This article was taken from the June 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
Late in the autumn of 2012, Richard Branson hosted a party on Necker, his private island in the Caribbean. His guests were also his customers: a handful of the millionaires and billionaires who had bought $200,000 (£130,000) tickets for Branson's Virgin Galactic -- a company that promises to send them, briefly, into space (see Wired 4.13). Some signed up as long ago as 2004, thinking that they'd be astronauts within four years. They're still waiting.
One of those sitting on the beach at Necker was Michiel Mol, a Dutch entrepreneur. Today, Mol is a Formula 1 team owner who was once married to a former Miss Universe Nederland. As a teenager, Mol made computer games and was obsessed with space. Aged eight, he built his own telescope. So, when Virgin Galactic started selling tickets, he was one of the first takers.
But, as the years passed, Mol became restless. Eventually he decided to hedge his bets: in 2010, he accepted an invitation to become CEO of a small Dutch startup called Space Expedition Corporation (SXC).
When Galactic was launched in 2003, SXC was just a vague idea in the mind of its founder, the Dutch fighter pilot Harry van Hulten.
A decade on, there is a chance that SXC -- a tiny company with only a dozen employees -- will beat Galactic in the race to be the first to send tourists into space. "We are," Mol says, "David versus Goliath."
[pullquote source="KeepInline]
Since Yuri Gagarin became the first man to enter space in 1961, fewer than 540 people have followed him. Of those, just eight have been civilians -- and each had to pay Russian authorities around £20 million for a week on the International Space Station. This is about to change. SXC is one of a small number of private airlines -- or "spacelines" -- trying to open up space to non-professional pilots and oligarchs. From 2014, up to four times a day, at $95,000 (£63,000) per head -- less than half Virgin Galactic's bill -- SXC hopes to take ticket-holders on hour-long flights from the Caribbean island of Curaçao to the edge of space. For several minutes, they will experience weightlessness and gaze at the Earth. "I've not been there yet, but it has changed something in all the astronauts I have talked to," Mol says. "Being up there, looking down on this blue, green and white sphere.
You see the curvature of the Earth, the fragile atmosphere, the blackness of space. It really looks vulnerable. It makes you like an ambassador for mother Earth itself." Both Galactic and SXC hope to start taking tourists into space in early 2014. Whether either can make any money from the venture remains to be seen. According to a 2012 report from Tauri, a space and defence-industry consultancy, the -potential value of the commercial-space industry by 2020 will be $1.6 billion (£1.1 billion). But no one knows which business models and whose spaceships will bring the industry to that point. "There are people across the world pursuing potential business models, many of them losing their shirts," says David Southwood, president of the Royal Astronomical Society and former director of science and robotic exploration at the European Space Agency. In the late 90s, three private firms -- Beal Aerospace, Rotary Rocket and VentureStar -- tried to launch commercial space projects. All three were failures.
The industry, Southwood argues, is comparable to the airline industry in the early 20th century. "In 1920, although we knew that aeroplanes and airships could fly, no one knew what model was correct," he says. "Certainly nobody could have foreseen the level of mass transportation that the modern air business has become, or that there would be no airships. Today I don't think anybody uses airships. But in the 20s, they were probably seen as as likely for mass transport as for aeroplanes."
According to Southwood, Virgin Galactic and SXC might both be operating the 21st-century equivalent of the airship. "Richard Branson and the people behind SXC are taking a gamble.
They're putting their money where their mouth is, or sometimes other people's money," he says. "And I don't know which will work."
Harry van Hulten, one of the Netherlands' most accomplished military pilots, has spent much of the past two decades flying Dutch F16s, and test-flying new jets for the US Air Force. Like Michael Collins -- who stayed on Apollo 11 while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin strolled the surface of the Moon -- van Hulten served in 2001 at the Edwards Air Force test centre in California. Like Collins, van Hulten's next logical step would have been to go to space. Yet the only fighter pilots who did so were Americans and Russians. By the time the International Space Agency started inviting pilots of other nationalities to join, van Hulten was two years too old to qualify.
Still, he dreamed. Every few months at Edwards, notable alumni would stop by. Apollo 14's Joe Engle came to speak, as did Eileen Collins, the first woman to pilot a Space Shuttle. One day, Chuck Yeager -- the first human to fly faster than the speed of sound -- showed up. "It was phenomenal," remembers van Hulten. "These guys regenerated my old dream."
Realising he couldn't go to space with an agency like Nasa, van Hulten decided to set up his own. A year later, on holiday in 2002, he came up with the idea of a commercial spaceline and spaceport. "I just thought: if ever we were to turn what is now aviation into space [travel], how would we do it?"
An answer came the next April, in Aviation Week &
Space Technology magazine, in an article on SpaceShipOne, designed by a maverick engineer called Burt Rutan. Of all the designs competing for the Ansari X Prize (which offered $10 million [£6.6 million] to the first team that could launch a reusable spaceship into space twice in two weeks), van Hulten thought Rutan's was the only one that stood a chance. It was the only craft that would make a spaceline possible. Van Hulten went back to Edwards for another year as a test pilot. The attraction wasn't Edwards itself, but what was going on down the road at Mojave, a small airport widely considered to be the Silicon Valley of the aerospace world. It was here at Mojave that Rutan's company, Scaled Composites, was developing SpaceShipOne. Van Hulten wanted to see the company at work, "and maybe figure out how I could buy a spaceship from them," he says. "I wasn't counting on Richard Branson..."
In 2004, van Hulten learned that Branson had signed a deal with Scaled Composites to develop a commercial version of SpaceShipOne, named SpaceShipTwo. Van Hulten was back to square one.
Anton Kreil, 34, a financial trader, wants to be the first person to trade in space. Some time in 2014, once out of Earth's atmosphere, he will use a simple satellite internet link to make a currency trade worth $10 million. Kreil, a Liverpudlian, was one of the first to sign up with SXC. Yet he took some persuading; he'd heard it all before. In 2004, Virgin Galactic offered him the chance to fly with them, but Kreil decided to see how it fared before parting with $200,000. "There have been a couple of hundred people who have bought tickets to go on Virgin Galactic, and they're all sitting here years later," says Kreil, a former Goldman Sachs trader who heads up the Institute of Trading and Portfolio Management, an industry group. Seven years later, in 2011, Kreil put his faith in SXC. "[Their] business model is very different,"
Kreil says. "They are believers in the Kiss principle:
Keep It Simple, Stupid."
[Quote"]Galactic and SXC hope to start taking tourists into space in early 2014. Whether either of them can make any money from the venture remains to be seen[/pullquote]
Branson's deal with Scaled Composites may have been a blessing in disguise, as it forced van Hulten to shop around. At one point, he and the company's president, Ben Droste -- a former commander-in-chief of the Dutch Air Force, chairman of the Dutch space authority and dean of the aerospace faculty at Delft Technical University, who joined the company in 2008 -- even approached Galactic to see if it could lease a spacecraft. But that was before they found XCOR, another Mojave-based outfit, which they think makes a more manageable kind of craft.
Getting into space with Galactic is complex:
SpaceShipTwo has to be carried most of the way by a second craft, the WhiteKnightTwo. The extra vehicle adds expense and a longer turnaround, and the nature of the SpaceShipTwo's engine means that much of it will have to be replaced after each flight. In short, Galactic's system has multifaceted variables.
XCOR's Lynx Mark II is a simpler concept: comparable to a fighter jet, the Lynx reaches space without a support craft.
XCOR claims that its propulsion engine can be reused 5,000 times. "In between flights, [Galactic] have to replace two-thirds of the engine," argues XCOR's chief operating officer, Andrew Nelson. "But for our vehicle, you put gas in, you do your checklist, you take off again. We can do four flights a day, easily."
Each trip takes roughly an hour. The Lynx takes off horizontally then shoots sharply skywards for three to four minutes, reaching supersonic speeds of Mach 2.9. At an altitude of 58.5 kilometres, the pilot cuts the engines, allowing the plane's motion to take it on into space, which officially begins at the Karman line, or 100 kilometres above sea level. The Lynx then glides through space for up to six minutes, turning on its back to allow the plane's now-weightless occupants a better view of the Earth. The pilot then brings the plane back towards the Earth -- a move that will, for 20 seconds, apply a sudden gravitational force 4.5 times greater than that at sea level. Finally, the pilot will glide the plane down to the spaceport, which will take around 40 minutes. Branson is sanguine about the competition. "I may be being naïve -- there may be somebody doing something very secretive which we don't know about -- but my guess is that we are five or six years ahead of any competitor," he said in Wired's March 2013 issue.
Nelson has a different perspective: he suggests that, as with the airline industry, the most successful spacelines will be the ones that have the fastest turnarounds. "You don't make money when the wheels are on the ground," he says. "Ryanair are the lowest-cost airline because they've worked out how to fly a fleet of aircraft for low-maintenance man-hours per flight."
"I wish I could tell you who's going to finish first, I wish them both luck," says Michael López-Alegría, president of the Commercial Space Federation, an industry body. He acknowledges that fast turnaround could be crucial to profitability. "The closer this thing can behave to a commercial airliner -- where you land, people get off, you service it, people get on, and you take off again -- that's what's going to make the difference. That's by far and away the biggest driver in all of this from a business standpoint." The advantage of Galactic's SpaceShipTwo is that its cabin is large enough to allow passengers to float for the few minutes that the ship is in space. But they won't be alone -- the cabin fits half a dozen passengers -- and the windows through which they'll look at Earth won't be much bigger than a Boeing 747's. The single passenger in XCOR's Lynx, by contrast, sits in the cockpit beside the pilot. They won't get to float around, but they will gaze at the Earth through the plane's windscreen. Sitting next to XCOR's flight captain Rick Searfoss, a former Nasa Space Shuttle commander, they'll feel a bit like a copilot.
[pullquote source="Ben Droste, President, Scaled Composites] "[Galactic"]What we are aiming for as a business is not unlike what Columbus did when he set out to prove that Earth is round[/pullquote] didn't sound such a great experience," says Dmitry Tokarev, a 23-year-old hedge-fund manager from Siberia, and an SXC "Founder Astronaut". "You're with seven other people looking out of a small window. With SXC, you've got a 180 degree view, and you're the copilot. If SXC was sending people as copilots for $200,000, I would still choose them over Virgin." Some 175 others have joined him, but in sales SXC is still behind Galactic, which has sold around 550 tickets. Mol says SXC only need 75 customers a year to make $7 million (£4.6 million) and break even. "The market is a lot bigger than either of us can handle alone,"
Mol says. "If there's only one of you, there's no industry."
Certainly the Tauri report says that the suborbital space market "appears sufficient to support multiple providers".
Based on interviews with wealthy entrepreneurs, Tauri's researchers forecast an initial market of up to 1,000 interested parties, rising to 13,000 within a decade. According to an estimate by aerospace consultancy Futron, SXC could be flying between 900 and 1,000 people to space by then.
The tourism market will be subsidised by the launching of small satellites for third parties and from scientific experiments. SXC has signed a deal with Wetsus, a Dutch research institute investigating the effect of microgravity on aspects of water.
For Droste, the potential of these experiments is enormous. "What we are aiming for as a business is not unlike what Columbus did when he set out to prove that Earth is round," he says. "He had no notion of discovering the Americas, but he did."
There is an image of a man's face on a computer screen in a laboratory south of Amsterdam. At first he appears calm. But, as the seconds go by, his eyes dull, and his shoulders slacken. Then his cheeks bulge and a stream of vomit explodes from his mouth towards the camera. An explanation for this can be found in the next room, which houses a powerful flight simulator known as Desdemona. Short for Disorientated Demonstration Amsterdam, the machine resembles a roller coaster built from a giant Rubik's Cube that rotates violently. The man who has just thrown up is sitting inside.
[pullquote source="Dmitry Tokarev, SXC "Founder Astronaut""]Endorphins and adrenalin rush through the astronauts' bodies, creating overwhelming elation once they return to Earth. It's what makes life worth living[/pullquote]
Desdemona simulates the experience of 3G -- the force, three times that of gravity, that SXC passengers will come close to experiencing on their ascent into space. All SXC passengers will use Desdemona to train for their flights, although Eric Groen, one of the scientists who will train passengers, emphasises that the vomiting man has undergone a test far more taxing than those for tourists. Still, no one knows how passengers, who will undergo rigorous health checks, will react to zero-G experiences, or 3G ones, or speeds at over Mach 3.
SXC passengers will have already been aboard the L-39 Albatros, a jet plane that replicates the experience of descending to Earth from space. "You feel the blood rushing from your head, and at the same time your body feels like it's being crushed in one of those car-crushing machines," Kreil says. "It's like lying on the floor, and six people are sitting on top of you... But, once you're used to it, the most interesting thing is your vision. As the blood drains from your head, you start to get something called
'grey-out'. Imagine if the world started going slowly grey -- and then black. You can still function and operate but the world is grey-black."
Endorphins and adrenalin rush through the astronauts' bodies, creating overwhelming elation once they return to Earth. "It's what makes life worth living," says Tokarev, a thrill seeker who speaks to Wired from Siberia, where he's snowmobiling. "You feel like you can do anything because you're so full of endorphins. It took me three days to get back to normality [after the L-39 trip]; I was bouncing around all over the place. After space it might take me a month."
Like many of SXC's would-be astronauts, Tokarev and Kreil don't have a special interest in space and flight, but see it as a more satisfying purchase than a new car or house. "I've been through those phases,"
Kreil says. "And it's not as rewarding as this is going to be."
SXC's customers are not all thirtysomething male millionaires: their ages range from 18 to 83 and thirty percent are women. Some are so passionate about space that they will undergo financial hardship to get there. Dutch artist Leentje Linders, 71 this year, is selling her house to raise the money. For someone whose work is devoted to aviation, a trip to space "has to happen. It's such a dream. I'm not that young. I never expected that it could be a reality, and now it can."
SXC also hopes to pioneer long-distance point-to-point journeys at affordable prices. Instead of taking 24 hours from London to Sydney, SXC imagines a spaceship that flies there -- through space -- in two. The difference in environmental impact is considerable: a 747 uses around 17,500 kilograms of fuel per hour; the Lynx uses 750 kilograms, as it needs to power itself only for the four minutes that it takes to get to space. Outside the Earth's atmosphere, and during its descent, the Lynx glides without its engine. Of course, a larger spacecraft with 200 passengers onboard would need more fuel to launch -- but substantially less than a conventional long-haul flight, and the journey is forecast to be ten times faster.
This isn't suitable for short-haul flights, nor will it entirely remove the eco-footprint created by long-haul flights.
And it is uncertain whether suborbital craft will work for long-haul flights. "We're getting ahead of ourselves," says the Commercial Space Federation's Michael López-Alegría, who argues that the heat generated by a spacecraft re-entering the Earth's atmosphere after flying such a long distance would be too great for the vehicle to handle. When the Tauri Group assessed the potential market for commercial space travel, it didn't bother to assess the potential of suborbital point-to-point flight. "I think that's a pretty strong statement," adds López-Alegría.
SXC still has some way to go before it is operational. Galactic has already built a Norman Foster-designed spaceport in New Mexico. Van Hulten and Droste began the search for a location to base SXC's operations in 2008. The pair were looking for a tourist destination that was untrammelled by bad weather or excess flight traffic. Eventually they settled on Curaçao, a tiny island and former Dutch colony off the coast of Venezuela. After overcoming initial scepticism from Curaçao's government, SXC secured around $300,000 (£200,000) from the country's airport authority as seed money, although this has since been turned into a loan. The local branch of professional-service firm KPMG saw the economic potential of the project, and helped SXC devise a business plan. In 2011 SXC secured a long-term deal with the country that secured the project's future. It had no Foster-designed space centre, but it had something crucial: a runway. After signing a deal for the spacecraft with XCOR, SXC turned to its next challenge: securing investors and customers.
To attract them, Droste and van Hulten sought one of the most prolific entrepreneurs in Holland, Michiel Mol. Mol had made his name -- and fortune -- with a software business, Guerilla Games, which he sold in 2005, before investing in Dutch Formula 1 team Spyder. Mol had also bought a ticket from Galactic. Van Hulten and Droste approached Mol after learning he had sold some of his motoring investments and was taking a back seat in the grand prix team.
Mol is now leading the commercial side of SXC: KLM, the Netherlands' national airline, is a partner, and 175 customers have signed up. Nearly 100 are full partners who have already paid the full $95,000; the others are "futures", who have made a 50 percent deposit. There are also "pioneers" -- $45,000 (£30,000) allows them to take part in test flights.
SXC hopes to service its first commercial flights within a year, but faces significant challenges between now and then. At the time of publication, the Lynx Mark II was about be test-flown for the first time -- the outcome will determine how soon SXC can commence operations. Safety remains a major concern: in July 2007, three Scaled Composites engineers died in a gas explosion -- the first fatalities in the commercial space business, and a reminder of the dangers inherent in the industry.
An export licence also needs to be procured: the spacecraft is officially classified by the US government as weapons technology, so SXC must persuade the authorities to grant it permission to move the Lynx to Curaçao. According to Nelson, this is a formality. Nevertheless, it's still a bridge that needs to be crossed. But in the meantime, van Hulten is acutely aware of the financial risks he faces should anything go wrong. "It's been pretty challenging on the family," he admits. "There's a lot of uncertainty and risk involved. And me being 44 with a family and a mortgage and a house -- it's something you don't get into on a daily basis."
Still, that SXC and XCOR could yet become the first functioning commercial spaceline is a source of some pride in both Amsterdam and Mojave. "To begin with we thought we'd be the third or fourth," says XCOR's Nelson. "The fact that we're potentially going to be first is amazing to me."
In the meantime, Michiel Mol remains a ticket holder with Virgin Galactic.
Patrick Kingsley wrote about our Wired 2012 conference in 01.13
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
