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Small Firms Touted As Space Pioneers ; Flexibility Called Key to Public Flights

Posted on: Sunday, 10 April 2005, 03:00 CDT

Making space travel accessible to the public will result largely from efforts of small firms, not industry giants, National Space Symposium panelists said Wednesday.

Those entrepreneurs will get help from the government, which recently declared a keen interest in commercializing human spaceflight.

Because smaller companies move more quickly on less money and want to turn a profit quicker than large firms, a space jaunt for someone willing to pay $200,000 may be closer than previously thought.

Shashi Raval, CEO of Novariant Inc., who has studied how high- tech companies emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, said entrepreneurial spirit is about innovation, taking risks, creativity, leadership and "the passionate desire to change the world."

Often, those values -- not routinely associated with mega- companies that report to demanding stockholders -- give rise to revolutionary discoveries and developments not initially envisioned.

The best example is the emergence of the Internet in the early 1990s.

"This moment was missed by gurus in the industry," Raval said. "If you look at large IT companies and research labs, they never actually propagated any of these ideas."

Is the moment right in the space industry today for such innovation?

Perhaps not, he said, because the space business is driven by industry giants that rely on government funding to develop large, capital-intensive and rigid systems.

However, much as the information technology industry progressed from mainframe computers to minicomputers to personal computers to today's hand-held devices, the space industry could capitalize on miniature technologies.

"I think the whole notion of miniaturization of satellites will be one process by which the right moment will come," Raval said.

But the innovations most likely will be developed by entrepreneurs, who invent uses and create markets that "are very hard for the big players to see," Raval said.

The government's role could be key to enabling those developments, said George Nield, deputy associate administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial launches.

He agreed that small firms will first market human spaceflight, using creative applications of existing technologies.

A recent study predicted that space tourism will be a $1 billion industry by 2021, Nield said, with 15,000 people traveling in suborbital vehicles yielding $700 million. More expensive flights -- totaling $300 million -- will take 60 travelers into orbit, the study said.

The nation's space policy, updated in January, mentioned public space travel for the first time, he noted, and the race is on.

Oklahoma provided a $15 million tax credit to a rocket company locating there; wealthy individuals are pouring money into space travel, and the SpaceShipOne team last year captured the $10 million X Prize for the first successful commercial manned orbital flight.

Late last year, Congress adopted the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act, which limits lawsuits of participants, streamlines the experimental launch permit process and calls for development of regulations for experience, training and medical condition of crews and passengers. They're due within a year.

"We're committed to supporting this kind of activity," Nield said.

He noted that British billionaire Richard Branson's plans to license the SpaceShipOne technology and operate five vehicles with seven passengers each at $200,000 per ticket have drawn a waiting list of 7,000 people. He plans a 2007 startup.

David Gump, president of Transformational Space Corp. LLC of Reston, Va., said President Bush's plan for NASA to return humans to the moon and then go to Mars, announced last year, has "fundamentally changed the game."

It created openings for entrepreneurs that didn't exist before, because Bush elevated economic pursuits in space to the same level as scientific pursuits, Gump said.

For example, missions may include media companies that seek to televise spaceflight.

"I have noticed over the 28 years I have been associated with the space program there is a significant change in the openness of the government to embrace and work with the entrepreneur," said Courtney Stadd, president of Capital Solutions of Bethesda, Md.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0238 or zubeck@gazette.com

Source: Gazette, The; Colorado Springs, Colo.

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