LAS CRUCES, N.M. – The business of commercial space travel is now far more
than a promissory note – but significant challenges and dedicated work are
ahead in shaping passenger spaceflight as profitable venture.
Experts outlined the coming years in
public space travel, speaking here at the 2007 International
Symposium for Personal Spaceflight (ISPS), highlighted by the theme: "Progress
and Next Steps."
"Back in the 80s, when we were
getting going ... we were new guys on the block trying to establish a foothold in
business," said Clayton Mowry, President of
Arianespace, Inc., with responsibility for managing Arianespace's customer,
industry and governmental relations as the company's U.S. affiliate. "A
lot of people were questioning our business structure ... how we were going to make
money. But here we are today, over a billion dollar a year enterprise," he
said.
Arianespace is the title sponsor of
ISPS 2007 and has over 170 launches to its credit, Mowry noted. "We were a
startup once," he added.
Mowry said that Arianespace sees the
personal spaceflight sector as a new and exciting business. "We're here to
kick the tires and see what's out there."
The suborbital market place is
probably a stepping stone to larger markets out there, Mowry said.
Old versus new space
Not far from the symposium site, Spaceport
America is to be planted in New Mexico. Construction of the spaceport is
being plotted out, said William Mattiace, Mayor of the City of Las Cruces. He projected that the southern part of New Mexico expects to a "big, big
player" not only in space industry but also in high tech research and
development.
Mattiace said that the expectation
is that many companies – both old and new arrivals – can add to turning dream
into reality regarding commercial space operations.
Michael Simpson, President of the International Space University, contrasted "old space" with "new space".
He explained that "accidents will happen" – in the pursuit of a
vibrant personal spaceflight business.
"When human beings have done
things important in their history, they have found that there were prices to
pay," Simpson said. "We owe a lot to 'old space', and one of the
things that we owe old space is to make sure that 'new space' builds something
that the next new space can look back on and say, 'yes, that was a good
foundation.'"
World market
"Space is a business,"
Simpson suggested, looking out into the audience. "This is a world market
you're knocking on."
Some of that market will be based on
suborbital and orbital flight, Simpson said. "Some of it is going to be
the ability to democratize access to scientific experiments in space ... the
ability to fly payloads that would otherwise wait 10 or 20 years for a
government ride," he said.
Simpson said that there are a lot of
opportunities out there, "and there are new opportunities being thought of
all the time."
The next 50 years of personal
spaceflight will take human society into space, Simpson concluded. "That's
very good news for those of us who weren't built in the shape of a fighter
pilot."
The key action item now is to create
an economic engine behind personal space travel, said Peter Diamandis, Chief
Executive Officer of the X
Prize Foundation. "That's what we're trying to shoot for. We're not
there yet. We are in this very critical phase that, if we stop ... it stops."
Something akin for space that's
required, Diamandis said, is an "exothermic-economic reaction. We're not
there yet, but given that situation, it's not stoppable."
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