaching up to 30,000ft.
"A tanker aircraft transfers 130,000 pounds of liquid oxygen
into your vehicle's fuel tank. The rocket engine ignites.
Suddenly you feel three to four times the force of gravity,
pushing you deep in your seat. Two minutes later this space
plane is 80 miles up," according to the brochure.
Surveys in Japan indicate that 70 per cent would like to go into
space and would pay three months' salary to do it. Surveys in
America have found 42 per cent are keen.
Business in Britain has yet to take off.
Only two people have paid WildWings a deposit for its =A355,000
Space Adventure package comprising six days of training, health
screening, talks, accommodation, food and, of course, a trip
into space. And the proposed first trip, originally scheduled
for 2001, has been put back by a year.
Dr Madsen Pirie, president of the Adam Smith Institute in
London, a right-wing think tank, is one of the two plucky ones.
He says he has been fascinated by astronomy and space since
"building my first telescope when I was eight". He is convinced
that the trip will go ahead and is certain that anyone now in
their early twenties will eventually see affordable hotels and
other leisure activities in space.
Space travel consultant Robert Haltermann reckons there will be
no shortage of activities in a space hotel, including weightless
or semi-weightless "dining, space games, dancing, stage
productions and cosmos-gazing".
Other planned pursuits include space walks and space buggy rides
on the Moon.
Should only a few holidaymakers cross the final frontier in the
next few years, it could be because of the cost. Michael Heaney
of the Space Frontier Foundation in New York believes prices for
a space holiday at an orbiting hotel might be initally as high
as =A3250,000.
Branson's project is a more modest =A350,000-=A375,000, and a
week-long package to an orbiting hotel is being touted at up to
=A39,375 by 2005 to 2010 by American firm Space Islands.
Haltermann believes whatever the initial costs, prices will
eventually fall.
"Today there are more than 200 cruise ships accommodating nearly
4.4 million tourists a year. But it was once a luxury for only
those few who could afford such extravagance," he says, adding
that space tourism is likely to evolve in the same way.
Some cynics claim few will really want to boldly go. But
supporters dismiss them as Luddites.
Robert Zubrin, chief scientist at Pioneer Rocketplane, says:
"People say 'Grandma will never fly that way'. Well, that is
what the railroad people said about airplanes in 1910."
WEBSITE:
WildWings
http://www.wildwings.co.uk
(0117-984 8040)
Space Adventures
http://www.spaceadventures.com
Nasa
http://www.nasa.gov
European Space Agency
http://www.esa.int
Links to other stories in the same group
*Space odyssey becomes reality
*Meanwhile, back on Earth
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