The history of human space exploration was changed forever on October 4, 2004. On that day aerospace designer Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites Tier One Team won the $10 million ANSARI X-Prize, eight years after the competition began.
The X-Prize was established in 1996 by private investors, including the Ansari family and the FirstUSA credit card, to “jumpstart” the space tourism industry by offering $10 million (USD) to whoever could fly three people in a privately funded spaceship at an altitude of 100km (considered to be the frontier to outer space), land safely, and, to prove reusability, do it again within a period of 14 days. The 26 teams were supported by a variety of private investors, including philanthropist and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen who invested $27 million (USD) in SpaceShipOne.
After a test flight on June 21, followed by their first official flight on September 29, SpaceShipOne and its pilot Brian Binnie flew over California’s Mojave Desert at an altitude of over 100 kilometres on October 4, winning the prize.
For many people SpaceShipOne’s success represents a huge turning point in the history of the space age, which began in 1961 with the flight of Russia’s Yuri Gagarin, the first man to reach space.
What’s the big deal?
But why is this such a big deal? Although space continues to capture our imagination, it does not generate as much public excitement as it did during the Apollo missions of the 1960s. For many people, the X-Prize is just another goal that has been reached without much significance. For others, it is a turning point in history that will propagate a human presence in space.
Whatever your stance, the one thing that is certain is that people today are witnessing the same kind of changes that brought personal computers and transatlantic flights to everyday life.
This is what the X-Prize is all about: breaking the long tradition of government-funded projects so that new technologies and fresh ideas that are not limited by national interest can invigorate the field, much like the Orteig prize stimulated Charles Lindbergh in 1927 to accomplish his heroic flight over the Atlantic, and gave new opportunities to the sector of aeronautics.
We live at a time when governments of space-faring nations are wondering what to do about space exploration. There is no more space race to inflame patriotism, and the aging International Space Station (ISS) no longer generates any excitement for space dreamers, if it ever did.
Now that Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites team has sent a man into space for one-twentieth of the required budget for a normal shuttle launch, the private sector and the general public have an open door for fresh ideas, and to the last frontier.
The nuts and bolts
But how are governments around the world preparing for this new era in terms of policy and regulations? Apart from international space treaties set by the United Nations, what international agreements will regulate space flights in the future?
The Federal Aviation Administration in the US and Transport Canada are prepared to grant launch permits for the upcoming flights of Scaled Composite in the US, and the Da Vinci project in Canada. Some theoretical work is also being done on at McGill University’s Air and Space Law Institute, and in the United States at George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute. But the current state of space policy will not allow private spacecraft to fly around the planet by tomorrow.
Designing such regulations represents a challenge in itself, knowing that Virgin’s leader and daring entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson has already offered sub-orbital flights to the public as soon as 2007. The division originally called “Virgin Galactic” will offer for £100,000 (about $220,000 CDN) per ticket for a three-hour trip on “spaceliners” modelled after SpaceShipOne, one week of training and four minutes of microgravity included.
This is a modest price, considering the amount paid by the first space tourist Dennis Tito: $20 million (USD) for a trip to the ISS. Virgin expects more than 3,000 customers in the first five years for its Galactic division, and is already planning the development of orbital hotels.
The recently announced “America’s Space Prize” might help them achieve this goal: Bigelow Aerospace, based in Nevada, will give $50 million (USD) to the first team to send five people into orbit at an altitude of 400 km (ISS’s current altitude), and do it again within 60 days, before January 10 2010.
The good side
What are the possible outcomes of privatized space? On the one hand, it will promote the development of the space industry and the creation of new employment sectors, which in turn will generate more technological “spin-offs” (i.e. products originally designed for space missions that later find terrestrial applications).
It will also stimulate the production of technological “spin-ins.” The LIDAR instrument, a laser-based radar developed at Optech in Toronto, is a good example. Bob Richards, head of the Space Division at Optech and co-founder of the International Space University, presented the LIDAR at the most recent lecture hosted by the U of T Astronomy and Space Exploration Society (UTASX). The LIDAR, which was originally designed for terrestrial applications, will now fly on the NASA Phoenix mission to Mars in 2007.
However, according to UTASX founder and president Justin Trottier, we should not expect the private sector to sustain by itself long-term exploration of our solar system by itself: “The best solution is public-private partnerships. The government must leave to industry the task of leading technologically mature sectors, whereas in areas where in-depth science research is still ongoing and intensive, the government should take the burden.”
Space privatization will give the opportunity to more people to have access to space. Unfortunately, this will remain available to only a very wealthy minority, but some hope that involvement from the private sector and the “laws” of market will inevitably force prices to go down.
As decades pass by, we will perhaps observe this completely new market contributing to our knowledge and understanding of the solar system, while at the same time modifying our perception of humanity’s role in the universe.
The bad side
On the other hand, space privatization will bring with it concerns of another nature. For one, it will certainly contribute to the widely ignored problem of space debris, which makes near-orbit flights even more difficult to achieve safely.
Small holes in the ozone created by spacecraft leaving the Earth’s atmosphere are also a cause for concern. These temporary holes in the stratosphere are created through the jettison of hydrochloric acids and other chlorine-reactive agents ejected from rocket propulsion systems. Even though the contribution of space-launches to atmospheric ozone depletion is relatively low, more launches will inevitably worsen this problem unless more benign propulsion systems are put into use.
Also, as the US military is currently investigating ways of making space more easily and quickly accessible through reusable launch vehicles, space privatization could provide cheap and efficient solutions for the development of military power in space. This will in turn contribute to deepening the political and economical fosse between space-faring nations and nations who have to struggle each day just to survive.
The big picture
“The sight of the Earth from space has had profound effects on those few individuals who have seen it. Broadening the fraction of the human species that experiences this should have interesting positive effects,” says Carmen Marra, vice-president of UTASX. Perhaps private space will allow more of our political leaders to fly to the next frontier and admire a planet without any national borders.
It is hard right now to predict how much space privatization will impact our future. It is, however, important to realize that we are traversing an instant in time that may have a huge impact on our future inside and outside the atmosphere. The best one can do is prepare for the advent of privated space, and expect a very quick revolution in this technological area. Who knows, perhaps in fifty years from now, you will be offering your grandchildren a one-week trip to the Moon Club-Med.
