Space travel will take off in the U.S. in the near future. Meanwhile, at least one part of the experience – weightlessness – can be achieved on an airplane flight by a company called Zero-G. (Courtesy Dan Miller)

Reported for KQEDnews.org

Space tourism – once the stuff of sci-fi novels and the Jetsons – is nearly here.

Several private companies are planning to offer the public rides into space starting in the next two to five years. The accommodations won’t be as lavish as in the movies or on television, but the Federal Aviation Administration has already started to prepare for a future in which airplanes and spaceships will share the air, and private companies will play a bigger role in space transportation of all kinds.

Last month, the FAA created a think tank to bring together industry, government and seven universities – among them Stanford – to conduct research and propose regulations for commercial space travel. The Center of Excellence for Commercial Space Transportation will be located at New Mexico State University, in Las Cruces.

The idea of private space travel may sound like fun, but the potential challenges it brings are deadly serious, experts say.

Among them: How can rockets and airplanes safely share the air? What kind of floating junk might spacecraft run into? How fit do private citizens need to be to go into space? And just how good of a business is space tourism?

“If you start to have launches once a day rather than once a month, and they occur in the middle of the nation rather than at the coasts, this could change how you manage your air traffic,” said Scott Hubbard, a Stanford professor of aeronautics and astronautics and former director of NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View.

Sharing the air

Currently, only 20 to 30 spacecraft are launched in the United States each year, said Stanford professor of aeronautics and astronautics Juan Alonso, who will be conducting research for the FAA along with Hubbard. They leave from launching pads on the coasts – at Vandenberg Air Force Base, in Santa Barbara County, and Kennedy Space Center, near Orlando, Florida – to minimize the impact of any accident.

Communication satellites are regularly launched by private companies on rockets like this one at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (Credit: Boeing)

“Because it’s so limited, we don’t have to come up with a particular system to not collide or disturb the traffic,” Alonso said. The FAA simply creates a temporary flight restriction along the spacecraft’s path so that airplanes won’t fly into the area during the few minutes it takes for the rocket to lift off.

But in the next 15 years, as the number of space flights grows and more of them depart from specialized space travel airports located inland, in places like New Mexico, managing air traffic control will become a more complex job. And today’s tools could fall dangerously short.

“Air traffic management is based on principles that were developed 50 years ago,” said Stanford’s Alonso. “Air traffic controllers get a plan and they direct the flights. In general, only the controllers know where all the airplanes are.”

This is because the system is based on radar, a technology by which dishes on the ground emit signals that bounce off of moving objects and send back information about their location and speed.

“Some areas of the world aren’t covered by radar,” said Alonso. “And if there’s a mountain between the dish and the object, it doesn’t work.”

The FAA is already planning to replace its radar-based air traffic control system with one that uses satellite information, said FAA spokesperson Laura Brown. A satellite-based system will enable aircraft to share information on their positions and provide a much more precise picture of where everything is. It also would make it possible to create tools that could simulate the likely trajectories of airplanes and spaceships, said Alonso.

Risky business

The biggest difference in regulating space flight and air flight is that the FAA currently ensures the safety of airplanes and passengers by requiring things like regular repairs and safety equipment. That won’t be the case with space flight, which will be treated more like an adventure sport. When the first paying customers go up to space, they’ll have to sign an informed consent form.

“It’s very similar to skiing,” said John Gedmark, executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, in Washington, D.C., which represents some 30 companies. “Whenever anyone goes skiing, they have to sign a waiver that shows that they understand the risks that they’re about to take.” He said that his group is developing a form that would be used on the first space flights.

The difference in safety requirements between air flights and space flights is meant as a way to allow the new industry room to develop, said FAA spokesperson Brown. It’s also a reflection of space flight’s risks.

Multi-day space trips, like the ones that this Boeing spacecraft might one day perform, will carry more risk than short flights. (Artist rendering credit: Boeing)

“Flying on a commercial space vehicle won’t be considered as safe as flying in a commercial airplane when operations first start,” said Brown. “But just as in the early days of aviation, some people are willing to take those risks.”

And even after thousands of space flights, whizzing away on a rocket is likely to never be as safe as flying in a plane, said the industry’s Gedmark.

The chance of a plane suffering an accident is one in a million, said Stanford’s Scott Hubbard, while manned space launches have been about 95 to 96 percent successful since they first started 40 years ago.

“So that means you had a 5 percent chance of something very wrong happening,” said Hubbard.

Two of the companies leading the commercial space business are Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Both have been putting satellites into orbit since the 1960s and helped build the space shuttle for NASA. Now they and about a dozen newer, smaller companies are poised to play a bigger role in space.

Some companies will take over transportation of crew and cargo to the International Space Station after NASA launches the space shuttle for the last time in 2011. Among them are SpaceX, a company in Hawthorne, California, owned by entrepreneur Elon Musk, also the founder of the Palo Alto-based electric car company Tesla.

Meanwhile, in April, President Obama announced a new space policy that increases the role of private industry in space transportation and calls for spending $5.8 billion over five years to support commercial space travel. The Senate approved a NASA budget that allots this amount, but negotiations are underway with the House, which is less supportive of private efforts. [UPDATE: On Sept. 30, the House approved a bill that authorizes $1.4 billion for commercial space transportation over three years. The final amount will be determined by legislation that still needs to be approved, said NASA spokesperson Bob Jacobs.]

Other private companies are focusing on building spacecraft to carry tourists on short flights in which they would achieve weightlessness, but not orbit the Earth. And some like Boeing are combining transportation to the space station with tourism. The company hopes to sell tickets on its planned flights to the space station, just as the Russians have done on eight of their missions to raise funds for their space program.

Shorter, but safer

The safety of space flight will vary depending on how far into space passengers venture. And that will depend on how much they can afford, though more money might actually increase the risk.

Starting at $200,000, Virgin Galactic is offering space tourists tickets for a two-hour trip that will take them 60 miles up to the edge of space. They’ll float around surrounded by darkness – stars don’t twinkle in space – and they’ll be able to snap photos of the Earth. These flights are called suborbital because the spacecraft doesn’t go into orbit around the Earth the way that a flight to the International Space Station would. Virgin Galactic has collected $45 million in deposits from 330 people, and intends to fly its first space tourists sometime in 2012, the AFP news agency reported this week.

Virgin Galactic tested its SpaceShipTwo spacecraft in July above the Mojave Desert. The spaceship is in the middle, carried by a vehicle with two fuselages. (Credit: Mark Greenberg)

The weightless experience would last only a few minutes, said Stanford’s Hubbard.

That type of short flight will be far less risky than longer space trips because the rocket won’t need as much energy to launch and won’t be coming back through the atmosphere as fast, said Hubbard.

Short flights also won’t be likely to cause the health problems that longer space trips can trigger, said Millie Hughes-Fulford, former space shuttle astronaut and University of California-San Francisco professor of biochemistry and biophysics. On trips lasting from nine days to 6 months, humans and animals have been found to suffer a whole host of physical effects.

“Loss of bone has been verified, loss of immune function, loss of muscle strength,” she said. “And humans don’t regain bone that they lose in orbit.”

Million-dollar diaper

Still, Boeing is betting that a few people will want to make the longer trip. Those with several million dollars to spare have so far only had the opportunity to fly to the International Space Station on board a Russian spacecraft. They soon might be able to board a U.S. vehicle.

Boeing’s seven-person spacecraft, called the CST-100, will be cozy, with three people sitting above four others inside the capsule.

“If you stood up, your head would be about to hit the ceiling,” said Keith Reiley, Boeing’s commercial crew development program manager. But once you were floating around, he said, it would feel “more roomy.”

Boeing's spacecraft would seat seven. (Credit: Boeing)

It would take eight hours to get to the space station, which is in orbit about 260 miles from Earth. Diapers would be provided for “number one,” said Reiley. As for “number two,” the facilities would be located behind a privacy curtain.

Boeing isn’t ready to say how much tickets will be. It depends on the market the company finds, Reiley said. But judging by the almost $40 million the Russian space agency charged Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté to travel to the space station in 2009, those could be some very expensive diapers.

Boeing is designing the spacecraft in Houston and Hawthorne, California, with $18 million in stimulus funds. If NASA decides to move forward with the vehicle, Boeing would deliver it in 2015.

Since NASA only needs four of the seats, the company has partnered with the Virginia-based Space Adventures to market the rest of the seats to private individuals, companies, non-governmental organizations and federal agencies besides NASA. Space Adventures already markets the trips on board the Russian spacecraft. Boeing’s idea in following the Russian model is to bring down the cost of missions for NASA, Reiley said.

Floating on the cheap

For those who have $5,000 of expendable income, the experience of weightlessness is already available. Space Adventures, through its Virginia-based company called Zero-G, provides short airplane trips that create weightlessness without the need to travel to space.

Berkeley-based venture capitalist Dan Miller took his first Zero-G trip four years ago, flying out of San José, and liked weightlessness so much that he returned with his 12-year-old son, on a trip leaving from Las Vegas.

Dan Miller experiences weightlessness on board a Zero-G flight. Astronauts train on similar flights. (Courtesy Dan Miller)

“It was peaceful, calm,” he said. “It felt like a very natural state to be.”

Weightlessness, as it turns out, isn’t the result of escaping the gravitational pull of the Earth. In fact, the Earth’s pull is so strong that it keeps the Moon orbiting around it.

Zero-G’s modified Boeing 727 jets climb about 6 miles up into the air, then pitch the nose. As passengers fall with the plane, nothing resists their mass the way that the Earth offers resistance when our feet are planted on it. That’s why they’re able to float around an area of the plane where the seats have been removed.

“It’s the exact same weightlessness that astronauts experience,” said Miller, who wanted to be an astronaut as a child. On Zero-G’s planes, the experience lasts 30 seconds, repeated 12 to 15 times, as the plane climbs and falls.

So what’s next for Miller?

“I would prefer to go orbital because you’re living weightless for a few days,” he said.

And the view isn’t shabby either, said former astronaut Hughes-Fulford, who spent nine days on board the space shuttle Columbia in 1991.

“Take your camera,” she said encouragingly. “You get one life, you should use it how you want to – with your family’s agreement.”

In this artist rendering of Boeing's planned flight, the CST-100 spacecraft docks to a private space station built by Las Vegas company Bigelow Aerospace.

More video:
Watch our QUEST story about LCROSS, a NASA mission that could pave the way for a moonbase.

37.424106 -122.1660756

Cal Poly's CP-4 mini-satellite in orbit. Credit: The Aerospace
Corporation.

It's a classic engineering story – a garage inventor spends years working in isolation, only to produce something that gets the attention of the world. Ok, the CubeSat story may not be quite as romantic, but it does have a lot of the same ingredients.

Professors at Stanford University and Cal Poly created CubeSats – 10 by 10 by 10 centimeter mini-satellites – as enginneering projects to give their students hands-on experience. Compared to standard satellite missions, which can run hundreds of millions of dollars and take years to complete, CubeSat missions are mean to be done cheaply and quickly.

CubeSat is also a standard – a basic blueprint that any university program can use. CubeSats are actually known as "FedEx satellites," since universities can mail them to Cal Poly to arrange a ride into space. They've created launching devices called P-Pods (a box that fits the CubeSats perfectly) so they can piggyback on larger rocket launches. Once the main cargo is deployed, the P-Pod releases the CubeSats into orbit. Depending how high they are, CubeSats can orbit for more than a decade before they burn up in the atmosphere.

What started at universities has spread – NASA, Boeing and other aerospace companies all have mini-satellite programs. Despite the small size, CubeSats are actually able to do valuable research. They can space test new technology, submitting it to all the rigors of space travel like solar radiation and launch stress. Recreating those conditions on the ground can be very expensive.

CubeSats can also gather scientific data. On Tuesday, NASA will be launching Pharmasat, which they hope will be their second nano-satellite in orbit. It will carry yeast samples, and once in orbit will hit them with an anti-fungal to see if their resistance is increased in space. NASA has previously observed that some bacteria are more resistant to antibiotics in space, something that could be dangerous for future human space travel.

You can tune in on Tuesday evening for the Pharmasat launch. Three other CubeSats from Cal Poly and other organizations will also be getting a lift into space.

Listen to the Do-It-Yourself Mini-Satellites radio report online, and see our Web Extra: Mini-Satellites Slideshow.

37.42444 -122.16714

Artist concept of lightning on Venus. Credit: NASA

With all the attention that the exploration of certain other planets has received lately, I feel that Venus exploration has fallen off our radar a bit, and that it is high time for an update.

There is no lack of exploration of Venus today: NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, bound for Mercury, flew by Venus twice (2006, 2007), making observations on the fly; Japan is currently planning to send a climate orbiter mission ("Planet C") there in 2010; and the European BepiColombo will perform a couple of Venus flybys of its own, in 2013, on its way to Mercury.

Most notably, the European Venus Express orbiter is in the middle of a two-year mission of exploration, and has revealed new and fascinating things about Venus–a planet whose cloud-shrouded surface kept us mostly ignorant about it until recent decades. (Before the 1960's it was even speculated that Venus might be a steamy swamp or rain forest world!)

Here's a quick recap of some of the highlights of Venus Express's findings:

"Hurricanes" at the poles: Venus Express's VIRTIS instrument, which is able to probe several different layers of the atmosphere, has put together a detailed picture of wind behavior at different latitudes and different altitudes. What was discovered from these observations is that Venus has giant, hurricane-like vortexes capping its poles. Winds within these systems all flow in generally the same direction, as you'd expect with hurricanes, circling mostly windless "eyes" at their centers at the poles.

Lighting: Evidence of lightning on Venus was detected by earlier orbiter and lander missions, and Venus Express has confirmed it–maybe more lightning activity than on Earth. What makes Venus's lightning unique among the planets with lightning (Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, as far as we know) is that it's the only case where lightning is formed by something other than clouds of water droplets–in Venus's case, sulfuric acid droplets do the trick. Lightning can be an important factor in that it breaks up atmospheric molecules and allows them to recombine in different forms.

Active volcano search: It has long been suggested that there may be active volcanoes on Venus today, though no direct evidence (like images of erupting volcanoes, for example) have yet been obtained. Venus Express has measured large variations over time in the concentrations of sulfur dioxide in Venus's atmosphere–a compound that on Earth comes from volcanic eruptions.

There's a lot more to say about Venus, as it is a world as varied and fascinating as the Earth (minus the life forms, as far as we know). Though it may not be the hottest vacation spot in the solar system, with its pressure cooker of a toxic, acid-laced atmosphere, it is one of those great mysteries that we actually get to watch unfold before us as exploration of it moves forward.

37.8148 -122.178

A patch of what might be ice, exposed by Phoenix's
landing rockets.

Two blogs ago I wrote about the then upcoming landing of the Phoenix spacecraft on Mars, near the Northern polar ice cap (Probing the Martian Pole). The entire point of landing on Mars' extreme northern plains was to find and examine ice-ice we know is up there in great abundance, as detected by orbiting spacecraft (Mars Odyssey 2001).

There, frozen under the surface dust layers, is a vast deposit of ice-"enough to fill Lake Michigan twice." So Phoenix was sent to actually land there and scrape up surface samples of the soil, and hopefully ice. The question was, would the layer of dust covering the ice be thin enough for Phoenix to reach the ice with its robotic arm and shovel?

The landing occurred on May 25th-a successful landing. NASA broadcast the drama live on NASA TV, which we shared with several hundred Chabot visitors via planetarium, theater, and closed-circuit TV. There were no actual images coming from Phoenix during the landing-after all, it was cooped up in its protective shell for much of the descent-but the excitement of the real-time drama and the nervous faces of NASA/JPL were enough to enthrall our audience. Pictures wouldn't come form Phoenix until later that night at the earliest.

But the pictures did come in over the days following. At first they looked much like images from other Mars landers (Viking, Pathfinder, Spirit, Opportunity), only flatter. Rusty red soil, low flat horizon, a scattering of pebbles and rocks. The landscape itself appeared less interesting to me than other landing sites-but if you measure Phoenix's success by the beauty of the scenery, you're missing the point.

Phoenix is pretty much all about the ice, and what chemicals are frozen and preserved in it. The questions asked by the Phoenix mission are: did life ever arise on Mars, is the current climate on Mars suitable to support life, and what is Mars' geological makeup? If the vast ice deposits of the flat northern hemisphere lowlands are the frozen leftovers of what was once a liquid sea, then are there chemical clues of past conditions-even past life-locked up and preserved there?

So, do we have answers to these questions yet? Is there ice under Phoenix within reach of its scooper? At the time of my writing this the answer is: maybe. During the first week of testing Phoenix's systems to get it ready for full-on prospecting, a picture of the ground underneath the lander was taken using the camera attached to the robotic arm. This picture revealed a patch of solid substance that seems to have been exposed by the blast of Phoenix's landing rockets. It looks like it could be ice, but until a sample is analyzed we won't know for sure (because, it could be solid rock, too).

The first sample scoop of soil dug up by Phoenix's shovel was placed in a bucket on board the lander and examined by camera, before being carefully dumped into a designated sample waste location (Mars' first land fill). The picture revealed some white substance in the reddish soil-which could be ice, or possible salt.…

Stay tuned in the coming days and weeks for hot news from the ice as Phoenix conducts its investigations in earnest.

37.7631 -122.409