Transport companies all over the world may have noticed, space exploration is becoming a reality for more and more people therefore, countless new collateral business opportunities are emerging.

Virgin Galactic‘s sales pitch is uplifting and targets the “Average Joe”, as long as “Joe” has boatloads of dispensable income:

“By the end of the decade, Virgin Galactic – the most exciting development in the story of modern space history – is planning to make it possible for almost anyone to visit the final frontier at an affordable price.”

Fortunately, the Virgin Galactic experts have prepared a little primer on space travel for regular folks just wishing to see the Earth from an exciting new perspective:

“The reason Virgin Galactic has become possible is thanks to the vision of one man, Paul G. Allen, who has taken the risk of funding the world’s greatest aviation designer of the modern era – Burt Rutan.

Rutan’s vision for mass space travel was born in the early years of interplanetary transport. The fathers of space exploration never planned sending man into space on what are basically large intercontinental ballistic missiles. They foresaw that people would somehow be taken up to a height and then launched into space. The Cold War forced the hand of space development. All the budget for space technology was usurped for military development, so the space programme became geared to what the superpowers were building – missiles.

Burt Rutan has gone back to basics and developed a number of things crucial to making Virgin Galactic and sub-orbital space tourism possible:

Firstly, the technology to get people into and back from space cheaply and simply, using an environmentally friendly aircraft that creates virtually no pollution.

The key to Rutan’s design is a craft, which on its return to earth turns from a beautiful sleek space plane into a ‘shuttlecock’ – to gently drift back through the atmosphere without overheating. It then metamorphoses once again into a conventional aircraft shape ready for landing.

Cost is another factor to make space tourism of the moment not of the future. Burt adopted a much more efficient, and up to date approach to making his space craft, using composite materials as opposed to metals. The most important factor that brings us to the precipice of mass space exploration is safety. Burt has utilised a much safer fuel than ever before – nitrous oxide (laughing gas) and rubber. The two things separately are inert. Only when the nitrous oxide has been forced onto the rubber and then ignited will the motor start, producing its tremendous energy. This is much safer than liquid propulsion systems or solid fuel rockets.

All these elements would be useless without the final component to this breakthrough – the ability to carry people into space without first having to train them for half a year at a cost of tens of millions of dollars.

A few days of medical assessment and pre-flight familiarisation is all the space tourists of this decade will require prior to their real ET experience.”

If you’re not excited by the possibility of reaching for the stars perhaps the sheer technological armada destined to make Virgin Galactic possible will someday apply to terrestrial transport companies. Low polluting emissions, new ignition engine, amazing safety features, innovative materials and semi-automated navigation can all find echos in the T&L industry.

Although you can’t hop on this ship and say “beam me up, Scotty” already, there’s a cool web page describing what the flight would be like, including the famous 5-4-3-2-1-lift off countdown, NASA-style.

For the readers who still wonder why in the world we need to leave our blue planet, even for an instant, perhaps this page can shed some much needed light on the reasons going into space is so meaningful.

We’ll continue monitoring Virgin Galactic and similar projects for the fun of it, the technological breakthroughs and the somewhat reassuring feeling that the human race is making ways into brand new, virgin territory.

Tags: virgin galactic, space travel, breakthroughs, energy, propulsion system, sub-orbital tourism

This may sound overly optimistic to many aerospace experts but nevertheless U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta says space crafts could be cleared to fly passengers by 2008.

Commercial space crafts could be cleared to carry passengers by 2008, Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta announced today. Speaking to a group of space entrepreneurs, the Secretary said that a number of companies should be set to take passengers into space and that the U.S. Department of Transportation would be ready to clear these flights within two years.

“This timeline isn’t based on science fiction,” Secretary Mineta said. “It is a timeline based on the reality of where commercial space is today and where we expect the state of commercial space to be within two short years.”

Mineta noted that the Department, which is responsible for clearing commercial space travel, would be ready to approve the passenger flights once tests of craft designed to take passengers into space were completed. The Secretary said he expected to issue permits next year to allow the test flights, and that if these flights were successful, the Department would then issue a license for passenger space travel.

“We will move quickly to green-light flights that we know are safe,” Mineta said. He added that if companies were able to complete testing sooner, the Department also would be ready. “When the industry is set for lift off, we will be ready to launch,” Mineta pledged.

The Secretary made it clear that the Department would take steps to ensure the safety of these commercial passenger space flights. But he added that the agency would make sure these checks did not delay the launch of passenger space travel.

“We have an important role to play in ensuring the safety of commercial space flights, especially for passengers,” Mineta said. “But we also have an obligation to encourage innovation and support new developments.”

The Secretary made the announcement during a keynote address to the 9th Annual Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington, DC.

More companies are gearing up for the anticipated space travel boom, in the US and around the world.

Millions of people would pay to see the Earth from space with their own eyes, not to mention the spectacular ride out of our atmosphere and then back into it.

Tags: earth, atmosphere, space travel, commercial space transportation, travel boom, us, world, space crafts