Virgin Galactic Plans Satellite Launches
The Wall Street Journal 01/24/2008
Author: Andy Pasztor
(Copyright (c) 2008, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)
LOS ANGELES -- British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, revealing a new wrinkle in his high-profile foray into space tourism, announced preliminary plans to launch satellites using his proposed Virgin Galactic venture.
The concept of carrying satellites high in the atmosphere on a carrier plane and launching them from that point at low cost is still preliminary, according to people familiar with Mr. Branson's plans, and no firm contracts or customers have been identified. But such a move not only could help defray some of the hefty initial investment costs to create a space tourism operation, it is one way to ensure more frequent flights aimed at keeping pilots and ground crews in top form.
At a news conference earlier today in New York City, Mr. Branson and his partner in space tourism, renowned aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan, disclosed new details and displayed a scale model of what they hope will be the be the first privately-financed spaceship to carry passengers out of the atmosphere around the end of the decade.
But amid the hubbub over SpaceShipTwo -- a sleek, eight-person craft designed by Mr. Rutan to provide a few minutes of weightlessness for a ticket costing about $200,000 per passenger -- the partners also revealed their still-developing idea of using some of the same technology to come up with a less-expensive way to launch satellites into orbit. Industry officials said the most likely scenario would be to boost relatively small satellites into low-earth orbit.
"The fact that this system will have the capacity to launch small payloads and satellites at low cost is hugely important," Mr. Branson said in his prepared remarks.
Known as an ardent environmentalist, the British billionaire apparently was attracted to the notion that an alternative satellite-launch system would produce less pollution that today's massive liquid-fueled or solid-fueled rockets, according to one person familiar with the issue. A spokesman for Virgin Galactic said company officials weren't immediately available to elaborate.
Launching satellites from the edge of space would require much less energy than lifting them all the way from the ground. Under the concept being studied, a four-engine carbon-composite carrier aircraft, dubbed White Knight Two, would carry the spaceplane or satellite cargo about 10 miles above the earth. In the case of a tourist flight, SpaceShip Two's rockets, fueled by a combination of nitrous oxide and robber-based solid fuel, would then propel the craft as high as 62 miles. The craft would land on a runway similar to a conventional airplane. The roundtrip could take more than two hours.
About 100 prospective Virgin Galactic passengers -- about half of all the customers who have already put down deposits to guarantee their seats -- were on hand at the press conference. A number of other ventures in the U.S. and Europe are actively pursuing space tourism, but Virgin Galactic hopes to be the ground breaker by projecting flights as early as 2009.
Starting with a spaceship prototype that won a $10-million private prize in 2004, Mr. Rutan has talked about setting up a production line that could turn out 50 or more suborbital space planes able to fly up to 100,000 passengers during the first 12 years of operations. But so far, Mr. Branson is the only customer who has placed firm orders, according to industry officials. Virgin Galactic is committed to buying five SpaceShip Two craft and two White Knight Two carrier planes.
George Whitesides, a senior adviser to Mr. Branson, told an industry conference last year that the price of a trip is bound to go down over the next few years. But he said there already is "substantial demand even at the price points" of about $200,000 per trip that "we're looking at now."
