2008 Woodie Awards
To Space and Beyond
The future of space tourism is looking up
Vincent J. Schodolski
Issue date: 11/3/04 Section: News
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MOJAVE, Calif.- Some day, the tiny airport in this high-desert town may be considered in the history of manned commercial spaceflight much as Roosevelt Field on Long Island, N.Y., is to commercial aviation.
It was here that SpaceShipOne, piloted by Michael Melvill, made the first commercial flight into space in June, making history just as Charles Lindbergh did in May 1927 when he took off in the Spirit of St. Louis at from Roosevelt for the first solo trans-Atlantic airplane flight.
Just as commercial aviation was spurred by Lindbergh, the success of SpaceShipOne seems to have given a boost to the growing private-sector space business. People involved in the industry are confident that anybody able to afford the steep price of a ticket will be flying in space within the next several years.
Days before the SpaceShipOne flights in late September and early October that won the $10 million Ansari X Prize, Virgin Atlantic Airways founder Richard Branson announced the formation of Virgin Galactic with the goal of providing regular flights into suborbital space, perhaps as soon as 2007.
Using the basic design of SpaceShipOne that was created by aviation innovator Burt Rutan, Branson plans to build VSS Enterprise, a craft that will carry five to nine people into space at a starting price of about $200,000. Other craft will be added to the fleet over time.
Seven thousand people already have signed up for one of Branson's flights, Virgin officials said.
It took more than three decades for programs run by governments- primarily the United States and the Soviet Union- to move from the first manned space flights to journeys to the moon to the space shuttle and the International Space Station.
But commercial trips to space, guided by a pioneer spirit and the lure of profit, are expected to take just a few years.
"They can scale up the SpaceShipOne and White Knight model," said John Olds, a professor of aerospace engineering at Georgia Tech, referring to the spacecraft and the plane that carried it during the first phase of its flights.
It was here that SpaceShipOne, piloted by Michael Melvill, made the first commercial flight into space in June, making history just as Charles Lindbergh did in May 1927 when he took off in the Spirit of St. Louis at from Roosevelt for the first solo trans-Atlantic airplane flight.
Just as commercial aviation was spurred by Lindbergh, the success of SpaceShipOne seems to have given a boost to the growing private-sector space business. People involved in the industry are confident that anybody able to afford the steep price of a ticket will be flying in space within the next several years.
Days before the SpaceShipOne flights in late September and early October that won the $10 million Ansari X Prize, Virgin Atlantic Airways founder Richard Branson announced the formation of Virgin Galactic with the goal of providing regular flights into suborbital space, perhaps as soon as 2007.
Using the basic design of SpaceShipOne that was created by aviation innovator Burt Rutan, Branson plans to build VSS Enterprise, a craft that will carry five to nine people into space at a starting price of about $200,000. Other craft will be added to the fleet over time.
Seven thousand people already have signed up for one of Branson's flights, Virgin officials said.
It took more than three decades for programs run by governments- primarily the United States and the Soviet Union- to move from the first manned space flights to journeys to the moon to the space shuttle and the International Space Station.
But commercial trips to space, guided by a pioneer spirit and the lure of profit, are expected to take just a few years.
"They can scale up the SpaceShipOne and White Knight model," said John Olds, a professor of aerospace engineering at Georgia Tech, referring to the spacecraft and the plane that carried it during the first phase of its flights.