A Colorado entrenpreneur is working with a team of researchers to develop

Business Week ponders the upsurge in space interest caused by the Mars Pathfinder and considers the implications for business with a look at SpaceDev, Kelly, Boeing and Pioneer Rocketplane.

A prototype lunar rover called Nomad successfully passed field trials on the Atacama Desert in Chile. Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute built the rover. Sponsored by NASA, the experiment tested the ability to safely maneuver over hazardous terrain without human intervention, and to transmit high resolution video data.

Company Press Release

Rotary Rocket Company of Redwood Shores, California revealed its revised design for the Roton, a rocket-helicopter hybrid vehicle. Using a combination of oxygen and JP4 fuel, the Roton will take off using aerospike engines. It will deliver its payload to low earth orbit. Then it will return to Earth engine-first. At a certain altitude, propellers will extend from the nose of the Roton, and the vehicle will return to the launch site in a manner similar to helicopters. Landing gear will extend, and the vehicle will softly land.

Gary Hudson, President of Rotary Rockets, notes that the first Roton will be about the same size as McDonnell Douglas' Delta Clipper Experimental (DC-X) vehicle. The Gross Lift Off Weight ( GLOW) is about 225,000 pounds. It will carry 2-3 tons of payload, primarily communication satellites. They plan to scale future versions up to the 20 ton class. The first vehicle will be designed for 20-30 flights, while later versions will be able to fly hundreds of times. The company's goal is to build and operate these vehicles until such time as others buy and operate them.

The second public announcement came from Pioneer RocketPlane Company of Lakewood, Colorado. Charles Laurer, Vice President of Business Development, showed reporters and the public the new design for the Pathfinder rocket plane. In order to protect the two F-100 turbofan jet engines from the heat of reentry, they have been repositioned to the top and aft of the plane, where there is less heat. Pioneer just won a $2 million contract with NASA's Bantam Rocket Program, which is for promoting the development of small reusable launch technologies. Pioneer will be competing for another $30 million in contracts, to eventually reach their goal of $100 million in funding. They plan to fly in 1999.

Manned by a crew of two, the Pathfinder vehicle is designed to take off like a regular jet plane, using the 6000 foot runway at Vandenberg Air Force Base. At an altitude of 25,000 feet, the Pathfinder will rendezvous with a tanker plane and be fueled with liquid oxygen. After separating from the tanker, the Pathfinder will ignite its RD-120 rocket engine and zoom to a sub-orbital altitude of 80 miles. At this point, the Pathfinder's cargo bay will open up. A satellite boosted by a Thiokol Star engine will place it into proper orbit. The Pathfinder itself will close its cargo doors, and return to its launch site under power.

As well as the new vehicle design, Mr. Lauer announced that banker and former member of the US Air Force, Richard Freytag, has joined the Pioneer Team. Also announced was an agreement with Thiokol for building the Star booster motors.

A British travel agency, Wildwings, is offering holidaymakers a chance to take an extra-terrestrial sightseeing tour early in the next century. Widlwings is acting as an agent for Zegrahm Space Voyages, an American adventure holiday specialist based in Seattle. Zegrahm intends to announce details of departure dates, prices and excatly what craft will be used in October.

From the L.A. Times' "Life & Style" section:

Would You Go?

If volunteers were being sought to colonize Mars, would you be on the ship or off?

Let us know what you're thinking (for instance: What if your kids could join you but your parents couldn't?).

Nonreturnable submissions, 50 words or less, should be sent by Aug. 15 to "Life on Mars" c/o Life & Style, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053 (Fax: [213] 237-4888).

No phone calls, please (but do include your daytime and evening numbers).

5 new papers relating to the JRS Space Tourism Study Program were presented at the 7th ISCOPS held in Nagasaki July 25-28, showing that this work is advancing on all fronts, and gathering interest from an increasingly wide range of experts - as it deserves to!

• "Dynamic throttling response of LH2 rocket engine for vertical landing rocket vehicle" by Y Naruo et al discusses the technical requirements for rapid throttle response for SSTO VTOL vehicles (like Kankoh-maru) in order to avoid the need to gimbal the engines (which adds to mass and complexity), and reports on recent experiments carried out on an LH2 engine that suggests that these requirements can indeed be met with existing technology. Very encouraging for reducing vehicle costs!
• "A common cost target of space transportation for space tourism and space energy development" by M Nagatomo et al estimates the launch cost targets that must be met in order for both space tourism services and transmission of solar-generated electric power from space to be commercially attractive propositions. In both cases the target is somewhere around $100/kg to low Earth orbit - a bit higher for tourism, a bit lower for SPS. If the launch industry can meet these targets they will be in a "whole new ball-game" with essentially limitless prospects for investment and growth, since they will be tapping two of the biggest business sectors in the world economy. Until this cost target is reached, space activities will remain a burden on taxpayers. Kankoh-maru and the cargo version are being designed to meet this target.
• "The JRS space tourism study program Phase 2", by P Collins and K Isozaki describes the current state of the JRS research, now in its 5th year. The 2nd Report of the JRS Transportation Research Committee has just been published, including cost estimates for development, certification and production of Kankoh-maru. The 1st Report of the JRS Business Research Committee is due to be published soon, including discussion of operating cost targets, operation of Kankoh-maru from airports, orbital accommodation and other matters. Plans for the 3rd phase of the JRS study (now beginning) are described.
• "Orbital considerations in Kankoh-maru rendezvous operations" by T Williams et al starts to analyze the use of Kankoh-maru for making return trips to orbiting hotels. Kankoh-maru is designed primarily to take 50 passengers for a short flight in a 200 km orbit, and reaching a hotel imposes new constraints on the vehicle design and operation - particularly since hotels will probably be sited in orbits of 355 km or above. The paper is written to be easily read by non-specialists such as airline planners, and looks forward to the day when phrases like "apogee", "RBAR", "Ten-to-one-rule" and "dog-leg" are as familiar to airline flight dispatchers as "great circle", "jet-stream" and "go-around" are today. And to when "passenger load factor", "block time" and "spacecraft utilization" are equally familiar to launch vehicle designers!
• "Pilot procedures for Kankoh-maru operations" by Erik Anderson et al is a real "first" - the first pilot's manual for an SSTO VTOL rocket. It discusses the need for rocket designers to adopt "aviation philosophy" if rocket transport is to become a mature business. And then goes through the procedures for a routine flight. The Appendix is a (simplified) version of a Flight Manual for the " Kawasaki S-1", an all-purpose variant of the Kankoh-maru. It reads like the real thing, and shows that if maintenance requirements can be brought down to reasonable levels, airlines will operate VTOL rockets just like aircraft. It even shows how, if there had been a pilot aboard, the DC-XA accident could have been avoided. A fun read for pilots!

  All in all, these papers are very encouraging to read, and show some of the widening interest in developing vehicles to provide space tourism services to the public. We hope they'll attract more researchers to join this field. For example, many university Professors, researchers and students have some flexibility to decide what subjects they will research. And as a research field space tourism has three great features - it's new, and so it's easy to do genuinely new work that is genuinely valuable - and even historic. It's fun - researchers will have no difficulty recruiting enthusiastic and able students - and getting media coverage for their work. And it's leading towards money - unlike almost all other space-related research. Tourism is one of the biggest industries in the world, it's growing fast, and it's always looking for new fields. So it's possible to do work that's not only new and fun, but also of real commercial interest.

A number of emerging technologies have the potential to provide major benefits to the aerospace industry. Among those recently cited by the judges of Technology Innovation Award is Space Tourism : `Recent in-depth studies suggest that currently available technology could make a two-stage spaceplane a reality within a decade (see also AWST Apr 7, p 58)'

AWST reports that Sen. John Glenn (D.-Ohio), the first American to orbit the Earth (in 1961), has a "..burning desire to go back to space..." NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin is reported to be considering his request to fly again. Glenn is 76 years old, and he would become the oldest person to visit space.

It is very unlikely that there will be any health problems due to his age, provided that he's in normal health - since going to orbit and living in zero G is not stressful. However, NASA is not allowed to carry people other than professional staff related to the work of each mission on board the space shuttle, and it seems unlikely that US taxpayers will wish to pay for his trip. Now if some company was only offering tourist flights... -SFJ