By making available to industry the technology NASA has acquired since it started over 40 years ago, companies like Virgin Galactic soon will be in a position to offer flights into space as soon as 2008. “Citizen space travel is developing much more quickly than we expected,” Schmidt says.
Just the beginning
Brewster Shaw, a former astronaut and currently a vice president of The Boeing Company, recently said that human space travel is such a powerful personal experience that “the more people who go, the more will want to go.”
G. Scott Hubbard, a visiting scholar at Stanford University and former director at NASA’s Ames Research Center, said recently, “Once space becomes accessible to tourists on a regular basis, practical industries will follow.
“If early aviation is any guide, we can say for sure that the demand is as woefully underestimated as the development costs. Still, clever advertising companies and marketers are already exploiting space connections to capture attention, and their strategies appear to be working.”
History of aviation mavericks
Today’s space entrepreneurs are not unlike the mavericks that founded the aviation business. For instance, William Boeing gambled on timber production before starting his aviation company in 1903. The Loughead brothers risked $4,000 in 1913 on a flying boat. They nearly failed, but went on to start what is now Lockheed Martin. Each major aviation company started much the same way.
What to expect
Unlike astronauts who train for up to a year before their flights, you will need only one week to complete your mission. And if you mistakenly think you may be “too old” to make the flight, William Shatner, 75, and Morgan Freeman, 69, have already made their deposits. And Richard Branson intends to take his father Ted on his company’s maiden voyage. He’ll be in his late 80s.
On the day of your flight, you will don your jumpsuit and climb aboard the space plane that has been securely strapped to a specially designed mother ship. After climbing to about 55,000 feet, you will experience a stomachchurning lurch caused by ignition of its powerful rockets, as the small space plane heads for the edge of the atmosphere.
Within an instant, you will be flying faster than the supersonic Concorde, with your back pressed firmly against the seat as acceleration continues for about 90 seconds. Then the engines will cut out, and the craft will coast in weightless silence.
You will then have six to seven minutes of freedom to enjoy the once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, and indulge in picture taking unlike anything you have ever experienced.
Your ship will then begin its arc back to earth, fluttering to the earth’s atmosphere rather than slamming into it like the space shuttle. Once you reach 55,000 feet above the earth’s surface, your ship will begin its glide to the airport from which you departed.
Out of this world
To date, fewer than 500 people have felt the effects of weightlessness while looking down on our home world. Thanks to an entrepreneurial spirit and knowledge acquired over almost 50 years, soon you will be able to take a trip that’s literally out of this world.
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