Space--Tourism’s Hot Ticket

Robert Bigelow has this vision: He and fellow space tourists orbit the moon aboard a luxury liner rocket ship with wall-to-wall windows on deep space. The five-star accommodations include gambling, gourmet food and romantic weightless encounters. For additional thrills, laser light shows illuminate the far side of the moon.

It all sounds like a pure reverie, except that Bigelow, owner of the Las Vegas-based Budget Suites of America hotel chain, is putting $500 million into development of technology to hurl a hotel into orbit and back again.

“As an investment, it’s beyond risk. It’s crazy,” he said. “But I’m a practical businessman; you can’t be prone to fantasy and survive in the finance field. Mark my words: Space hotels will open in my lifetime.”

Crazy maybe. But Bigelow is among a growing galaxy of competitors who have set their sights on the stars in a new, privately funded space race.

Amid lampooning from critics who point out that there is still no such thing as a safe, reusable rocket, this new drive is being piloted by entrepreneurs who have long stood on the launch pad sidelines.

In February the Netherlands-based MirCorp announced that it will commercially operate Russia’s Mir space station and begin delivering tourists for brief weightless stays in space. A Japanese TV reporter and a woman from England recently spent eight days aboard Mir at a cost of $10 million each.

Already, tourists are willing to pay big bucks just to come close to entering Earth orbit: 144 have paid $98,000 apiece to reserve seats on a trip to the very edge of space aboard a craft that has yet to be built.

Space Adventures of Alexandria, Va., hopes to offer a two-hour flight that will soar high enough above the Earth to enter space but not travel fast enough to go into orbit. Six companies are vying to develop the rocket that will take customers on the brief voyage.

Christopher Faranetta, the company’s space flight program manager, said Space Adventures already takes people for jaunts inside the cockpit of a Russian MiG-25 military jet. More than 4,500 people have paid $11,900 for the trip, which tops out at 85,000 feet. An additional 1,200 are on a waiting list for an eventual trip to the moon.

Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin--the second man to step on the moon--has formed a nonprofit organization, ShareSpace, to promote space tourism. Aldrin said: “This is completely within the realm of possibility.”

Even more fantastic plans come from people like Gene Meyers, a West Covina engineer whose Space Island Group wants to open a space resort by 2007 fashioned from “space junk,” discarded space shuttle fuel rockets connected in a wheel-shaped design “like something from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’ ” Meyers said there are people already trying to figure out how to run the place--in a course in space resort management at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Facing Up to Some Practical Questions

Some major corporations have dabbled in futuristic plans. Virgin Atlantic Airways wants to build an orbiting Virgin Hotel--reached by a new airline called Virgin Galactic Airways--if the right technology can be developed.

Last fall, Hilton Hotels announced an interest in developing an orbiting hotel, but has since expressed doubts about the potential market. “Once a consumer climbs aboard that spaceship, are they going to be able to get back?” asked Hilton spokeswoman Jeannie Datz.

Good question.

The space shuttle makes trips to space and back, but the current cost of putting people and payloads into orbit is stratospheric: $10 million per flight, or $10,000 a pound.

“If the good Lord had meant for us to become space tourists, we would have been born with more money,” said John Pike, space analyst for the Federation of American Scientists. “After four decades of space flight, there still has been no improvement in the cost of getting into Earth orbit. That’s not going to change any time soon. Not in our lifetime, anyway.

“They say the best way to earn a small fortune in commercial space tourism is to start out with a large fortune,” Pike said.

A 1998 NASA study concluded that the space tourism industry could one day be worth billions. But the economics of space travel is “a ‘chicken and egg’ problem,” said Jay Penn, senior project engineer with Aerospace Corp. in El Segundo. “To get people into space, you need to get the cost down. But to get the cost down, you need to get people into space.”

Peter H. Diamandis, chairman of the X Prize Foundation, agreed. To solve the problem, his group has offered a $10-million prize to inspire engineers to design a rocket to carry the first space tourist.

The X Prize is modeled after the $25,000 Orteig Prize, which inspired Charles Lindbergh to cross the Atlantic Ocean on his 1927 New York-to-Paris flight. Erik Lindbergh, a grandson of the historic aviator, is a board member of the foundation offering the prize. Competitors include 17 teams from a dozen countries.

Diamandis hopes to award the prize no later than 2003.

“I’m one of the millions who assumed that our landing on the moon was only the beginning of space exploration--but once we got to the moon, we won the race and the game was over,” said Diamandis, a Harvard and MIT graduate who once dreamed of becoming an astronaut.

“Now I no longer believe our government is going to help open space for the rest of humanity. I’m sick and tired of waiting for them to do it.”

Working everywhere from backyard garages to behemoth airport hangars, the aspirants for the X Prize have their work cut out for them.

Current rockets fail about 5 times out of 100 and the projected fail rate of the space shuttle is 1 in 454 missions. Engineers designing NASA’s X-33 rocket plane, the prototype for the Venture Star reusable launch vehicle, are aiming for a failure rate of 2 in 10,000.

“A launch vehicle is like a commercial jetliner; the average plane failure rate is 1 in a billion,” said Tony Jacob, a business development analyst for Lockheed Martin Corp.’s X-33 program. “So you can see how far we have to go to reach aircraft-like reliability.”

The rocket race may soon be getting some help. Arizona Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate’s Commerce Committee, is pushing Congress to consider ways to fund space development. Still, “one concern is creating a toy for the ultra-wealthy and no one else,” said the committee’s staff director, Mark Buse. “Will space tourism jeopardize scientific missions? Is the government liable if some tourist boards one of its rockets?”

If tourists do arrive in space, one former astronaut says, they will be in for an unforgettable ride.

“It’s the highlight of a lifetime to look back at Earth from space--to see this glowing, beautiful ball of blue with white swirls and land masses against a background of pure blackness,” said Carl Meade, a three-time shuttle astronaut and the first to venture outside an orbiting NASA craft untethered, zipping about with a jet-powered backpack device.

Space travel isn’t for the faint of heart--or stomach. No amount of training can prevent the sickness caused by a dizzying dual punch of G-forces and weightlessness.

“If you don’t like camping, you’re not going to like space travel,” Meade said. “Because all the experiences you have while roughing it in the woods, like ‘Where’s my toothbrush?’ will be amplified in space. You can’t put anything down without having it float away. Some people will find this a lot of fun; others may not.”

Some swear by the floating euphoria of zero gravity. Experiencing the sensation in a diving airplane while filming “Apollo 13,” director Ron Howard said: “Saying something is better than sex rarely lives up to that claim. Weightlessness came awfully close.”

Texas computer magnate Richard Garriott said his MiG-25 ride to the threshold of space was worth every penny. “A flight to 85,000 feet is just a tiny taste of what space must feel like,” he said. “You’re up dramatically higher than any commercial jet, so high you can see the curve of Earth. Up there, the clouds below look like snow plastered on the ground.”

Garriott is the 38-year-old son of a former Skylab astronaut who calls himself a “sports adventure nut.” He has attended astronaut training camps, worn authentic space gear inside a neutral buoyancy tank to mimic zero gravity aboard the Mir space station, and has done simulated space walks.

At camp, he played physics tricks in zero gravity, trying to drink a drop of water suspended in space. “It’s impossible to do,” he said. “Once you get the droplet before you and go to put your head forward, the other side of your body floats away. It’s maddening.”

Garriott so enjoyed his first space flight that he wants to go again: He has paid a refundable $98,000 for a trip to the moon.

“I think it’s more than a fair price and I would personally pay more,” he said. “It’s a huge amount of money, yet other experiences of the same magnitude--guided tours to Mt. Everest or the South Pole--cost almost as much and still a large number of people line up year after year.”

West Covina engineer Meyers believes he can put together a ring-shaped resort by connecting shuttles’ spent external fuel tanks. He already has one sure-fire customer: noted space adventure writer Arthur C. Clarke, whose novels have long evoked images of far-flung worlds. The 83-year-old Clarke, who collaborated with director Stanley Kubrick to make the film “2001,” has told Meyers he would like to spend his 90th birthday in Earth orbit.

“I’m ready to become a space tourist,” Clarke said from his home in Sri Lanka. “Actually, I never dreamed astronauts would go to the moon in my lifetime. So, for the rest of us to go to space is all truly amazing.”

From his headquarters here in the land of big dreams and outrageous gambles, Bigelow insisted that private enterprise will make space tourism a reality.

“With profit calling the shots, this industry is going to take off,” Bigelow, 55, said during an interview at his sprawling Tudor-style offices near the Las Vegas Strip.

The Las Vegas native has long been fascinated by outer space--ever since he was 8 and his grandparents told him of seeing a glowing red ball hurtle menacingly toward their car in the Nevada desert. He has since spent $10 million backing research into UFOs.

Despite Bigelow’s fascination with UFOs, space tourism advocates and engineers--including former astronaut Aldrin--take him seriously. “Sure, he’s a real wild card,” said James George, director of the Los Angeles-based Space Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group that promotes space travel. “But half a billion dollars makes anybody legitimate. And along with the money, Bigelow has a commitment that’s unshakable.”

A businessman whose earthbound empire is worth about $900 million, Bigelow said the key to his space tourism vision is a massive orbiting “Hudson Bay Co.” warehouse that will service his fleet of spacecraft.

The facility would be positioned at what Bigelow describes as one of five La Grange points between the Earth and moon--locations in space with no gravitational pull from any surrounding planets “so it will take zero fuel to maintain its location.”

These days, Bigelow is cranking his vision into high gear. He’s hired a 30-year aerospace veteran from Houston’s Johnson Space Center to become his vice president of spacecraft development. He also is recruiting researchers, engineers, architects and scientists.

His company, Bigelow Aerospace, will soon break ground on a new Las Vegas headquarters--a mammoth rocket-shaped building--surrounded by a moat to give the impression of a launch pad. Bigelow hopes the facility will rival those of aerospace giants Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

Bigelow hopes his moon-bound ship will eventually be equipped with all the amenities of an opulent ocean liner, including an observation deck and portals for viewing the Earth, moon and planets. The craft may also supply the means for a brief passenger walk in the cosmos.

Bigelow said one fascinating facet of his lunar adventure will be a ceremony held on the captain’s bridge as the ship approaches the moon. “Because arriving at the moon is going to be an epiphany for most passengers,” he said, “a very, very profound moment.”