How could see orbital space tourism boom

Orbital space tourism is a niche industry at the moment, but business was really poor and reduce costs by a few orders of magnitude, a new study suggests.

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To date, only seven people – starting with multi-millionaire businessman Dennis Tito in April 2001 – have paid for the launch of the orbit, and they have reportedly plunked down between $ 20,000,000 and $ 35,000,000 for the experience .

These are not the numbers of a thriving industry. But things could change dramatically if prices drop significantly – to about $ 500,000 per seat or so. This reduced rate would draw hundreds of thousands of customers for orbital tourist travel, income generation potential of over $ 100 billion a year, according to the study.

"This is the first time in the theoretical realm that we closed a business case," said study lead author Ajay Kothari, president and CEO of the aerospace engineering Astrox Corporation. "So that's very exciting for me."

Kothari and his colleagues have mapped out a rough plan of dropping the cost to $ 500,000 per seat or less – and it is developing fully reusable, two-stage-to-orbit spacecraft.

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Shallow customer poolThe current going rate for a two-week tourist trip to space – including a stay at the International Space Station – is more than $ 30 million. The Virginia-based company Space Adventures sells seats on such flights aboard the Russian Soyuz vehicles, and now they are the only game in town.

This is not surprising, because the pool of potential customers willing and able to pay up to $ 30 million for a space trip is not very deep. Kothari and his team wanted to figure out how this pool might deepen if the price came down.

They began by looking at a space tourism landmark 2002 study by technology consulting firm Futron stuck with the assistance of the polling firm Zogby. This report used interviews with 450 American millionaires to an assessment of the market for space tourism, both in orbital and suborbital rich.

Although the Futron / Zogby report nearly a decade old, is the most thorough look at space tourism potential customer base remains, Kothari said.

The report found, among other things, that 30 percent of surveyed millionaires willing to spend up to $ 1,000,000 for a two-week orbital trip, but only 7 percent would go if the price is set at $ 20 million per seat.

The researchers took into account a variety of factors, including the eagerness to space and physical fitness. For example, the average age of American millionaires is 57 – so a significant proportion of customers willing or probably too old to be safe from the rigors of space sick.

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The team then calculated a conservative case, which assumed that passengers would be willing to only 1.5 percent of their net worth to spend on an orbital trip. And they calculated a more optimistic scenario, where a net 5 percent threshold is assumed.

After crunching the numbers, Kothari and his team found that the worldwide customer base at $ 5 million per seat is only about 600 people on the threshold of 1.5 percent, and about 1,500 people in the 5 percent scenario. So even if prices decline by a factor of four, that's not good enough to "close the business case for orbital tourism.

If the price amounts to $ 1,000,000, the pool is about 9,000 people on the threshold of 1.5 percent and 5 percent at 23,000. That's better – but still not good enough to support a thriving industry, Kothari said.

But that changes when tickets go for $ 500,000. At that price, global customer base is 14,000 in the conservative case, but nearly 225,000 in the optimistic scenario. With hundreds of thousands of people willing to fly, the income over 100 billion U.S. dollars annually within a few decades, the study said.

"A closed business case is certainly possible," said Kothari. He presented the results in San Francisco earlier this month during the 17th International Space Planes and Hypersonic Systems and Technologies Conference, organized by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

A new vehicleIt is a steep drop of more than $ 30 million to $ 500,000 per seat, but Kothari and his team have some ideas about how aerospace companies could get there.

The key is the right space.

After analyzing a variety of designs, the researchers determined that a fully reusable, two-stage-to-orbit vehicle is the best bet. Kothari presented such a model at the conference.

The concept car would have a payload capacity of 20,000 pounds (9,091 kilograms) and can carry 40 passengers. It would launch vertically, with a rocket booster does the hard work for the first part of the journey. At an altitude about 75,000 feet (22,860 meters), the separate booster and glide back home to the launch pad.

At that time, advanced engines on the upper stage – the actual spaceship – would kick in. These engines were dual function, serving ramjet / scramjet technology – the speed of the vehicle used to compress air before burning – to about 100,000 feet (30,480 m) and Mach 10 (10 times the speed of sound).

Then the engines would turn into a rocket function that would ship the rest of the way into space.

After completing his space mission, the vehicle would land on a runway like an airplane or NASA's Space Shuttle would. While the cost of developing such a new spacecraft would be high, the vehicle owners would recover their money over time by flying often, according to the study.

This fully reusable architecture could eventually lead to prices as low as $ 340 per pound (compared with current figures of $ 5,000 to $ 10,000 per pound) campaigns, Kothari said. And that could well translate into ticket prices below $ 500,000.

Getting there this space is just a concept car for now, and more work needs to be done before it a reality. For one thing, scramjet technology must be developed and tested, according to Kothari.

"The scramjet is the cake, and the rest is the icing," Kothari told SPACE.com. "If you do not scramjet, you can not get there."

Still, as a spaceship is eminently possible and would be operational within a few decades – provided it receives adequate funding, Kothari added.

"This should be developed," he said. "It really has a program to be."

Works in many other natural progressOf orbital vehicles are further in development than the spacecraft Kothari in mind. Several companies are designing their own manned vessels with significant financial assistance from NASA.

Just last week, for example, the space agency distributed nearly $ 270 million to four companies – Blue Origin, Boeing and Sierra Nevada Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) – for this purpose. NASA wants the business to begin with crew and cargo into space as soon as possible, in the wake of the retirement of the space shuttle program later this year.

So Space tourists should not be limited to the Soyuz much longer.

"There will be other vehicles along the line," says Tom Shelley, president of Space Adventures. "And I think almost all of these vehicles have their own space as part of their business plan, if you want. It's part of what does the business case."

Space Adventures, for its part, has signed a contract with Boeing for people to fly to space on the orbital CST-100 vehicle. And those trips can be relatively quick start.

"We hope, come 2015, we can start flying with a number of paying passengers" on the CST-100, Shelley told SPACE.com.

This new race to space could help drive down costs considerably through competition and develop new, more efficient Techologies. But only time will tell if prices fall – and if so, how much and how fast.

Still, all signs point toward the dawn of a new era in human spaceflight, experts say. NASA's attempt to encourage private enterprises to develop their potential, the heavens opened for more and more people who do not have 30 million U.S. dollars lie.

"This is really what I would call an inflection point for manned spaceflight," said Bretton Alexander, president of the Commercial Space Federation. "This change in manned space travel will not only show leadership [the U.S.], it will take us light years ahead of everybody."

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