Shooting Into Space
June 14, 2007
The space arm of the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS) has announced plans to develop a spacecraft for tourists. The vessel would offer travelers a 90-minute suborbital flight, including three minutes of weightlessness, at an altitude of more than 100 kilometers (62 miles).
According to Francois Auque, the president of EADS Astrium, the fare in space could total some 150,000 to 200,000 euros ($200,000 - $267,000). This compared to $25 million for the few space tourists flying in the narrow capsule of the Russian rocket "Soyuz," Auque said.
The Russian space authority currently holds the monopoly in space tourism. It offers flights to the international space station ISS.
"We are offering a profitable system and have given ourselves until early 2008 to find industrial partners to share the risk, private investment of around one billion euros and an operator for the journey," Auque told 2,500 VIP guests in the French capital Paris on Wednesday evening. "We will not do it without that."
A deep desire to enter space
The aircraft, which EADS plans to start developing next year, will be in operation from 2012. Auque said EADS expected the space tourist market to total 20,000 passengers a year by 2020.
"We want to serve a third of this," Auque said. "We believe in this market."
According to Auque, people had a deep desire to enter space.
"We want to rouse European ambitions in the process," he said.
EADS is competing with the US company Spaceship, which is working on a successor for the legendary SpaceShipOne. This spacecraft, which uses a hybrid rocket motor, completed the first privately funded human space flight in 2004. Spaceship is aiming to offer suborbital flights for less than 100,000 euros in the near future.
No threat from Virgin Galactic
The EADS space jet will take off and land conventionally from a standard airport using jet engines. Once it is airborne at an attitude of some 12 kilometers, though, the rocket engines will be ignited to give sufficient acceleration to reach the altitude of 100 kilometers. Then, the engines will be shut down so that passengers can experience zero gravity in space.
"We have ruled out the idea of a simple rocket, which can not be used again," said Robert Laine, EADS Astrium's technical director.
The company was also not in favor of a small vessel attached to a large plane, the idea chosen by Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, he said.
"This seems to us less safe," Laine said.
Virgin plans to offer space flights from 2009. But EADS Astrium said it was not concerned about entering the space race later, given "the qualities of the solution proposed by Astrium which can take off and land on any runway, and the possibilities of the market."
The guests at the Paris event were shown a full-sized model of the craft's forward section. The cabin, created by Australian born designer Marc Newson, will be able to hold four passengers. Newson is best known for his work as creative director of Qantas Airways.