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Volume 15, Number 3 June/July/August 2003
The Human Journey
By Brian E. Chase, NSS Executive Director
I hope you had a chance to read this
issue’s column by Eric Anderson of Space Adventures. His op-ed focuses
on an announcement that RSA has agreed to resume flying Soyuz flights with paying
tourists to the International Space Station, with the first such launch in 2005
after the Space Shuttle has resumed flights and ISS supplies and logistics are
back to normal.
So what makes this announcement remarkable? These Soyuz flights will be 100%
dedicated to tourism, with two paying customers on each flight, instead of only
one. This is good news for everyone involved, including Russia, the United States,
and all ISS partner nations, because it gives Russia additional revenue to continue
Soyuz production, and if the demand is high enough to manifest multiple private
Soyuz launches, those capsules could become a supplemental part of the supply
chain needed to support ISS.
This announcement also highlights the importance of the private sector efforts
to build a space access infrastructure. Yet some of the most exciting and promising
developments in this area are occurring in companies that aren’t even planning
to reach orbit with the vehicles currently in development. Instead, these efforts
are aimed at achieving suborbital altitudes.
But even as they tackle the financial and technical challenges to achieve their
objective, some of the biggest hurdles they face are government regulations.
Suborbital launches do not fit into the existing descriptions of either aircraft
or spacecraft, so the federal regulatory structure is struggling to develop
ways to handle (i.e. regulate) this new breed of vehicle. NSS will be taking
an active role to help these companies overcome this hurdle and help the government
understand the importance of their efforts. Let the success or failure of these
efforts rest on their merits, not because of the limitations imposed by government
bureaucracy.
The long term prospects of the suborbital launch sector in many ways can reshape
the way we approach the exploration and development of space. If even one of
the more than twenty teams competing for the X-Prize are successful, that has
the potential to spawn a huge “near-space” tourism market (see Futron’s
recent ASCENT report at www.futron.com), which in turn will build the business
base needed for investment in new orbital launch systems. Unlike past efforts
to build new launch vehicles, at least some of these teams have the very real
potential to be successful, and in doing so fundamentally change the space industry.
I advise you to closely watch these vastly underestimated suborbital launch
efforts—they may fundamentally change the way we approach space transportation.
The lesson for all of us, whether we’re talking about the resumption of
Soyuz tourist flights or the ongoing efforts in the suborbital launch sector,
is to ensure free market forces can work within the space business sector. While
government funding of many missions will remain critical for decades to come,
we must ensure government policies and regulations don’t inhibit private
sector solutions. Democratic capitalism has built successful nations around
the globe, and we shouldn’t ignore its potential in overcoming our most
pressing barriers to exploring, developing, and settling space.
Ad Astra!