Virgin Galactic and the Start of the Commercial Space Race

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Don't believe anyone that tells you that the safety will be the same as a modern airliner, which has been around for 70 years."

There's been no announcement yet on when Virgin Galactic will start operating commercial flights, but in Rutan's TED presentation from 2006, he flagged that he expects as many as 100,000 people to enjoy suborbital spaceflight before 2020.

And of course, once these customers flying and money flowing in, the pace of spaceflight development can finally start again. Bert reckons that it won't be long before the Virgin Galactic team work out how to get past the safety issues that have stopped him from putting his aircraft in orbit. And once you can get beyond orbit, the possibilities of space tourism get a whole lot more exciting. How does a swing around the dark side of the moon and back sound? According to Rutan, that's an easy one.

"That'll be really cool because the moon doesn't have an atmosphere. You can do an elliptical orbit and miss it by 10 feet if you want. Oh that's gonna be so much fun."

And of course, once there is somebody making money out of it, commercial competition will kick in and we'll start to see what Rutan predicts will be a second, capitalist space race.

If it is another space race, then the Russians have again got a head start on the USA—two fare paying customers have already stumped up about USD$20 million each to take a joyride on a Soyuz rocket and spend a week in orbit on the International Space Station. What's more, they're already offering the chance to fly around the back of moon for any customer with $100 million to spend. So in that sense, Virgin Galactic has some catching up to do.

With regular, profitable space flights running daily up close to orbital altitudes, Virgin will be able to offer a super-affordable service to take satellites and instruments up into the thermosphere, and as development picks up pace like it always has in competitive commercial environments, the research and other commercial opportunities could grow well beyond the scope of what we can now envisage.

And Branson's goal of harvesting unfiltered solar energy might start looking a lot closer to being within reach—who knows, maybe some day round-the-moon joyflights could end up being hugely subsidized by the massive amounts of clean energy each flight could bring back down with it.

There is no way to tell where this might go, but perhaps the most important thing is that it's going again. After 40 years of stagnation with space programs in the hands of national governments, the dynamism of private industry and the passionate genius of men like Bert Rutan looks set to breathe new life into the dream of space travel.

And of course, if Virgin Galactic need the help of pioneering journalists to spread the word about their space flight program, I'm happy to get measured up for a space suit any day of the week. I'll even grow a pair of whopping big galactic sideburns like Bert's, if that'll help my application. Whaddya reckon guys?

Provided by Gizmag.com—ideas, innovation, invention

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