Has The Promise of Space Tourism Started to Fade?
Virgin Galactic boldly goes into small satellites, telling future astronauts ‘you have to wait’, Telegraph
“Before the crash in November last year, there were around 750 “future astronauts” signed up to Virgin Galactic’s space programme, paying $250,000 (160,000) a pop for a seat on a spacecraft SpaceShipTwo that can reach the edge of space at an altitude of 62 miles before returning to earth. Numbers have already fallen to 700. These steadfast customers, believed to include high-profile ticket holders Ashton Kutcher, Angelina Jolie, Kate Winslet and Stephen Hawking, represent $175m in revenue. Whitesides, a former chief of staff for Nasa, is in a difficult position: it is necessary to keep his future astronauts sweet but with no date for the first space tourism mission, and investors to mollify, there needs to be a short-term moneyspinner or Virgin Galactic will run aground. His answer has been to pivot its business model dramatically away from human space travel, and into a burgeoning new sector: small satellite launches. This is why Virgin Galactic has rolled out the welcome mat for the UK firms they are potential customers, partners and advocates.”
Virgin Galactic passenger numbers ‘almost recovered’ after space craft’s fatal accident, Suffield Times
“Over the previous six months, Virgin Galactic has quietly reshaped its enterprise mannequin to give attention to the burgeoning small satellite tv for pc launch market, which it estimates might be equally worthwhile.”
Keith’s note: On one hand, there is nothing at all unusual about this business decision. Air carriers have been mixing passengers, cargo, mail etc. for the better part of a century – for obvious business reasons. Virgin Galactic is simply being smart in trying to diversify its customer base and product offering – while leveraging one against the other. On the other hand, you have to wonder who is going to write huge deposits for a flight with no clearly-known flight date. After a while more people are going to start asking for their money back – or they’re going to Virgin Galactic’s competitors (assuming they succeed where Virgin Galactic has not).
Further proof of the failure of the Ansari X-Prize. Not only did it steer reusable sub-orbital rocket development into a small dead end market, space tourism. It also “selected” the wrong technology based on it poorly written rules. 11 years and nearly $300 million dollars later and the stunt vehicle that won the prize is still not ready to give “birth” to the industry.
Sir Richard Branson would probably have flown in space years ago if in 1995 when he reserved the name, Virginia Galactic, for his space tourism business he had done a traditional RFP for a space tourist rocket and had the design selected by a committee of experts than allow a PR stunt to select it for him.
Really, could you imagine a commercial airline using a similar PR stunt to design their newest airliner? Prizes are useful tools in a focused and controlled setting were they are able to harness the “wisdom” of crowds. But when you need millions to win one their value as a tool for innovation disappears quickly, as the Ansari X-Prize, and the Google Lunar X-Prize show.
Would be interested in reading further into these ideas, and perhaps a response from the other side.
So where does the analogy with the Orteig Prize break down? Or perhaps you do not hold the Orteig Prize in high regard either?
You say the X-Prize rules were poorly written. Perhaps the prize ideas to seed innovation is still valid but only as long as they are implemented better? Can Google’s rules be improved?
Would you consider the DARPA Challenges to be successful? Much progress has been made in the area of self driving cars and robotics, it seems, thanks to these contests, which get a lot of attention. Would you call them PR stunts too? Are DARPA’s rules better? Do the Challenges deserve credit for advancing these technologies?
It is really based on the economics of how prizes work in real life. A prize that requires millions of dollars to win excludes the vast majority of the public, and vast majority of creative ideas. In the case of the Ansari X-Prize there was only a single team with the deep pockets of a billionaire with any chance of winning. The rest were mostly view graph teams with a few scrapping enough money for a mockup or two, but no real shot at trying for it. So it wasn’t a real competition, just a publicity stunt.
,As Paul Allen himself states in his biography, his decision to fund SpaceShipOne was not based on the Ansari X-Prize and actually delayed SpaceShipOne’s first flight and doubled its cost because of the need to modify it to win the prize.
http://www.thespacereview.c…
Paul Allen’s past (and future) in space
“Although Rutan attended the St. Louis event in May 1996 that formally announced the X PRIZE and was the first to register for the competition, Allen notes in the book that their effort was not originally designed to win the prize: in fact, the original vehicle design was apparently only intended to carry a single person. Only when the Ansari family donated the money in 2002 needed for the “hole-in-one” insurance policy that would fund the prize purse did Scaled modify the vehicle to carry three people as required by the prize rules. That redesign caused the price of the project to more than double, from $9 million to $19 million, according to Allen.”
So all three claims of the Ansari X-Prize are false. It did not create a competition to win the prize as their was only one team with the resources to do so. There was no competition except between view graphs and mockups.
It did not accelerate the first private human spaceflight vehicle, it actually set its first flight back by many months, perhaps a year because of the need to redesign SpaceShip One.
And three, it did not give birth to a private sub-orbital industry by attracting money to it but actually drove money away as venture capitalists wanted no part of being in competition with high profile deep pocket investors like Paul Allen and Sir Richard Branson.
It was only when it became apparent that SpaceShipOne was not scalable that XCOR, which was never a part of the competition, started receiving funding.
And as I noted above, Sir Richard Branson already had decided to do Virgin Galactic prior to the Ansari X-Prize and put his plans to find a vendor on hold when it was announced, further delaying the birth of the industry.
So yes, by all measure the Ansari X-Prize was a failure, but don’t expect the X-Prize Foundation, who had donations roll in afterward, to admit the Emperor is 100% naked 🙂
The DARPA Challenges were successful because they allowed board participation. Any one with access to a vehicle, knowledge of robotics and a desire to be part of it could be, using money from “friends, family and fools”. There was even a high school team in one of the robotic challenges. That is the formula for a successful prize, maximizing the number of folks with ideas that are able to take part because the money needed is not a barrier to participation. In short, they were run on the traditional prize business model.
In terms of the Orteig Prize, it only cost the business community in St. Louis $15,000 to pay Ryan aircraft to modify their existing design for a very successful mail plane into the Ryan NYP – AKA “The Spirit of St. Louis”. So like the DARPA Challenges, and most aviation prizes of the era, it was open to many adventurers.
And its impact on aviation was not based so much the accomplishment itself, but how it was won by a single photogenic pilot no one had ever heard of before. On May 9, 1927 he was an unknown ex-mail pilot getting ready to fly the Ryan NYP from LA to NY. On May 22, 1927 his name and fame was known worldwide.That is what made it a national phenomena and not just another headline. There was never a chance for that to happen with the Ansari X-Prize.
In terms of the Google Lunar X-Prize the challenge is not designing and building the rover, any number of college teams and groups of robotics experts could design and build one, its raising the $50-100 million needed to buy a launch vehicle and lander needed to place it on the Moon and win the $20 million dollar prize. So like the Ansari X-Prize its not about who has best idea, but who is able to find a billionaire will to spend $100 million to win a $20 million prize as an award.
Thank you for the response. Really spells it out nicely.
Now that Astrobotic and Hakuto have teamed up on their launch vehicle costs, are you any more confident of one of them accomplishing the goal?
But yeah, it seems like the rover is somewhat moot in all this. It is a fraction of the cost of accomplishing the task. The main cost remains getting out of Earth’s gravity well. The primary advancement in all this is reduced launch costs, independent of the google lunar x-prize, which companies like SpaceX are trying to accomplish.
An analogy might be if each contestant in the DARPA Grand Challenge had to buy millions of dollars of real estate in order to demonstrate their vehicle, which overwhelmed the cost of the vehicle itself, and the prize money for that matter. Or Lindbergh had to purchase the land and plow runways before attempting his flight.
If and when launch vehicle reusability is established, and launch costs are a fraction of their current levels, I wonder at that point, hopefully before the end of the decade, what prize goals would make sense? Till then, anything in space, perhaps with the exception of CubeSats, remains expensive.
Yes, good analysis.
In terms of Astrobotic and Hakuto sharing a launch vehicle it is a good move, but it still requires them to rise the money needed. The only solution, based on your analogies, I see would be for Google to buy a launch vehicle and lander, and then select through a contest on Earth the three best rovers to place on it. They could probably cut the prize to a few million if they followed that model and still get the PR from rovers on the Moon with their name on them.
In terms of more reasonable prizes, the real long pole for space development and settlement is not developing better launch vehicles but closed ecological systems able to work using just energy and IRSU, what Isaac Asimov called “Spomes” a new word composed of SPace hOMES.
The advantage is that such prizes would be modest in cost enabling thousands to take part. One example would be a prize for a source for rubber for industrial use in a Spome. The two current sources, rubber trees and synthetic rubber made from petroleum, are really unsuitable sources for a space habitat.
The prize could be very modest as any professional or amateur chemist/botanist/microbiologist could have a chance of winning, either with a home lab/garden or one at a high school or college, the ideal environment for a creative solution as it allows the possibility of a really innovative answer coming out of the unknown.
A new rubber source would also have the potential of Earth based commercial applications if it proves to be a green substitute for existing sources as well as a security element given the importance of a secure rubber source to the military. Both are also important features of a successful application of the prize model.
Other requirements to create a Spome could also be broken down into similar pieces and structured as prizes, so when launch cost reach the point that Mars, Moon or open space habitats are practical financially the technology is ready to make them mostly self-sufficient as well.
Take note, someone was just persuaded here on the internet. I’m not sure about anyone else but I never had anything negative to say about the Ansari X-Prize before. And your advice for the Google prize is fairly solid although it looks like some teams are also working to develop Moon Landers. Perhaps Google could just go about acquiring the launch vehicle. Still well outweighs their current prize commitment however.
I see now that you were on the Space Show. I’ll be sure to listen to those episodes now
Thanks for the kind words 🙂
If you are checking out the Space Show you should also listen to the show from Oct. 4, 2004 on the last Ansari X-Prize flight. I was one of the guests and noted how I believed they still had a long way to go to turn SpaceShipOne into a tourist ship.
http://archived.thespacesho…
At the time I was actually thinking 5-6 years, so I am a bit surprised it has actually dragged out longer, but then I had not assumed they would make the follow on vehicle, SpaceShipTwo, as large as it is or that the engine used would not be scalable to the size needed for it. In retrospect it makes SpaceShipOne look even more like a “one trick pony”.
In terms of the lander, yes a couple of the teams are and perhaps Google could leverage that as part of a facing saving victory by selecting one of the lander designs, funding it, and then using it to carry that team’s robot with two others to the Moon for the final competition on the Moon. If they did so they could potentially have a winner by the tenth anniversary in 2017.
Yes. Took a while for people to notice, huh ?
In other news, no you wont have a flying car or a butler robot any time soon either. Neither will your next iphone run on fusion batteries.
But they have developed a Hoverboard …..
Great, now we only need a flux capacitor to keep it hovering for a minute. Once we have that, we can also power VASIMR with something and go to mars in a month.
The only problem is that you need to supercool which lasts only moments… and you can’t move it, because it needs to be suspended over one spot…
…and it won’t bear any weight.
Other than that, it’s a great ride!
Belatedly,
Actually they made a track. With a rider. Even put a jump in it.
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawk…
Keith, didn’t you go through the astronaut training program with them?
Are you still on the list?
Do you still plan to on flying with them Keith?
May I suggest you call up Jeff instead.
http://nasawatch.com/archiv…
Yes I took (and passed) the NASTAR suborbital Scientist-Astronaut Program training – like the other folks who will be flying (“Strapping On A Centrifuge: Suborbital Scientist-Astronaut Training” http://nasawatch.com/archives/2011/05/strapping-on-a.html). I also did two flights on ZeroG. I do not have a sponsor so I’d have to buy my own ticket on a suborbital flight – I simply do not have that kind of money – nor will I ever have it. FWIW I think flying people to hit the switch on a payload inside a suborbital spacecraft is not a very efficient use of mass or volume – or money. Computers can do that much more effectively and efficiently. That does NOT mean that I wouldn’t take a free ticket in a heartbeat though 😉
As marketing studies have repeatedly shown, the size of the market for human spaceflight, both for tourism and externally funded science, is very sensitive to price. Human spaceflight of any kind beyond the current handful thus requires lower cost; a significant increase in market will require a seat to LEO to be priced at $1M or less.
In some respects VG took a difficult path; I personally think it makes more sense to use automated orbital flight (e.g. the Dragon 1, X-37) to develop and test the technology, and add human capability later. XCOR may prove me wrong. The X-prize emphasis on human suborbital flight from the first discouraged this. I also feel the use of solid or hybrid propellants in reusable launch systems is not cost effective.
The promise hasn’t faded at all, it’s the same as it ever was.
It’s the delusion that may be fading.