LV man’s vision: Space tourism

Grace Leong

Wednesday, July 28, 1999 | 11:24 a.m.

Las Vegas hotel and real estate tycoon Robert Bigelow plans to build a 100-passenger luxury tourist cruise ship that will orbit the moon.

Seriously.

Critics may scoff at his vision, but Bigelow pledges to invest $500 million in the project. His new space tourism company will soon break ground at a new headquarters building in western Las Vegas near Red Rock Canyon.

Bigelow Aerospace's headquarters is scheduled to open around May 2001. The $6 million rocket-shaped building is to be surrounded by a moat, and includes 90,000 square feet of office and warehouse space.

The fledgling company now has 11 full-time employees and plans to hire another nine by the first half of 2000.

Bigelow is already well known in Las Vegas as the benefactor of UNLV's Consciousness Studies program, which studies the paranormal, and also funds research on unexplained cattle mutilations by the Nevada-based National Institute of Discovery Science.

While Bigelow's passionate interests in parapsychology and cosmic consciousness may be perceived as eccentric, skeptics have to acknowledge the businessman is putting his money where his mouth is.

"He is a child of the Apollo program, with a passionate interest in improving the human condition. But he is also a serious businessman with a very firm grasp of reality, and could look at issues from all angles," said Greg Bennett, Bigelow Aerospace's vice president.

"It's not a question of whether the project will work, but how long it'll take. We're barely standing at the dawn of space flight. This is the first step to getting people into space," he said.

"If you want to go into space and stay, you have to make it pay. Flying around the moon would create opportunities for people to seriously start considering lunar industries," he predicted.

Bigelow said he hopes his $500 million investment in the as-yet non-existent space tourism business will stimulate more competition among commercial reusable rocket makers and reduce launch costs for freight and passenger carriers.

"Philosophically, most commercial launchers won't want the space industry to be tied to the government," Bigelow said. "It'll be like having a national airline. Prices will always be high if we had just one company dominating the industry. We need to have more competition in the private sector."

Bennett said the company is betting on the commercial launcher industry to provide lower-cost launches for freight and passengers.

Regardless of whether Bigelow's rocket ever makes it to the moon, his investment of $500 million is bound to result in economic benefits for Las Vegas and the aerospace contractors his company will work with.

"A few hundred jobs could easily be generated in the spacecraft factories. We'd need machinists, shop-work mechanics, electricians to handle the overhead cranes, metal bending machines, wire cables, electronics, welding and painting," he said.

Bigelow's plan boggles the minds of most space industry experts.

Not only are current costs of space launches prohibitive and the logistics of maintaining a fully independent cruise ship in space daunting, industry experts note there aren't yet any fully reusable launch vehicles that can safely carry both human and nonhuman payloads to space and back.

And insurance companies are expected to avoid the industry until the commercial space launchers establish a record of successful launches, experts predicted.

The Bigelow project's blueprints are still being drafted.

He envisions a half-mile long cruise ship accommodating 100 passengers and 50 crew that would spin to create gravity. Its parts would be built on earth and then assembled in space. The ship will permanently orbit the moon, and passengers will be ferried to it from earth aboard smaller ships.

It hasn't been decided yet where the ferrying ships will be launched, but Bennett hopes the launch site will be in Nevada.

"Ideally, the ships should be able to take off from any part of the world, but my favorite scenario would be for the launches to be made from the Nevada Test Site. Several companies like Rotary Rocket are considering moving their launch operations to the NTS," Bennett said.

Bigelow, who owns the Budget Suites of America hotel chain, plans to work with other companies to defray the costs of the space launches and construction costs.

The company plans to subcontract projects to companies that develop systems including life support, communications, solar power, on-board electrical components, navigation guidance systems, heating, air conditioning, atmospheric and climate control systems.

Several companies have also sought partnership opportunities with Bigelow Aerospace, said Bigelow. He declined to reveal names of potential candidates, but said the size of the investment depends on the type of project conceived.

Bigelow and other experts agree the key to success of the project is the development of low-cost, fully reusable launch vehicles.

NASA's space shuttle is only partly reusable and its costs are prohibitive for Bigelow's project.

It costs NASA about $10,000 per pound to put cargo into orbit on the shuttle, and private launch companies such as Boeing spend about $8,000 per pound to launch satellites.

For the cruise ship construction project to be cost-effective, costs must fall to $550, Bigelow said.

"This is a long-term project that may take more than 15 years to complete. Sometime in the future, when the technology of launch systems is more sophisticated, we should be able to launch RLVs more efficiently and cheaply," said Bigelow, whose plan was described Sunday in a story in the Washington Post.

Gary Hudson, president of Rotary Rocket Co., had similar sentiments. His company is developing a reusable single-stage rocket.

"For projects like Bigelow's to succeed, the company would need 100 percent reusable rockets. A crucial factor is the availability of low-cost space transportation. Without that, no space tourism project is possible," Hudson said.

"There are no low-cost space launches right now, because the government controls the space shuttle program to a large extent. There must be market forces at work in order for the commercial space launch industry to be competitive," Hudson said.

Of all the new proposed space shuttle programs, Bigelow said one called VentureStar appears to be the most promising because its RLV can be launched into orbit at $1,000 per pound and since it doesn't need booster rockets and expendable fuel tanks like current space shuttles. Its first full-scaled flight is scheduled for 2004 and the vehicle may be launched from the Nevada Test Site.

VentureStar is a reusable single stage-to-orbit rocket that is being built by aerospace giant Lockheed Martin Corp.

VentureStar is also the only vehicle with a passenger-friendly module that can be attached to the craft, Bigelow said.

Bigelow said that puts it head and shoulders above competitor Kistler Aerospace's proposed K1 launch vehicle.

The reusable Kistler vehicle is proposed to be launched from both Australia and the Nevada Test Site.

"VentureStar has plans that look the most logical. Its RLV is shaped like an airplane. It takes off vertically and lands horizontally, which is the position that humans like to land in an aircraft," Bigelow said.

"We're hanging our hat on VentureStar. If Lockheed Martin is successful, then we could be waiting to contract 100 flights a year with them," he predicted.

Bigelow also acknowledged there is a chance his $500 million experiment may not pay off at all. Should the space launch industry fail to cut per-pound costs to $550 per pound, the average person may not get a chance to experience the ultimate tourist destination.

But skeptics argued that even with launch costs trimmed to $550, the price of a six-day trip in space is still out of reach for most people.

Based on Bigelow's current estimates, such a trip would cost $350,000-$700,000 a ticket.

Bigelow Aerospace hasn't conducted its own market surveys as yet on the size of the space tourism market, Bennett said. "There are millions of millionaires. The question is what percentage of these millionaires would be interested," he said.

A 1997 U.S. National Leisure Travel Monitor survey conducted of 1,500 Americans found 42 percent interested in flying in a space cruise vessel and willing to spend an average of $10,800 for the trip.

Watching Bigelow's project with interest is Tim Carlson, whose agency is promoting Kistler's plan to launch rockets from Nevada and also wants VentureStar to launch from the Test Site.

"Bigelow is a futurist. The space tourism market is still a small one because there are still a lot of concerns out there about personal safety, and life support systems," said Carlson, president and chief executive of Nevada Test Site Development Corp., a federally funded nonprofit organization promoting the Nevada Test Site as an alternative for industries looking to move.

"Life support technology in space is still being developed, licensing procedures and space legislation still need to be developed and there are a lot of people who are still nervous about this," he said.

archive