Posted on 04/20/2005 6:20:59 PM PDT by KevinDavis
Speaking before the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics today, SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan said the commercial space industry will thrive but the current regulatory system is need of repair and nearly destroyed his program.
Rutan was one a of a group experts in the emerging commercial space market to testify before lawmakers. Congress is attempting to define what role the government should or shouldn’t play in supporting entrepreneurial space progress.
The potential of space tourism was made all the more real by last year’s successful suborbital flights by SpaceShipOne, the world’s first privately-built and human-piloted spaceship.
Work is underway to build an affordable and safe vehicle to make personal spaceflight a reality, Burt Rutan, the chief designer of SpaceShipOne told the lawmakers. Rutan, who heads the Mojave, California-based Scaled Compositions, envisions multiple competing spaceline operators vying for space traveler dollars.
“The airline experience has shown us that it is not just technology that provides safety but the maturity that comes from a high-level of flight activity,” Rutan said.
However, Rutan criticized the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and its office of the Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (AST), saying “the AST process, focusing only on the non-involved public, just about ruined my program.”
Streamlining Procedures
AST’s stated mission is to ensure protection of the public, property, and the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States during a commercial launch or re-entry activity and to encourage, facilitate, and promote U.S. commercial space transportation.
“It resulted in cost-overruns,” Rutan said. “It increased the risk for my test pilots. It did not reduce the risk to the non-involved public. It destroyed our safety policy of always question the product, never defend it.”
The regulatory process imposed by AST, Rutan continued, “was grossly misapplied for our research tests. And worse yet, is likely to be misapplied for the regulation of future commercial spaceliners.”
Rutan said that the FAA is already in short supply of people to maintain its regulatory vigil over the airline industry. There’s need for streamlining the certification of new commercial spaceships, he said, with the designer ready to work with FAA/AST on tackling these and other regulatory, safety, and certification issues.
“This problem must be solved quickly to support an industry that needs a proper research environment to allow innovation,” Rutan said.
Once a commercial spaceliner is realized, Rutan said, it will likely fly as many as 500 astronauts the first year. And by the fifth year, that number would rise to 3,000 people per year. By the twelfth year of operations, at least 50,000 to 100,000 individuals “will have enjoyed the black sky view of suborbital flight,” he said.
Viable business
Last September, Sir Richard Branson announced that his newly formed Virgin Galactic would buy a fleet of spacecraft based on SpaceShipOne’s design to carry tourists into suborbital space. The technology is owned by Microsoft mogul, Paul Allen, and is called Mojave Aerospace Ventures.
“We’ve not taken lightly the idea of entering the personal spaceflight market,” Will Whitehorn, President of Virgin Galactic and Group Corporate Affairs and Brand Development Director for Virgin Management Limited said during the hearing. “We believe that within 5 years we can create a viable business,” he said, an enterprise that would lead to eventual reduction of Earth-to-space ticket costs from an initial fee of $200,000 a seat.
Whitehorn said Virgin Galactic would like to order at least five SpaceShipTwo vehicles and start operations before the end of the decade. “We would like to be going through a testing process by the end of 2007…and commercial operation by 2008, if that was possible,” he testified.
There’s a big difference in purchasing an aircraft from airline manufacturers, contrasted to buying a suborbital spaceship, Whitehorn suggested. “We are in uncharted territory here…at the experimental cutting edge of a new industry.”
Whitehorn said that, since announcing their suborbital passenger plans, Virgin Galactic has received 29,000 applications. He emphasized that they were not moving forward on the space travel business “as a rich billionaire’s toy adventure.” BR>
“The pioneer astronauts will help fund the process of making personal spaceflight something that people…can enjoy and afford in the future,” Whitehorn said. “We believe that, eventually, we could get it down to $25,000 or $30,000 after a number of years, per flight, per person.”
Large cabins, big windows
Rutan would not provide specific details on his spaceliner design. “We’re only at the preliminary stage of technology development,” he noted.
On the other hand, the aerospace designer offered a sneak peek at what a ticket-in-hand space passenger might see. “The very first generation of commercial suborbital spaceships will be experience-optimized,” Rutan added.
There will be large cabins and big windows, Rutan explained, all for the benefit of the free-floating passenger so he or she can fully experience four-to-five minutes of weightless time. “We are working very hard on assuring that this will be extremely attractive to the public, extremely affordable, and it will be at least as safe a the early airlines,” he said.
Rutan said he intends to franchise his spaceliner design. In doing so, an operator would also have to follow specific rules for maintaining and flying the vehicle safely. Between five and ten years into operation, he expects to see three to four operators competing with each other from various launch sites – all able to tap into “an enormous, enormous market.”
Why am I not surprised. NASA's tentacles extend through all federal and state agencies. They want to maintain their ridiculous monopoly, a monopoly that has kept launch costs high (up to $20,000/lb on the shuttle), and has prevented man from returning to the moon or go to other planets.
They've killed all competitors. Anyone here remember the Delta Clipper SSTO? Damn, that was a fine ship and would've reduced launch costs down to less than $1,000 a pound. Michael Bell's supergun launchers could've placed hardened mass into LEO for as little as $50 a pound. Instead of capitalizing on it; the powers that be stabbed him in the back, threw him in jail for trying to help the Americans in Africa and practically forced him into Saddam's arms with a bullet in the back of the head a few years later.
Who would've thought in 1970 that we don't have the capability ot returning to the moon in 2005. Pathetic.
Rutan should just move his company to Australia and launch from there. Bypass the entire FAA and NASA influence.
Give'um heck Burt. :D
“It resulted in cost-overruns,” Rutan said. “It increased the risk for my test pilots. It did not reduce the risk to the non-involved public. It destroyed our safety policy of always question the product, never defend it.”
If I was a President of an equatorial country I would give them free reign for a space port.
Just bring jobs and money.
The government just needs to figure out how to tax this.
Hmmm...We must have similar interests and/or information sources. You stated this well. I've been telling people for years that we could be using the supergun technology to place supplies and fuel in orbit.
Hmmm...We must have similar interests and/or information sources. You stated this well. I've been telling people for years that we could be using the supergun technology to place supplies and fuel in orbit.
Did you read the article?
NASA isn't even mentioned once.
I'm shocked...
NASA has no regulatory authority. They only control NASA facilities.
No, but I remember the Pan Am Space Clipper.
You can blame NASA, but Congress is just as much at fault - in their quest to spread NASA money around to as many districts as possible, they end up wasting God knows how much money, as well as making things more complex and more difficult.
Do you mean Gerald Bull?
Yeah, he got a really raw deal.
No kidding. Just think of how our world would be today if only NASA backed him back in the 60's. Way back then, his initial supergun already fired a payload more than 50 miles straight up. We could've had solar power satellites beaming GW of clean energy down to earth and entire colonies in L-5 by now since launch costs for inert materials would be minimal, probably no more than $20 a lb or a thousand times cheaper than the space shuttle.
What a catastrophe for mankind! Instead we burn billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere and make the Islamic Arabs petrobillionaires. Way to go!
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