Who Will Become the World’s First Commercial Spaceline?
New Shepard booster executes a controlled vertical landing at 4.2 mph. (Credit: Blue Origin)
With Blue Origin’s successful re-flight of its reusable New Shepard booster and capsule on Friday, the company jumped ahead in the competition to fly people into space on a commercial basis.
None of New Shepard’s flights has carried a crew. Blue Origin has not announced ticket prices or a schedule for flying people aboard the capsule, which lands under parachute. You can sign up on its website to receive “early access to pricing information and tickets when we open reservations.”
In Mojave, Calif., two rivals are still struggling to their space tourism businesses going. Virgin Galactic, which bills itself as “the world’s first commercial spaceline,” has yet to fly its SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle above 71,000 feet. The company was launched in 2004 with the goal of beginning commercial service in 2007.
Virgin Galactic is set to roll out its second spacecraft on Feb. 19, with flight tests to follow. The first SpaceShipTwo was destroyed during a flight test in October 2014.
In an interview earlier this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Virgin Galactic Founder Richard Branson did not give an estimate for when the new spacecraft would begin flying. Tickets aboard SpaceShipTwo cost $250,000.
XCOR is still building its first Lynx vehicle, which it expects to fly later this year in Mojave. The Lynx Mark I will be a high-altitude test vehicle that will not be able to reach the boundary of space at 100 km (62 miles). An upgraded Lynx Mark II will be designed to fly to space.
The company, which is running years behind schedule on its first vehicle, is not providing a schedule for flight tests or commercial service will begin. Tickets cost $150,000.
Space Adventures is the only company to fly tourists to space on a commercial basis. The company has booked seven clients on eight trips to the International Space Station aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft since 2001.
However, those flights are limited to when the Russians have spare seats aboard the Soyuz. The last one took place in 2009. British soprano Sarah Brightman pulled out of a flight scheduled for last year. She was replaced by a cosmonaut from Kazakhstan.
Space Adventures does have a plan to fly two tourists around the moon in a modified Soyuz spacecraft. The company said it has signed up two customers willing to pay $150 million apiece for the flight.
Space Adventures had hoped to fly the mission before the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire in January 2017. That goal appears unlikely because the tourist flight would be preceded by a mission around the moon flown by professional cosmonauts to test the upgraded Soyuz. No such mission appears to be on the schedule for the year ahead.
67 responses to “Who Will Become the World’s First Commercial Spaceline?”
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If we are talking just sub-orbital, I will still give the nod to VG even though B.O. seems farther along. Sub-orbital to Bezos is just a step along the way. Orbital is where it gets interesting with three rocket companies who specialize in building hardware and no experience at all with running an airline. The winner there may be a company not yet in existence that buys its equipment from SpaceX, Boeing and/or Sierra Nevada.
I agree, Jeff Bezos doesn’t need the money from Sub-Orbital flights, it is just a step on a longer vision. I agree about some firm buying the technology. I don”t see that happening with VG, but could well happen with Blue Origins and perhaps with XCOR.
I would not imagine he would be against any revenue streams that help offset costs. That said are not launchers a bit site specific and personal specific versus something like a turn key WK2 – SS2?
How so? Why couldn’t a reusable rocket like the New Shepard be turn key as well? McDonnell Douglas didn’t plan on operating DC-1 rockets they were proposing, they were planning to sell them just like airliners.
Remember, new technology always leads to new business models. The firms that recognize that first are usually the ones that gain the market share.
And yes, selling also means international sales. The U.K. wants to build a spaceport for zero carbon suborbital flights. The New Shepard would serve that market well, as well as the space agencies of several other nations that might like their own suborbital rocket. Of course there are ITAR issues, but those could be addressed as needed.
Don’t forget, Jeff Bezos made his money recognizing the new opportunities the Internet presented for retailing.
I correct you, sir. Billlionaires do not like to spend large amounts of money on investments with no return; that’;s why they are rich.. They do and will require revenue sooner or later from their investments. Economics 101.
Do you know what he does for a living?
Blue Origin is obviously not a Bezos investment and neither is his deep sea adventure. These activities are for self-gratification. Presumably most of his fortune is tied up in his business, and he’s probably cautious enough not to spend his cash too recklessly. So both BO and SpaceX need to make some revenue purely as a method of expanding their activities. I don’t believe that either of these individuals are building rockets and space craft as a means of financial investment.
You’re correct. One commodity that sub-orbital spacecraft can deliver that’s not available at ground level is upto five minutes of microgravity. Scientists, engineers and business-people are willing to pay big bucks to carry out research in microgravity. UP Aerospace sounding rockets and those parabolic- arc flying research aircraft are solidly booked for such research.
As a rule you generally expect your investments to produce 10-15 percent. Given Jeff Bezos has $47 billion dollars at the moment that would equal between $4.7 to $7.1 billion a year. Allowing for taxes that is still about the same NASA has to spend on HSF, about $3-4 billion a year. In fact it is almost equal to the ESA budget and is probably more then Russia spends.
So bottom line, there is plenty to spend on activities like building rockets, especially as he doesn’t have the bureaucratic overhead that NASA or needs to account to anyone on how he spends it, without ever endangering his fortune.
Elon Musk is not yet at that point, as I noted, which is why he needs near term revenue and government contracts. But I expect he will reach it as well if Telsa and Solar City continue to be successful.
Hmm. Amazon comes quickly to mind. So does spacex, Tesla motors solar city, and now Hyperloop..
One the the problems with ECON101 thinking that I must unlearn students taking graduate economic classes are that the “rational man” models are too simplistic and there are other ways to view ROI than in $$.
Billionaires often spend money on investments that have little prospect for ROI if they believe in something. Look at how much Ted Turner has spent on buying western ranch land to turn into “ecoranches”. Or Andrew Carnegie with his foundation and libraries. What you overlook with simple ECON101 thinking is that billionaires often believe in making “social investments” as well as financial ones. Andrew Carnegie’s “Gospel of Wealth” is a good discussion about why.
Also when you have a chance you might well reread Robert Heinlien’s “The Man Who Sold the Moon” to study what motivated D.D. Harriman since those are the same motives driving folks like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Sir Richard Branson, Robert Bigelow…
“Billlionaires do not like to spend large amounts of money on investments with no return;”
So the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation doesn’t exist?
Better question; How did Bill become a billionaire in the first place? By investing what he had and expecting no return? Nought.
Yes. Non-billionaires invest, get a return and become billionaires.
After they are billionaires there are numerous examples – such as Bezos, Musk, Gates, Paul Allen, etc. of investment with little to no likely return.
Quite unlikely that Bezos will ever give up Blue Origins just as he will probably always own Washington Post. The latter isn’t a moneymaker but it offers something longer term and offers social impact. Likewise with BO.
I am not talking about selling off Blue Origins, just selling New Shepard rockets to space lines that might want to buy them, just as Boeing sell airliners.
The mindset that the firm that builds rockets must also operate them is part of the expendable launch vehicle paradigm. Rockets that are reusable may well be owned by multiple entities in their life time, just as airliners are.
Yes, even with only Boeing and Airbus in the jet airliner market the competition can get hot and heavy between airlines, as long as governments don’t jack up prices (looking at DHS).
Reusable and have a fairly automated turn around and launch processing, i would add
Bezos should get together with Branson and make an adapter to mount SS3 on top of his launcher. Take out the cantankerous engine and go back to the reliable one, add a couple more seats, and go higher (longer weightless ride). Then fly the sucker back home to land next to the first stage. More revenue per flight.
Before everybody starts taking me apart, I realize this is a silly idea. I just wanted to point out that there are dozens of ways to get to space with all the hardware we’re making. The culture difference between VG and BO is far too immense to join together.
keep in mind that Bigelow wants their station up as soon as there are human launchers. In the past, he has said, but, I wonder if they will start building once just 1 of them has launched?
I actually doubt that Bigelow will build anything until they have firm occupancy commitments. I’m sure that Mr. Bigelow would rather just be the builder instead of both builder and landlord but he is going to need enough occupancy commitments to not only make building the station feasible but also to run the station. If it was me, I wouldn’t start the build until there were two launchers available but you could actually start now if you have the signed leases from your tenants.
So, you think that a guy who owns a motel chain hates being a ‘landlord’? I would beg to differ on that. More importantly, he has indicated over and over that they would be leasing/renting space, and possible buyers would be extremely limited.
Oh, I suspect that first tenant will be NASA for a year with 2-4 astronauts. And no doubt, it will be a subsidy to help get them off the ground, but at the same time, it is useful.
The speed with which he built the BEAM module for NASA shows he is ready when the transportation is there. Of course ISS will undercut him by offering free rides to foreign astronauts is a problem, but I don’t expect it to be in competition for long. It is a complex piece of hardware that is aging and, lacking the Space Shuttle, it only has one destiny which is the bottom of the Pacific. I just hope it hangs together until all the commercial crew and cargo systems are functional.
Falcon Heavy will get him to the moon. I see a market opportunity, though – who is building landers? We need the equivalent of the “out for delivery” UPS trucks, tailored for different neighborhoods. Orbits and LaGrange points are one thing, surfaces are another.
I guess Masten Space Systems would love to get a contract for a fleet of Moon landers 😉
But let us not forget, that SpaceX and BO have pretty much dialed in their landings as well by now, so those could build landers as well.
As Mazda used to say (or do they still?): “Zoom-zoom!”
There is nothing keeping SpaceX from becoming the first commercial spaceline. If you disregard that its government astronauts, Boeing or SpaceX will be the first one. Private citizens are not likely to follow with Boeing’s CST-100. We can imagine why. $$$ SpaceX could go the path but it means creating another company, a subsidiary, that doesn’t put a operational drag on SpaceX overall. They will be fashioning Dragon 2s for astronauts, why not spin off to accommodate wealthy privates and pocket the whole nine yards.
Private transport to Bigelow stations will be done by SpaceX without NASA’s policies bending the knee to Senator Shelby and raising costs thereby. Those cheaper flights will initially be to wet-leased stations, that Bigelow people run, while countries A,B,C,D,E,F send up researchers to them for the work they want accomplished. What will be interesting will be when some wet-lease participant uses their time aboard a Bigelow station to build their own station right next to it, lighter, bigger, and without the design compromises needed to launch it on anyone’s rocket. SpiderFab and 3d-printing and similar tech would feature big in that.
Once that is done, by anyone from Italy to Israel to India to Iceland, and they use that tech to build more stations in orbit for others, *then* we will see cheaper destinations that will multiply and become truly private. At some point, State Dept. and Commerce Dept. will have to acknowledge they can no longer control access to Space through ITAR, and the door will swing wide open. At that time we can hope that someone from outside the Cost+ Contractor Club like BO has become a competitor to SpaceX, and prices will begin their true tumble.
Maybe, if it is affordable. I wouldn’t count on space tourism to blossom as a industry until the cost of lifting people out of the gravity well comes down to somewhere close to what you pay for an economy-class airline ticket. I also wouldn’t count on National Science Foundation grants financing your off-planet research. I like Buck Rogers as much as the next guy but anything done in space by private enterprise needs to be both profitable and sustainable.
NSF is NOT likely to spend much money for LEO work.
However, as soon as Private space says that they are going to the moon, you can bet on it, that every nation in the world that has money will be happy to put together a space program where it starts with 1-2 of their citizens getting 6-12 months space time in preparation for going to the moon.
But how long will it last? Once Bolivia (for example) has sent their first 2 astronauts to the Moon, the “new” will have worn off, national pride will have gotten its biggest boost and most of these countries will decide that they have better uses for their money than a manned space program. Reusability is nice but IMHO until the cost per pound of lifting people and things out of the gravity well drops from hundreds of thousands of dollars per pound to just dollars per pound, space is not going to be bustling regardless of whether it is private enterprise or governments doing the driving.
It will be more affordable for Bolivia to lease 1/3 of a BA330 for 150 million a year. Then pay 26 million + 3 million for each additional month for a total of 38 million for six months, then rotate a new astronaut every six months. Now bolivia can have a full up space program based in LEO and manned year round for a little over 200 million a year and be beaming video of their own astronauts in space. They can talk about the moon from space.
Also since 1/3 of a BA 330 is good for two people, Bolivia could sublease space for one tourist or researcher at their facility.
it is not about being ‘new’, but about claiming space on the moon. look at the chaos on Antarctica, and the coming chaos for Arctic floor.
> the cost per pound of lifting people and things out of the gravity well drops from
> hundreds of thousands of dollars per pound to just dollars per pound
The cost never exceeded $20,000 per pound, and that was only on the STS (Space Shuttle.)
The cost to overnight a package is more than “dollars per pound.”
The Shuttle was a little under $61,000 per kg, or nearly $28,000 per lb.
You will ALWAYS have early adapters and space transportation will be no different. First you will see it play out with 2nd and 3rd tier countries moving into LEO. Marginal economic analysis shows that as every new price point gets hit going down an uptick in demand takes place.
Just like regular airlines, travel to LEO will need volume. The Dragon 2 can carry 6 but alone, its time in a sardine can. How much do you think a fully loaded Dragon 2 will cost? $200M? I suspect that with Dragon 2, private citizens to space would pay at least $20M each. Dennis Tito has surely made up for his great recession losses and his ticket to ISS in the past 5 years of economy.
We already know that a Dragon mission is charged at $140M Crew Dragon can carry 7, and Musk has suggested that with 7 seats the price would be $20M a seat. Of course, that is based on NASA’s present insistence of a brand new Dragon per mission and a brand new first stage. First stages will hopefully be able to fly 10 times or more between refurbishments and Crew Dragon is designed to fly at least 10 times between refurbishments (principally heat shield replacement). So, the actual cost per seat could potentially drop considerably once the market becomes comfortable with the concept of flight-proven hardware.
Dropping the price to $15M will be enticing to many more. More so at $10M. Windbourne, everyone – face it, eventually we will see reused stages and capsules as the norm and look back at the first 50 years like we look at the gas guzzlers of the 50s and 60s (beauts but they cost us a bundle in several ways)
Dragon is capable of flying seven astronauts. Regular ISS missions will only fly four at a time.
Sure, to start with and for NASA missions to ISS. If other destinations become available, then all seats could be filled to slightly improve the per seat economics. Clearly though, Dragon sized vehicles will need to be superseded by larger space craft for the orbital, lunar and Martian dream to become reality.
Dragon 2 carries 7 and will costs around 140-150 M for eelv.
However, for private space , they will likely have reuse of both capsule and first stage.
They want drop costs to 100m or so.
That is a Iow, 10-15m just for transportation.
3 re-uses of Dragon and the first stage (with minimal refurb) would halve the cost. Not so sure the price to the customer would halve. I don’t think that a re-use of 3-6 times is too ambitious and would set the stage for some serious price reductions in the next decade.
10 reuses could bring the per mission cost down to the $30-40M range – with 7 seats that’s near $5M per seat. This could be enough to boost a true early adopters market and enable a lot of experience and data to be gained. For a truly “big” market, we would need BFR type architectures to get the price seat to 10-100 times lower still. Airlines can only get the price low by filling 200-300 seats. We can’t expect human space launch to be cheap until the seat count rises significantly.
At 200 million, if it used 10 times and add 15% for servicing and you are around 23 million per flight or 3.3 million per person per flight. The first stage if thrown away after the flight would be around 8.5 million per person and If the 1st stage becomes reusable that could drop a few more million. So about 12 million or less per seat add in the profit margins..
Yes, but we know the starting figure is closer to $140M; don’t know where $200M was pulled from.
How long till Blue puts a human in Shepard?? I’ll bet 2017
Before Virgin Galactic, for sure. I don’t see VG sending SS2 above the Karman Line this year, maybe never.
I agree. Hopefully they are building additional New Shepards, and will be doing frequent flights now that they have broke the ice. Given that they may well have folks flying in it before anyone else.
Jeff Bezos flies Jason Rezaian home on
New Shepardprivate jet.My version would have been so much cooler.
Not until they’ve done a max-Q abort escape. Once they are confident they can keep passengers safe, the only other issue is gaining experience of the longevity and maintenance/refurbishment of the PM.
hotel?
Bigelow wants to be on the moon before anybody else.
And to put a base there. They are investing a lot of money into both space station and lunar modules.
And assume BEAM goes up in about 1-2 months along with Human launches being completed, I think that he will get his way.
Bigelow wants to put up open facilities. He has stated this over and over. If you want to open a hotel, or a lab, or a mineral storage and analysis center it wouldn’t matter. He just wants to lease you the open space and you can put in any kind of government lab or business you want. This is the same thing he wants for LEO.
Yes, if ESA was smart they would forget their Moon Village and just budget to rent facilities from Bigelow Aerospace on the Moon. But as a government, or more correctly multi-government, space agency it has a lot of rice bowls it must keep filling so it probably won’t. As such you may well have nations like Singapore or Brazil having astronauts on the Moon before ESA or even NASA 🙂
Zero chance on some of that. Basically, it makes little sense for NASA to focus all their efforts on the moon. However, there is little doubt that NASA will not only go there, but help private space get there. And that likely means that NASA will be more than willing to spend 1-3b / year to be there. And esa, along with others, will likely take advantage of private space to be there getting set up while designing and building equipment.
Yes. The Trump of space exploitation! I wish he’d hurry up so I could book a room before I kick off…
“1. He gave big to defend gay marriage last year. Bezos’s most notable step into the political arena came in 2012, when he put a whopping $2.5 million into the campaign to defend gay marriage in the state of Washington.
3. He’s mostly given to Democratic candidates. Campaign finance records show that Bezos has mostly given to Democratic candidates for federal and state office,
5. Amazon’s PAC gives to both parties: It’s also worth noting that Amazon.com has a political action committee, to which Bezos and his wife have donated. The PAC split its donations pretty evenly between Republican and Democratic candidates for Congress last cycle. Democratic House and Senate contenders received $93,000, while Republicans got $86,500,”
https://www.washingtonpost….
Why on earth would you let your enthusiasm for a technology venture be affected by the politics of its founder? Last time I checked, there wasn’t a contributing term for “gay marriage support vibes” in the calculation of thrust-to-weight or specific impulse.
Why is it that you extrimist from both the far right and far left insist on controlling others lives?
It’s not a Left or Right thing, but the natural testosterone-rewarded tendency to want to be the Alpha in any group. Certainly Musk and Bezos have that, and when they bump, it shows. Hierarchies are the organization form people use to control resources, while networks are the forms that generate wealth. Those wanting to get the testosterone high of being Alphas tend to set up herarchies, even when they know that networks *must* be accommodated if they are to get anything done.
Those who forget the need for networks end up as totalitarians, which we see when they suppress networks they cannot easily control just because they get *NO* back too often to their political/personal demands for moving resources around. An example is Stalin’s replies to engineers who crossed his political program’s needs, explaining that physics didn’t work that way, …”Wreckers!, …Defeatists!”
Those who keep that impulse under control, and subordinate it into communication that anticipates the *NO* that physics sends back up the line, keep building profitable companies that grow. Those that don’t, …don’t for very long.
That is one of the most bizarre things I’ve read in a while.
Subjugation of the masses for the benefit of an elitist minority is the central tenet of right wing political ideologies. Far left politics is all about removing the rights of individuals in an attempt to equate human civilisation with an ant colony. Both extremes rely on authoritarianism to strip people of dignity, hope, freedom and opportunity.
Centrist liberalism is about raising the lowest standard of living out of poverty and to a level that treats all people with respect and dignity, whilst at the same time giving those with the skills and/or motivation to achieve an even more comfortable life style via a system of regulated capitalism, that is, striving for a true, fair and just meritocracy.
So are you a fascist, a communist or a liberal?.
None of the above, because I do not believe that government *can* lift anyone to an attitude that supports the freedoms of action needed to build and maintain the multi-level highly productive networks that make up industrial society around the world. That requires a Civil Society with a focus on individual freedoms of action, and responsibility for the results of those actions.
“…as we can observe in just those days in Europe in act of suicide”
I don’t understand what this refers to; please explain.
He’s referring to the willingness of politicians, their police hirelings, and the press to overlook both mass rapes in large German cities, and the 10+ years long scandals, like forcing 1400+ young girls into prostitution, as happened in Rotherham in England. These were all over-looked out of fear of criticizing the Muslim families and mobs that did these horrors, while the police watched, or turned away so they could claim they did not know. It has happened because of the multiculturalist political policy dominating EU countries.
These policies basically will not allow criticism, by anyone actively supporting industrial society’s needed freedoms of action, against the attitudes brought in by people from agrarian cultures. Those groups, in turn, are given the assumption that they are “among the oppressed”, and so can do no wrong.
Its more of a focus of vision thing than a political philosophy with these guys. They tend to see the benefits of their own decisions from the top of a hierarchy, and assume that decisions from the top of a government hierarchy can be just as beneficial. Yes, they can fool themselves that other hierarchs are as benevolent as they wanna be, but it just isn’t so.
Humans tend to be realists about whatever they are focused on, and fantasists more and more the farther the particulars of a situation get get from their focus of attention. Having a billion dollars doesn’t seem to change that so much.
Odd that you say that.
WHY DOESNT THE CAPE PROVIDE AND OIL RIG SIZE LANDING PAD FOR ITS TENANTS???
Jeff Bezos wants to patient Barge landing to stop future companies from using that to make reusability affordable for all.
Shouldnt all spaceports have launch pads and landing pads both land and water??
SpaceX takes position that it is not patentable idea.
Shouldn’t NASA/gov reinforce that by providing landing zones for all?
In this new Reusable Space age all launch complexes should have landing zones!