United Federation of Pioneers?
It’s not every day a new industry and market comes along and the potential for space tourism is, if not infinite, then certainly global.
This week the Personal Spaceflight Federation (PSF), comprising of private, public and non-profit organisations working to make commercial human spaceflight a reality, re-launched itself with a new slate of officers and a new chairman.
They are president Michael Kelly (the Federal Aviation Administration’s commercial space transportation advisory committee chairman and X Prize Cup flight operations vice president), chairman Alex Tai (Virgin Galactic’s operations vice president), vice-chairman Jeff Greason (Xcor Aerospace chief executive), treasurer Stuart Witt (Mojave spaceport general manager) and secretary George French (Rocketplane-Kistler chief executive).
For people wanting to play Kremlinologist and examine the PSF line up Virgin Galactic is well represented, with a senior vice president and the manager of the spaceport from which it will initially operate on the top table.
Greason’s position of vice chair is no surprise, he was a champion of the PSF when it was originally launched in February 2005. A long time space advocate he also had a lot of behind the scenes involvement in lobbying Congress when the, quite frankly, landscape transforming Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act (CSLAA) 2004 was going through the legislative process.
Then there is George French, Rocketplane-Kistler (RpK) chief executive. His role as secretary will no doubt now have an added emphasis with RpK’s award of $207 million by NASA for its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services demonstration programme (COTS).
The corporate membership of the PSF also reflects this leadership split.
Of the 14 members, six of them are SpaceShipTwo (SS2) developer Scaled Composites, SS2’s first customer Virgin Galactic, the SpaceShipOne (SS1) launch site Mojave Spaceport, SS2’s future launch site New Mexico’s newly renamed Spaceport America, SpaceShipOne’s motor provider SpaceDev, and the X Prize Foundation, which funded the X Prize that SS1 won.
Then there is orbital tourism provider Space Adventures, COTS winner and aspiring orbital tourism company Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), and Bigelow Aerospace, whose prototype space hotel Genesis I may one day provide a destination for these SpaceX and RpK.
Finally there is AirLaunch, which is involved the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s small launch vehicle programme, and embryonic booster developers Armadillo Aerospace and Transformational Space.
The passage of the CSLAA caused tensions amongst some of the members of this group with legal descriptions of launch systems being a particularly tetchy point. For some a description would ensure their technologies were literally outlawed while a competitor achieved market domination.
The PSF has done a good job of putting that behind them with the co-operative work on submissions to the Federal Aviation Administration’s proposed rules on commercial human spaceflight.
Looking to the future Virgin Galactic may well wonder what RpK’s NASA award will do for its suborbital Rocketplane vehicle, which is today the only close competitor to SS2 with hardware demonstrably in development.
While the NASA award to SpaceX could also bring it closer to threatening Space Adventures’ monopoly on sending tourists into orbit care of Russia’s Soyuz boosters.
How would the relative successes of the suborbital and orbital markets represented in this federation affect each other, how would the PSF respond to the threat of new tourism inspired United Nation’s space treaties or even a fatal accident?
Space tourism is a high stakes game and the difficulties its had historically with funding and technological credibility, and more recently with legislative battles and now the potentially market distorting impact of $478 million of NASA cash, could all reintroduce tensions into an industry that knows that a united front is a key confidence builder.
