Multiple providers and an assortment of vehicles herald a healthy start to commercial passenger spaceflight.
Irene Klotz
A jubilant Michael Strahan, co-host of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” emerges from the Blue Origin New Shepard capsule after a 10-min. ride in suborbital space. Credit: Blue Origin Webcast
As 2021 draws to a close, for a brief time the number of private space travelers is nearly matching the number of professional astronauts in space, with commercial missions by Blue Origin and Space Adventures overlapping crewed flights underway aboard government-owned space stations to bring the total number of flyers to a record 19.
The tally includes eight private citizens—six riding aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital spacecraft and two who chartered a Russian Soyuz flight from U.S.-based Space Adventures to the International Space Station (ISS). The commercial missions are a harbinger of what is expected to evolve in crewed spaceflight transportation over the next two years.
Among the newly initiated was Laura Shepard Churchley, who was in eighth grade when her father, Alan Shepard, became the first U.S. astronaut to fly in space. His 15-min. suborbital ride on May 5, 1961, serves as historical and technical context for Blue Origin’s namesake New Shepard commercial flight service, which debuted last July.
On Dec. 11, Shepard Churchley joined four paying passengers and another guest flyer, Michael Strahan, co-host of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” for the third crewed flight aboard the reusable New Shepard launch system. Blue Origin has flown 14 people into suborbital space to date, including the company’s founder and financier, Jeff Bezos. The pricing has not been disclosed.
The New Shepard comprises an autonomously operated capsule that returns via parachute and a propulsion module that boosts the capsule to altitude and separates for a powered vertical landing near the launch site.
Next year, Virgin Galactic is expected to transition from flight testing and upgrades of its air-launched SpaceShipTwo system to join Blue Origin in the nascent commercial suborbital spaceflight industry. Virgin Galactic ticket prices currently sell for $450,000 per seat.
Just ahead of Bezos’ launch last July, Virgin Galactic flew its founder, Richard Branson, as part of a shakedown mission that included two company pilots and three employees. In conjunction with upgrades to the SpaceShipTwo Unity, the company’s quadjet WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft Eve is being modified to support a fleet of vehicles. The first next-generation SpaceShip III, named Imagine, is currently under construction in Mojave, California. “When the mother-ship [Eve] is ready, we will have Unity ready to finish off the remainder of its test program and Imagine ready to start,” says Virgin Galactic President Mike Moses.
While Shepard Churchley and her crewmates prepared for their suborbital ride, Japanese entrepreneur and video blogger Yusaku Maezawa and his production assistant, Yozo Hirano, launched aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule, accompanied by cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, for a 12-day stay aboard the ISS. Space Adventures brokered the flight, its ninth space charter and first orbital mission since Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte flew to the ISS in September 2009. The company has a reservation for another two Soyuz seats in 2023, a mission that also could possibly include a spacewalk, says Eric Anderson, Space Adventures co-founder and chairman. “We don’t yet have customers per se, but we have a couple of people who are looking at it seriously,” he says.
E-commerce entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa during centrifuge training in preparation for his flight to the ISS. He also has chartered a flight around the Moon aboard a SpaceX Starship. Credit: Space Adventures
With a price of $50 million and more per seat, the market for orbital spaceflight is perhaps a few people per year, Anderson notes. “If the price comes down to 20-30% of where it is now, maybe dozens of people will go, but it’s still an exclusive-type thing. It’s not for everybody until it gets to be a lot less,” he says.
Toward that goal, industry juggernaut SpaceX is working on a two-stage, fully reusable, multipurpose, 100-person space transportation system known as the Starship. “If the Starship works and is operationally cost-effective and can hold as many people as we hope it can . . . then maybe the cost could come down to the point where a relatively affluent person could aspire to fly,” Anderson says. “But it takes rapid reusability, very efficient maintainability, operability . . . all those things—and safety—so that the vehicle costs can be amortized over many, many more flights.”
SpaceX in 2020 became the first company to fly astronauts to the ISS, restoring U.S. crewed orbital spaceflight capability following the end of the space shuttle program in 2011. A year later, the company organized and operated a private orbital mission, commanded and financed by billionaire entrepreneur/philanthropist Jared Isaacman. The Sept. 15-18 Inspiration4 mission became the poster child of a new age of autonomous civilian spaceflight and a high-profile fundraiser for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
The first all-civilian spaceflight crew (from left), Jared Isaacman, Chris Sembroski, Sian Proctor and Hayley Arceneaux, who flew spent Sept. 15-18 aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon in low Earth orbit. Credit: SpaceX
“We have witnessed some remarkable achievements and growth in 2021,” says Karina Drees, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, a Washington-based industry advocacy organization. “The industry flew several private citizens to space safely on multiple vehicles, each with their own unique designs.”
In February, Houston-based Axiom Space plans to demonstrate another type of space charter when retired NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, now employed by Axiom, returns to orbit to command a four-member private mission to the ISS.
With flight services and training provided by SpaceX, the 10-day Axiom-1 (Ax-1) mission is part of a planned series of U.S.-based, privately funded flights to the ISS. The missions also serve as precursors to a new Axiom-developed, -owned and -operated addition to the ISS. The Axiom modules, which are targeted to launch beginning in 2024, are being designed to separate to form the hub of a new commercial station before the ISS is decommissioned.
NASA is looking to transition its low-Earth-orbit (LEO) research program and technology demonstration initiatives to commercial platforms before the ISS ends sometime after 2030. Currently, the U.S. and its ISS partners—Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada—have agreed to fund the station through 2024.
In addition to its January 2020 selection of Axiom to dock modules to the ISS, NASA on Dec. 2 awarded contracts worth a total of $415.6 million to Blue Origin, Nanoracks and Northrop Grumman to develop designs for commercial space stations. The contracts mark the first of a two-phase approach to transition from the ISS to one or more public-private outposts in LEO.
The Ax-1 crew, slated to launch in late February, includes Israel’s Eytan Stibbe, a former fighter pilot and entrepreneur. Stibbe was a close friend of Israel’s first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, who died in the Feb. 1, 2003, space shuttle Columbia accident. He is flying on behalf of the Ramon Foundation that he helped establish. Stibbe plans to spend his time in orbit on educational projects and technology demonstrations.
Stibbe’s mission also exemplifies a way for countries, companies, research institutions and educational groups to explore the value of having a human spaceflight program without the cost, time and expertise needed to build and fly hardware.
Axiom’s next flight, Ax-2, targeted for late 2022, will be headed by retired NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, a former ISS commander who holds the U.S. record for the most time spent in space. Her crew is expected to include the winner of a Discovery reality-TV show, “Who Wants To Be an Astronaut?”
The Discovery project follows the October 2021 flight of Russian actress Yulia Peresild and producer-director Klim Shipenko to the ISS to shoot scenes for a movie called “The Challenge” that is being produced under a commercial agreement among the Russian space agency and two Moscow-based media companies.
Along with Axiom’s debut in 2022, Boeing is preparing for a second uncrewed flight test of its CST-100 Starliner, which, like SpaceX’s Crew Dragon system, was developed in partnership with NASA. A crewed flight test to the ISS is slated to follow about six months after the uncrewed Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2), now targeted for mid-2022. The flight tests are part of NASA’s certification requirements.
“Right now, I’m focused on getting these test flights done. That’s the steppingstone to supporting NASA, and that’s my next primary focus,” says John Vollmer, Boeing Commercial Crew vice president and program manager.
“As I’m doing that, I want to start looking at what commercial opportunities I have,” he adds. “I do have some seating capacity that I might be able to make use of [to] carry an extra passenger, but I’ve got to get through these test flights first and these flights that I’ve committed to my customer.”
The Starliner also is part of the transportation system to support the Blue Origin-led commercial LEO outpost known as Orbital Reef. After more than a year of work, software and communications problems that marred the Starliner’s December 2019 debut were resolved, and Boeing was poised for an August 2021 reflight when a new issue surfaced: stuck valves in the capsule’s propulsion system.
The company in October said it would take a $185 million charge against earnings to cover the additional repair and test costs. That followed a $410 million charge in January 2020 to pay to resolve issues stemming from the flawed OFT-1. Boeing’s Commercial Crew contract with NASA, which includes six operational missions, was worth up to $4.38 billion as of Oct. 31, 2021—a 3.5% increase since its award in 2014, NASA figures show.
With Starliner certification still pending, NASA in December said it intends to award three extra crew transportation missions to SpaceX under a sole-source contract modification. SpaceX, which launched its third Crew Dragon mission to the ISS in November, has three more operational flights under its existing Commercial Crew contract, which was worth $2.73 billion as of Oct. 31, 2021, an increase of 4.9% since its initial award in 2014. The value of the three additional flights has not yet been released. NASA said it anticipates potentially needing additional ISS crew taxi flights as early as 2023.
NASA is closing 2021 with the selection of 10 new astronaut candidates who are scheduled to begin a two-year training program in January. They will be joined at the Johnson Space Center in Houston by the two latest additions to the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) fledgling astronaut corps. The first Emirati astronauts, Hazzaa al Mansoori and Sultan al Neyadi, who were selected in 2018, trained in Russia. Al Mansoori flew to the ISS in September 2019 aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, becoming the first person from the UAE to fly in space.
Meanwhile, astronauts from the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) are training in Russia to prepare for flight aboard India’s first crewed spacecraft, Gaganyaan. The capsule is planned to launch aboard an ISRO Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mk. III rocket around 2023.
In addition to astronaut training, Russia is assisting ISRO with wind-tunnel testing of the crew module and the launch escape system as well as development of components for the capsule’s life support system, according to ISRO Chairman Kailasavadivoo Sivan.
“We’re also exploring the option of human spaceflight with NASA,” Sivan said at the International Astronautical Congress in Dubai on Oct. 25.
With a directive to get India’s human spaceflight program flying as soon as possible, ISRO turned to other space-faring nations, including France, for help. “We are really progressing very strongly on this national mission,” Sivan says.
Independently, China is closing 2021 in the midst of what was expected to become its longest-duration spaceflight. The planned six-month mission by taikonauts Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu aboard the new Chinese space station, currently under construction, began on Oct. 15. China’s current longest spaceflight lasted three months.
