Beyond NASA: The push to privatize spaceflight

The Ansari X Prize itself has morphed into the X Prize Cup, envisioned as an annual event to encourage more players to continue their efforts. "One vehicle does not an industry make," says Diane Murphy, executive vice president of the X Prize Foundation.

Following the X Prize model, in May Mr. Sponberg's NASA division unveiled a $250,000 prize for the first team to devise a practical way of converting lunar soil compounds into breathable oxygen. The award carries a June 1, 2008, deadline. Earlier this year, the office announced four $100,000 prizes for advances in beam-power and space-tether technologies. He says money has been earmarked in the proposal for next year's budget to begin building toward the biggest prizes. These prizes aim to encourage large private efforts that might include robotic missions to the moon.

To some analysts, tourism is the fastest way to capitalize on personal spaceflight. Rutan has licensed his technology to Sir Richard Branson, who aims to send his first tourists to briefly slap the rim of space on a craft similar to SpaceShipOne in 2008. So far, his company, Virgin Galactic, reports that nearly 100 people have made reservations for tickets selling for $200,000 each.

Some studies have suggested that at the right price, the market for space tourism is large, notes Greg Autry, a spaceflight enthusiast and business school lecturer at the University of California at Irvine. But those studies may overstate the case, at least for suborbital flights.

"Although this will clearly attract a lot of 'extreme' folks, they will likely be surprised by the intensity of this ride," he says. "There is virtually no time to gather your wits and stomach to enjoy the view before you go right back down."

That may explain why other players in the personal-spaceflight industry are setting their sights beyond suborbital trips.

Robert Bigelow, who owns Budget Suites of America, is putting his money into inflatable modules larger, lighter, hardier, and less expensive than those making up the International Space Station. Ironically, the technology was developed at NASA, then killed by Congress, at which point Mr. Bigelow bought the patent rights, notes William Schneider, a former NASA engineer who originated the concept and is now a collaborator on Bigelow's project.

Although much is made of using the modules to build an orbiting hotel, Bigelow Aerospace also is banking on pharmaceutical companies' interest in conducting biological experiments in microgravity. Those experiments have been drastically curtailed in the aftermath of the Columbia disaster in 2003. Dr. Schneider says Bigelow Aerospace is hoping to pick up the slack. The first test flight for a one-third scale module is slated for launch in February from Russia, he says.

Meanwhile, Bigelow has put up $50 million for America's Space Prize. The goal is to launch and return an empty vehicle capable of holding five people in an orbit some 249 miles above Earth, then repeat the task 60 days later with five people on board for two orbits. The deadline: Jan. 10, 2010, the year NASA's remaining shuttles are slated for retirement.

That's the brass ring Musk's company hopes to grab. He's charting a course to get there - first, launching his Falcon 1 unmanned rockets with military or commercial payloads into low earth orbit, then developing an advanced Falcon 5 capable of hurtling heavier payloads higher.

The effort has drawn NASA's attention. In early June, after a Falcon 1 successfully fired its motors on the pad at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, NASA officials at the Johnson Spaceflight Center in Houston inked an agreement with Space Explorations Technologies. It provides opportunities for exchanging information, people, hardware, and gives the company access to NASA facilities.

What drives Musk's vision? Establishing permanent bases on the moon and a self-sustaining civilization on Mars. "Of anything we could do, it's the most significant as far as perpetuating the species," he says. "If we really want to understand the nature of the universe and our place in it, we must become a spacefaring civilization."

Page: 1 | 2