NEWS from the fledgling private space business is coming thick and fast. A few days ago the Antares rocket built by Orbital Sciences Corporation made a successful maiden flight, paving the way for Orbital to provide some competition for SpaceX when it comes to delivering cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). Then, on April 29th, Virgin Galactic, the private space firm with the slickest PR (its name notwithstanding, the firm does not even plan to fly into orbit), conducted a successful, in-flight test-firing of the rocket motor aboard its SpaceShipTwo craft.
Virgin—which is bankrolled by Richard Branson, an adventurous British billionaire—has pedigree. Its distinctive rocket-plane is a direct descendet of SpaceShipOne, the craft that, on June 21st, 2004, became the first privately-built, crewed spacecraft to make it beyond the Karman Line, the 100km high cutoff that officially marks the beginning of space.
The firm is distinctive in other ways, too. It eschews the traditional long, thin, disposable rocket (the approach adopted by both SpaceX and Orbital) in favour of a reusable aeroplane that is launched in mid-air from a much larger mothership. It is an elegant design that ought to keep costs low, albeit at the price of performance. While SpaceX and Orbital's rockets can launch reasonably large payloads directly into orbit, Virgin's machine is limited to shorter, sub-orbital hops.
As a result, Virgin's business model is different, as well. A significant chunk of SpaceX's revenue comes from a $1.6 billion agreement it has with NASA to fly a dozen cargo-resupply missions to the ISS. It also has satellite-launch contracts with, among others, America's military and Iridium, a firm that makes communications satellites. Orbital is also in the satellite-launch business (it also makes some of its own). But Virgin's focus is primarily on space tourism. For $200,000 a pop, the 500 or so passengers who have already signed up have been promised around six minutes of weightlessness in a flight that lasts a total of two and a half hours. Provided that business proves profitable enough, the company hopes, one day, to begin flying between different points on Earth, providing a sort of super-fast, super-Concorde mode of transport for the wealthy and impatient. With little reliance on public money, Virgin is arguably the most privately-focused of the private space firms.
That, of course, assumes that the firm's subsequent tests continue to go well. The company has suffered plenty of delays, having originally hoped to begin flying passengers in 2007. And while SpaceShipTwo's first rocket-powered flight is a significant milestone, it was far from a dry run for a passenger mission. The rocket burn lasted just 16 seconds. There is still plenty of work to be done before the first tourists get their brief glimpse of space.
(Photo credit: MarsScientific.com/Clay Centre Observatory)
