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Boeing Announces Space-Tourism Business
By KENNETH CHANG
Boeing said on Wednesday that it was entering the space-tourism business, an announcement that could bolster the Obama administration’s efforts to transform the National Aeronautics and Space Administration into an agency that focuses less on building rockets and more on nurturing a commercial space industry.
Boeing, which is developing a capsule that it hopes will take NASA astronauts to the International Space Station, announced that it will offer for sale any seats that NASA does not need. The entrance of an aerospace giant like Boeing perhaps marks the transition of space tourism from a dreamy pursuit of start-up entrepreneurs to a mainstream aerospace market.
“We’re ready now to start talking to prospective customers,” said Eric C. Anderson, co-founder and chairman of Space Adventures, a Virginia-based space tourism company that would market the seats for Boeing.
The flights would probably take off from Cape Canaveral in Florida for a trip to the International Space Station. Seven earlier space tourists have made similar visits riding in Russian Soyuz capsules. Space Adventures arranged the Soyuz trips with Roscomos, the Russian space agency.
Current NASA plans call for four space station crew members to travel on each flight. The Boeing capsule, called the CST-100, would have room for seven, leaving perhaps three available for space tourists.
Boeing and Space Adventures have not set a price yet. Mr. Anderson said the cost would be competitive with the Soyuz flights. Guy Laliberté, founder of Cirque Soleil, spent about $40 million for a Soyuz trip to the space station last year. Boeing officials said their first flight is aimed for 2015.
But the prospects that anyone who buys a ticket will ever get to space hinge on Congress, which is considering two versions of a bill that support very different visions for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
A bill written by the House’s science and technology committee to lay out the direction of NASA for the next three years would largely follow the traditional trajectory for human space flight. It calls for NASA to build a government-owned rocket — probably the Ares I, which NASA has been working on for five years — to transport astronauts to the International Space Station, and then a larger one for missions to the Moon, asteroids and eventually Mars.
The competing vision, embodied in President Obama’s 2011 budget proposal for NASA, focuses instead on nurturing private companies that want to develop the space equivalent of airlines. NASA would then simply buy seats on those rockets to send its astronauts to the International Space Station.
Competition, the thinking goes, would drive down the cost of getting to space, leading to a profitable new American industry and freeing more of NASA’s budget for the deep-space missions.
Advocates of the commercial approach are rallying to block the House version of the NASA authorization bill, which provides only $150 million a year over the next three years for the development of commercial crew. “I think it’s awful,” said Bob Werb, chairman of the Space Frontier Foundation, which is urging its supporters to register disapproval with their Congressional representatives. “It’s leaving NASA with way more pork than program. I see that as a disaster for the agency.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/sc...a.html?_r=1&hp
Boeing said on Wednesday that it was entering the space-tourism business, an announcement that could bolster the Obama administration’s efforts to transform the National Aeronautics and Space Administration into an agency that focuses less on building rockets and more on nurturing a commercial space industry.
Boeing, which is developing a capsule that it hopes will take NASA astronauts to the International Space Station, announced that it will offer for sale any seats that NASA does not need. The entrance of an aerospace giant like Boeing perhaps marks the transition of space tourism from a dreamy pursuit of start-up entrepreneurs to a mainstream aerospace market.
“We’re ready now to start talking to prospective customers,” said Eric C. Anderson, co-founder and chairman of Space Adventures, a Virginia-based space tourism company that would market the seats for Boeing.
The flights would probably take off from Cape Canaveral in Florida for a trip to the International Space Station. Seven earlier space tourists have made similar visits riding in Russian Soyuz capsules. Space Adventures arranged the Soyuz trips with Roscomos, the Russian space agency.
Current NASA plans call for four space station crew members to travel on each flight. The Boeing capsule, called the CST-100, would have room for seven, leaving perhaps three available for space tourists.
Boeing and Space Adventures have not set a price yet. Mr. Anderson said the cost would be competitive with the Soyuz flights. Guy Laliberté, founder of Cirque Soleil, spent about $40 million for a Soyuz trip to the space station last year. Boeing officials said their first flight is aimed for 2015.
But the prospects that anyone who buys a ticket will ever get to space hinge on Congress, which is considering two versions of a bill that support very different visions for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
A bill written by the House’s science and technology committee to lay out the direction of NASA for the next three years would largely follow the traditional trajectory for human space flight. It calls for NASA to build a government-owned rocket — probably the Ares I, which NASA has been working on for five years — to transport astronauts to the International Space Station, and then a larger one for missions to the Moon, asteroids and eventually Mars.
The competing vision, embodied in President Obama’s 2011 budget proposal for NASA, focuses instead on nurturing private companies that want to develop the space equivalent of airlines. NASA would then simply buy seats on those rockets to send its astronauts to the International Space Station.
Competition, the thinking goes, would drive down the cost of getting to space, leading to a profitable new American industry and freeing more of NASA’s budget for the deep-space missions.
Advocates of the commercial approach are rallying to block the House version of the NASA authorization bill, which provides only $150 million a year over the next three years for the development of commercial crew. “I think it’s awful,” said Bob Werb, chairman of the Space Frontier Foundation, which is urging its supporters to register disapproval with their Congressional representatives. “It’s leaving NASA with way more pork than program. I see that as a disaster for the agency.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/sc...a.html?_r=1&hp