up up and away

By Marc KaufmanWashington Post Staff Writer Sunday, March 30, 2008; Page A03

The race to become the first private company capable of launching paying customers into space got more crowded last week as a small but well-respected California firm announced plans to have a two-seat spacecraft ready within two years.

The mini-ship, built by Mojave-based Xcor Aerospace and designed to fly to the edge of space, is expected to be ready for test flights by 2010, around the time Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic hopes to send its much larger spaceship on its maiden voyage.

More than half a dozen other companies -- most, unlike Xcor, bankrolled by wealthy businessmen, including Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com and Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal -- are building rockets and spacecraft that they hope will capture the imagination of space travelers. Most plan to finish testing their rockets and rocket planes in the next few years, and the Federal Aviation Administration has estimated the market for space tourism to be more than $1 billion a year by 2021.

In announcing his company's plans, Xcor chief executive Jeff Greason revealed last week that his company's spaceship, called the Lynx, will have an unusual but understandably interested partner: the Air Force.
The Air Force recently announced that it awarded Xcor a small-business research contract -- usually between $700,000 and $900,000 -- to demonstrate the capabilities of the spacecraft. The U.S. fleet of space shuttles, which are fixed-wing spacecraft like the Lynx, is scheduled to be retired in 2010, but the Air Force has voiced interest in continuing that technology. The Lynx could help provide a model.

XCOR is a company that I could start working for... immediately.

I would like to start selling tickets for the flights. I wonder what the seats will cost?

Let's take a guess.

I say.......$1 for the first launch....and then $1 million if everything goes well.

Eventually the seats will run about $50,000 apiece.

Please note that by the time the Lynx is ready to fly....gasoline will be $7.00 a gallon. Of course the fuel for this craft will probably be unique....and God only knows how much unique fuel goes for on the open market.

A meal on the flight will run around $30,000. A barf bag will cost $15,000. An in-flight movie will be about $2500 and a small bottle of beer will be in the $750 range.

I'm going to call XCOR and get some details and I'll get back to you later. Maybe I'll get a distributorship for ticket sales....if Ticketron hasn't already snapped up the dealio.

Michael Timothy McAlevey