Will the Reusable Falcon 9 Kill the Suborbital Launch Industry?

Will the Reusable Falcon 9 Kill the Suborbital Launch Industry?

Sepatuads.com   Oktober 01, 2011   Comment  

With SpaceX’s announcement this week that the company would not only develop a reusable first stage for its Falcon 9 family of rockets but would make a completely reusable rocket system (I will use Clark Lindsey’s nomenclature: "rF9" for reusable Falcon 9), I have been wondering about the future of the young NewSpace companies developing reusable suborbital rockets.  Will companies like Masten, Armadillo and to a lesser extent XCOR and Virgin Galactic, survive this incursion from a well-funded NewSpace Cousin?

(the youtube video via Clark Lindsey's youtube channel.)  

SpaceX has announced the company is developing the “Grasshopper,” a 100 foot-tall suborbital Falcon 9 first stage that SpaceX’s cadre of young, talented engineers will use to test this initial piece of the rF9.  SpaceX has NOT announced any intention to commercialize the Grasshopper.  But if Masten, XCOR, and Armadillo continue to delay bringing a product to market that can reach 100KM, and SpaceX continues to develop products in its typical rapid fashion, might customers ask to buy payload space on an upcoming Grasshopper test?  

Or would SpaceX be willing to sell Grasshoppers to operators who then provide a suborbital launch service to users using the Grasshopper all before Masten has reached 100KM?  Could the unmanned Grasshopper be modified to carry passengers and compete with Virgin and XCOR?  If an operator came with funding, wouldn’t SpaceX take their money to make the modifications to "manrate" Grasshopper?

But the big money is the orbital market.  Most of the suborbital companies have expressed interest in using their suborbital experience and even their suborbital vehicles to expand current offerings to include an orbital system.  XCOR has published this image of an orbital capability.  

Virgin Galactic even took investment money from the Middle East to jump start their orbital program.  Could an rF9 meet all market demand for both suborbital and ultimately orbital launches as well?  And if they do, are the current suborbital companies doomed? 

It all comes down to money.

How cheaply could SpaceX really launch their new rF9?  We don’t know.  SpaceX does not even know yet.  But we can make some interesting estimates.   The heart of these projected orbital price reductions stems from reusing the rF9 like Southwest reuses its 747’s (which can fly commercially for 30 years with proper maintenance).  How many reuses is SpaceX planning on? 

At this point, the best data I have is a nugget SpaceX's CEO, Elon Musk, said this last week that he is targeting $500K trips to Mars as a market for his reusable craft.  

Let’s make some assumptions so we can approximate SpaceX’s reusability assumptions:

1. A price for a Dragon/Falcon 9 trip to Mars will be equal to the price SpaceX is currently charging NASA for ISS visits ($130M per trip) - optimistic assumption
2. 5 paying passengers per Mars Trip - optimistic assumption
3. 10% profit per launch
4. All maintenance and between-flight costs are included in the launch price - optimistic assumption

SpaceX breaks even after 47 flights (but that is a lot of assumptions).  here is a table to help visualize the math:

 Assuming a 47-flight amortization, what could be SpaceX’s breakeven price per KG to LEO?  Or to say it another way, how low would the suborbital company’s prices have to be to beat SpaceX?  

Again, let’s make some assumptions:

1. A price for an rF9 to LEO is the same as current LEO Falcon 9
2. Falcon 9 payload to LEO is unchanged
3. 10% profit per launch
4. All maintenance and between flight costs are included in the launch price.
5. Propellant Cost per Launch = $200K
6. rF9 breaks even after 47 flights

Based on these assumptions, SpaceX's breakeven Price to LEO for rF9 is $130 per KG or ~$1.4M per flight.  Again, here is a table to summarize how I came to this conclusion.  At the end of this post is a link to an interactive spreadsheet where you can modify these assumptions to create your own analysis.

These SpaceX prices are surely the most optimistic for the near term:

1. What if the rF9 doesn’t get 47 flights per vehicle?
2. What if between-flight maintenance costs for the rF9 are significant?
3. What if payload capacity has to be significantly reduced to accommodate rF9’s reusability elements?
4. What if near term launch demand is not high enough to fly as often as they need?

Even with the identified risks, this analysis would indicate:

• Yes, rF9 could compete against suborbital companies for suborbital market share (especially if SpaceX sells the Grasshoppers to entrepreneur operators)
• Yes, rF9 could compete against suborbital companies for orbital market share through extraordinarily low prices

So how can XCOR and Masten compete?  

I continue to be bullish regarding the utility of Nanosat-class launch vehicles.  When suborbital companies start offering orbital services (a second generation service), their initial orbital offerings would probably be within this Nanosat class - broadly speaking, payload space significantly under 100kg.  Is there still a market for suborbital companies to offer this type of orbital service?  Even if SpaceX may be able to now match (or beat) them on price?  

Yes.  Here is why:

Sometimes smaller is better.  The smaller vehicles these suborbital companies will eventually offer on orbit should:

• Be easier to "fly full"– to get the $130/KG price on an rF9, you have to wait for the manifest to fill.  Not so with a smaller vehicle.  XCOR was talking about a payload of 12-20KG initially.
• Be easier (and cost less) to maintain.
• Be launched with less integration or preparation – this advantage is the BIG one.  XCOR talks about multiple flights on the same day, taking off and landing from existing airports.  Even if the rF9 could launch that often, it will be some time before regulations allow SpaceX to fly that often - especially if they are still flying from the Cape or Vandenberg where ops tempo is measured in "launches per month" not "launches per day".

Nanosat launchers are the future, but only if their ops tempo is fast enough to justify paying a premium for preferential launch windows.  

This advantage of the small won’t last forever.  SpaceX will keep improving its initial RLV offerings.  Spaceport operations will grow to allow for more airline-like ops tempos.  So Nanosat launch operators (today’s suborbital companies) will have to keep improving too.

But there is a market for Nanosats and it hinges now on ops tempo.  There is hope.

The bigger worry…

…is in the near term.  I mentioned earlier, I doubt SpaceX will pursue commercializing their Grasshopper suborbital vehicle.  But they may be open to selling this suborbital vehicle for others to operate.  Such a suborbital operator flying the Grasshopper would have tremendous suborbital market advantages and could be a major competitor to those suborbital companies focusing on suborbital research (Masten, Armadillo, etc.).

Suborbital companies should be worried, but not panicking.  If the reusable Falcon 9 hastens the development of viable Nanosat launchers, the industry will be doubly blessed – low launch costs from the rF9 and high ops tempo from Nanosat launchers.

Here is the interactive spreadsheet so you can build your own rF9 assumptions.

XCOR's Nano Sat Launcher

XCOR's Nano Sat Launcher

Sepatuads.com   Mei 05, 2011   Comment  

At Last Week's Space Tourism Society’s +10 Dinner, I spoke with two of the founders of XCOR: Aleta Jackson (Co-Founder/Chief Technician), and Dan DeLong (Vice President/Chief Engineer). We discussed general Lynx status, customers, regulation concerns for each flight, XCOR’s preference to fly out of standard airports, etc. And then we changed gears to discuss the Lynx’s “Dorsal pod” intending to ride a top of the Lynx.

Here is an image of the Lynx without the Dorsal pod – in tourist configuration (my term).

Here is an image of the Lynx with the Dorsal pod on top – in NanoSat configuration (again, my term).

XCOR’s stated plans are to develop an upperstage that can ride inside of the Dorsal pod to launch Nano-Satellites.  the Lynx would act as a first stage to get to 100km and the upperstage would take the payload to orbit. Here is an XCOR image of an upperstage launching out of the Dorsal Pod carrying a nanosat on board (perhaps my favorite XCOR image ever).

Here are a few of the XCOR Upperstage specs:

• 76cm diameter
• 340cm long
• Mass up to 650kg
• 12kg Nanosat Payload
• 400km circular orbit

This discussion with XCOR’s founders got me thinking again about NanoSat launches themselves. The small payload market (which include nanosats) can be segmented by how time-sensitive their launch is:

• Low Time Sensitivity: Traditional NanoSatellites – a delay of a few days/weeks would be frustrating, but par for the course with rocket launches.
• High Time Sensitivity: Urgent NanoSatellites perhaps fulfilling an ORS mission for the military of disaster relief
• High Time Sensitivity: Package delivery to space stations – daily milk runs – fresh apples – critical (but small) replacement parts

I have said before how I believe package delivery to station to be a large portion of this “small payload” market because of the frequency of needed launches and ridiculously low integration requirements (how long does it take to load a bag of apples into a “no bruising” canister for launch?).

Now XCOR has a long way to go. A lawyer friend of mine reminded me last week when I was discussing this topic with him, “Yes, but XCOR has not flown their version 1 vehicle to altitude yet.” And he is right. The NanoSat launcher from a Dorsal Pod would be a Version 2 vehicle (at least), but…

…If I was to build a business to serve the small-payload-to-LEO market, I would want to secure a method to reach LEO as frequently as my customers needed. XCOR through their Lynx/Upperstage vehicle would provide an attractive solution if they can truly fly as often as they say they will be able to. It would not surprise me that, in the end, the market leader will be the company who can fly the most.

Jeff Greason at TEDxSanJoseCA

Jeff Greason at TEDxSanJoseCA

Sepatuads.com   April 24, 2011   Comment  

Thank you Jeff.  Jeff Greason eloquently explains "Why Space?," and "Why do we need a frontier?"  I especially love this quote...

But the most important element of a frontier is psychological, because it is hard to sustain that believe in limits - that belief in the zero sum game - when you can see, stretching before you, new lands - untamed, untapped.  

I don't think it is an accident that the industrial revolution coincided with the age of sail.  I don't think it was an accident that the United States was founded on the edge of a very sparsely populated and untapped continent.  And this time, the lands that we see are truly unpopulated.  They are waiting for the gift for life.  ~Jeff Greason

Low Costs. Rapid Testing. Right-Sized Processes.

Low Costs. Rapid Testing. Right-Sized Processes.

Sepatuads.com   Maret 22, 2011   Comment  

XCOR 5K18

Why work with a New Space firm? As a major Prime, why not just build it yourself?  New Space firms won’t have access to the equipment you do.  New Space firms won’t have as diverse of a workforce as you do.

ULA had reasons for working with New Space.

In their announcement this week, United Launch Alliance (LM and Boeing) described the reasons for working with XCOR on a new innovative Aluminum rocket engine technology:

• Lower Costs: “performance and reliability our customers need at a more affordable price.” The overhead/G&A cost burdens for large companies often makes one hour of effort for a smaller company cost less than at larger aerospace firms - even when you factor in the smaller firm's profit margins. 
• Faster to Test and Re-test: “rapid turnaround for build and test cycles that drive innovative learning.” A culture built on the idea of “when in doubt, build” rather than a culture built on “when in doubt, PowerPoint”.
• Right-sized Processes: “small company project management approach.” Larger companies often times have a one-size-fits-all set of processes that may work well for large development efforts but may need to be rethought for smaller, more risk-tolerant efforts. Kudos for ULA/XCOR recognizing the need to match the processes with the effort.

Every industry is replete with examples of large firms working with/buying innovative smaller firms to gain the advantages mentioned above: lower costs, rapid testing, right-sized processes. But first you need to get invited to the dance.  New space firms need to demonstrate enough independent success to get noticed by these larger companies.  But how do you demonstrate that type of independent success? Lower costs. Rapid testing. Right-sized processes.  Congrats, XCOR.

25 SBIR Winners to Watch

25 SBIR Winners to Watch

Sepatuads.com   Desember 13, 2010   Comment  

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program was created by Congress in 1985 as a tool to promote small business, commercialization, innovation and US competitiveness.

NASA’s version of an SBIR (similar to programs run by other agencies) awards a series of contract “Phases” to small business helping them demonstrate their technologies.  Upon completion of these phases, small businesses would be empowered to independently pursue commercialization of their technologies.

Good for the company: marketable product.
Good for NASA: access to technologies at commercial-off-the-shelf prices

Phase I contracts: $100K (or less) over 6mo.
Phase II contracts: $600K over 24mo.

The SBIR program continues to show great potential, but sadly produces far fewer commercializations then anyone would like. The low commercialization success is driven by several factors (I am sure there are more than these):

• NASA chooses SBIR technologies that they want commercialized , not necessarily ones that have been analyzed to thrive in the marketplace (SBIRs are more tech development than business development). Check out #24 on my list below for a firm attempting to change this for NASA's biomedical SBIRs.
• The SBIR program has some companies that win and execute an SBIR through all of its phases, but never commercialize anything preferring the low-risk approach of perpetually submitting new SBIRs without taking the high risk/high reward attempt at commercialization. Have you heard of the term, “SBIR Shop”?
• Aerospace components don't sell nearly as well as integrated products.  Since SBIRs focus on components (usually), it may take the integration of several SBIR contracts to gain enough components to turn into an integrated product slowing the path to commercialization.

But let’s talk about the good news. Wow, there are a lot of cool ideas in this batch of NASA SBIR Phase I winners. Below is my summary of 25 SBIR Ideas to watch.  To make my list, the SBIR idea had to meet these loose standards:

• Have a market (I could easily think of) beyond NASA
• Be hypothetically commercialized by a small firm
• Demonstrate a space focus (sorry to all of the air-traffic control and UAV SBIR winners, you did not make the list)

Forgive me if I missed the market opportunity from your firm’s SBIR submittal (there were many more winners than the twenty-five I chose):

1. Advanced Scientific Concepts, Inc. 3D Flash LIDAR real time embedded processing  
2. Altius Space Machines, Inc. Attractive docking technology
3. Aspen Aerogels, Inc. Ablative Flexible Aerogel TPS Materials for Mars Aerocapture and Entry
4. Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation Rendezvous and Docking Technologies for Orbiting Sample Capture
5. Composite Technology Development, Inc. De-orbit Devices/Technologies for Small Spacecraft
6. EM Photonics Compressed Sensing for Space-Based High-Definition Video Technologies
7. Firestar Engineering, LLC Low Cost Carbon-Carbon Rocket Nozzle Development
8. Gloyer-Taylor Laboratories LLC Reliable, Reusable Cryotank
9. HKM Enterprises Inc. Interface for grouping multiple secondary payloads into a primary mission
10. Honeybee Robotics Ltd. Magnetic Bearings for Small Satellite CMG’s & Other Miniature Spacecraft Mechanisms
11. Hyper-Therm High-Temperature Composites Novel Fabrication Approach for SiC/SiC Thermal Protection System Elements
12. Innoflight, Inc. CubeSat Power Management Controller and Solar Array Articulation System
13. Materials Technologies Corporation Durable and Conductive IR witness coatings for High Accuracy IR Thermography
14. Pacific Design Technologies, Inc. High Performance Space Pump (mentions re-fueling hydrazine on orbit)
15. Picometrix, LLC Miniaturized Non Destructive Evaluation for In-Orbit Inspection.
16. Pioneer Astronautics Nitrous Oxide Micro Engines
17. Powdermet, Inc. Aerogel Modified Structural Thermal Protection System
18. Rocketstar Robotics Inc Modular Actuators for Space Applications
19. Sierra Lobo, Inc. A CubeSat-Scale Testbed for Cryogenic Fluid Management Technologies
20. Technology Applications, Inc. Lightweight Inflatable Cryogenic Tank
21. Techshot, Inc. Life Science Research Sample Transfer Technology for On Orbit Analysis.
22. Tethers Unlimited PowerCube: Integrated Power, Propulsion, and Pointing for CubeSats
23. Tethers Unlimited High Thrust Efficiency MPD Thruster
24. Virtual Incubation Company, LLC A venture capitalist market assessment of NASA’s Human Research Program Technologies
25. XCOR Aerospace Cryogenic Composite Tank Fabrication for Reusable Launch Vehicles

Promising Innovations...yes.  But it's long road to commercialization.  Good luck to all of these companies in implementing both their technology and business solutions.

Interview with the Founder of The NewSpace Business Group

Interview with the Founder of The NewSpace Business Group

Sepatuads.com   November 28, 2010   Comment  

Are you a NewSpace organization? Could you use a group of MBA’s at your disposal to complete company projects without the cost of keeping them on your payroll? Meet the NewSpace Business Group. Think of the NewSpace Business Group as a network for nearly minted passionate, space-minded MBA’s that gain valuable business experience by solving real world problems for the NewSpace industry.

So listen up Altius, Armadillo, Bigelow, Masten, XCOR, SFF, and NLV Challenge competitors. The NewSpace Business Group is available to assist with your:

• Market Research
• Competitive Analysis
• Pricing Strategies
• Business Development Strategies
• Business Plan Development
• Internships
• and more.

Here is an interview with the group's founder, Jonathan Card (another interview in the series from Space Studies Institute’s Space Manufacturing Conference 14).


Q: Describe the NewSpace Business Group.

Jonathan Card: The NewSpace Business Group is a student group for business students, historically at the MBA level, interested in space businesses. We are focused on bridging the gap between the space technical community and other specialties in business that are necessary to run a successful company. One of the most destructive things that our current space policy has done is that NASA has frequently had to act as the intermediary between the space companies and the public. NASA's goal has been to foment experimentation and technical advances that were necessary in the 1960s to get humans to space.

Unfortunately, it's not enough for the technology to exist, but it has to exist in a network of social institutions that manufacture it, improve it, and operate it and there has been limited success in forming these kinds of institutions. This is very difficult for the government to do in a democracy, but NASA has recently begun to rectify this. COTS, SBIR, and, I think, Obama's recent NASA budget have started to bridge this gap.

The NewSpace Business Group is a setting for people in the space community to apply what they are learning in school to the industry that needs to learn it and so that business people that specialize in Marketing, in Finance, or in other aspects of private companies can learn from the NewSpace Business Group members on their campus that space is a viable place to do business and make a profit. It's less and less true that there's only one customer (NASA), that you need to get money (from NASA) before you can build anything, that you need to structure your company around government contracting and procedures.

Q: There are many other campus organizations. Why do you think you will be able to attract top business talent?

Jonathan Card: Because space is awesome, of course! It's space! Seriously, though, space is the New World of our time. It's a place that is unsettled and full of riches, from solutions to the energy crisis to new IP that can only be discovered in space. It is what will keep our civilization alive when an asteroid comes to finish us off like the dinosaurs before us, when nuclear weapons finally get out of hand, and when some unknowable tragedy strikes our ecosphere. In the end, money is the way for the people to show what's important to them; since space is important, there must be money to be made and the one to figure it out, gets to keep it. Fortunes were made, lost, and made over and over in the transatlantic trade and in the mines and forests of the New World. It will happen again in space.

Q: How do you see the NewSpace Business Group benefiting the NewSpace industry?

Jonathan Card: I would like to see NewSpace alumni forming the next cadre of managers and entrepreneurs of space-oriented companies. There are a lot of exciting companies coming of age right now and there are still holes to be filled in. Companies are just learning to talk to each other, how to do business with each other, and what institutions other industries created for themselves that space companies don't have because the unrelenting NASA-focus of the past has prevented a mature industry from emerging organically.

There are opportunities here that we haven't yet dreamt, and they are problems that MBAs and other business school students study full-time. We are the leaders that will make this industry make money and will make money elsewhere and bring it to NewSpace and so into the future.

Q: What you like the NewSpace Business Group to grow into over the next few years?

Jonathan Card: I'd like to make it into a national campus organization whose members know each other, work together, and can learn to rely on each other. I'd also like to make it into a group whose name becomes a credential; that, with the NewSpace Business Group on their resume, business school students can be assured of at least an interview with investors, companies, and other firms in the space industry.

Q: How can the New Space Industry benefit from your group’s efforts today? Internships? Projects? Other?

Jonathan Card: We have done projects for NewSpace groups already; we helped organize some of the events at the NewSpace 2009 conference (it was this experience that led to me becoming Treasurer of the Foundation) and we did an industry analysis of the future of the CubeSat industry for a Google Lunar X Prize competitor applying modern industry theories of innovation to see if we can establish some insight into the future growth of that technology. Portions of that paper are being prepared for public distribution; stay tuned to http://www.newspacebusiness.org/ or our LinkedIn group for more information on that, probably in December. We are always looking for projects and internships for our participants. The benefits are subtle and more widespread than you may think.

Last spring, we arranged a campus talk by Dannie Stamp, the former COO of Iridium (you can watch this on our YouTube channel); bringing such a luminary to campus was important to the school and it was my understanding at the end of the year that the school was interested in building stronger ties with him. This kind of relationship can be an important way for NewSpace to be highlighted in publications and to be used as examples in classrooms. That kind of publicity, in the context of other topics, is an important way to mainstream what we're doing.

Q: How can the New Space Industry help you become successful? Where do you need help to take the New Space Business Group to the next level?

Jonathan Card: I don't really want to focus on "how can the NewSpace industry help me". It's important to me that this remains a group that comes together to help the industry. Even when we are looking for projects, it's important that those projects are not just make-work for the sake of a good idea. If we can't help NewSpace, there's no point is being a group. If NewSpace can't help humanity, there's no point in it existing. I firmly believe that for-profit businesses, and those of us that believe in the power of the private sector, exist solely to serve others and be others-centered; usually our customers. I guess the most the NewSpace industry can do for us is to remember that we are there for them, and our members are a group of people that will know something about their industry, and if they need something done or they need good people, we are here to help.

Q: If anyone reading this wants to get involved how can they get a hold of you?


Jonathan Card: jcard@email.arizona.edu will still reach me, even though I've graduated, as will any message through the LinkedIn group. This has been dormant for the last few months, but we're revisiting it and will be re-opening it for new members soon. We welcome industry members, students, prospective students, or anyone else that wants to keep up on our activities.

Q: What should I have asked that I didn’t?

Jonathan Card: What are you doing now?

The NewSpace Business Group has alumni at Sargent Controls, which manufactures parts for military and civil space and airplane parts, and we have several members that have started their own businesses after business school.

I'm working at a cloud software company, B50 Data, making software for tracking maintenance for commercial shipping fleets. We're finishing our first round of sales calls without any venture or angel capital, and we're very optimistic. In addition to polishing the paper on CubeSats for publication, I'm finishing a paper overviewing international property law and various means of resolving complex IP legal situations, like those in cloud computing, other than expanding the power of the UN.

I've also started inquiring about re-establishing the Serviceable Spacecraft Committee on Standards at the AIAA so that we can start work on docking, berthing, and refueling standards that we need in order to have things like orbital fuel depots. I've heard so many people talk about how NASA needs to start establishing industry standards, but that's not NASA's job. It's our job, and it's time we did something about it. I've gotten some interest in it from some good people, but it's still an infant idea. I'm also heading up several committees for the Space Frontier Foundation, and I'm investigating some interesting possibilities that may lead to a NewSpace company. Nothing definite yet, but I'll keep you informed.

Interview with bloon's founder José Mariano Lopez Urdiales

Interview with bloon's founder José Mariano Lopez Urdiales

Sepatuads.com   Oktober 16, 2010   Comment  

There are two main customer categories for suborbital space flights:

1. Those that want “the experience” and
2. Those that want “the view”

Those seeking “the experience” could be adventure seekers valuing the high-g’s, motion sickness, and perceived danger; they could be floaters valuing the micro-gravity free-floating opportunities; or they could be scientists valuing some aspect of the flight profile.

Those seeking “the view” want to see the curvature of the earth, view earth landmarks, see the blackness of space, or take pictures of the stars. These people want an eye-witness account of what space looks like more than an account of what space feels like.

Although most potential customers in category one (“the experience” seekers) are also in category two (“the view” seekers). I doubt the reverse is true. In fact for Virgin Galactic and XCOR, which will be offering suborbital rides that include both both categories of experiences, these companies will sell tickets to "the view" seekers only if there is not a viable alternative for low-intensity, “view only” trips.

Enter an alternative: bloon.

bloon is the first product of Spanish startup, zero2infinity, offering customers “the view” of space while enduring a less intense balloon-based ascent instead of a rocket one. The images above are illustrations from the bloon website.

Here is a quick comparison between the two suborbital offerings - excuse the gross generalizations in the rocktet column:



Below is a video where zero2infinity flies the Spanish Soccer team’s red jersey to 33km highlighting the team's recent success at this year’s World Cup. After the video is my interview with zero2infinity’s founder, José Mariano Lopez Urdiales about his plan for the company.



And now my interview with zero2infinity’s founder, José Mariano Lopez Urdiales.

Project-related Questions:

Q: What is bloon? Can you give a summary of your company’s suborbital balloon experience?

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: Seeing the curvature of the horizon, a black starry sky under a white hot sun and the Earth atmosphere as a blue thin layer protecting our planet from the harshness of the cosmos. It’s a visual experience that many people would like to enjoy. Well, bloon is my company’s solution to the problem of offering that view in a safe, sustainable and enjoyable manner.

Four flight participants lift off vertically in a pressurized piloted pod. The pod soars to near space with the aid of a helium sail. It spends two hours at a cruising altitude of about 36km. The choice of altitude is optimal in terms of experience and safety because it is high enough so that the human eye can appreciate all the visual cues of suborbital flight and not too high to complicate the return with a high-speed re-entry. Flight participants will be able to gaze at our planet through panoramic windows; this is possible because our speeds are always relatively low. Different customers will want to do different things while they are up there, listen to the explanations from the pilots, eat, pray, write a poem, it’s left to their imagination. Every bloon flight is a bespoke experience and privacy can be provided on board. The descent procedure starts and the pod lands on a predefined spot using a guided parafoil and vented airbags. We’ve selected textile-based decelerators because they’ve proven to be the most reliable and safe way of coming back into the atmosphere and landing. The Russian, Chinese, early American and most new American real spacecraft designers seem to agree.

Q: What are the remaining milestones between today and commercial operations?

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: We are halfway through our fundraising and expect to be done by the end of 2010. The next major milestone is to fly a first human. That will be an experimental flight and could happen as early as late 2011. In 2012 will be mostly busy testing. Then we’ll go through the certification period, first with EASA and later on with the FAA. Certification is a complex issue, many steps have to be certified, the company, the vehicle, the operators, etc. We expect the first commercial operations to take place somewhere between 2013 and 2015.

Q: You mentioned on your website the potential for participants to experience one-third, one-sixth, or microgravity during a portion of the experience. Describe how this is achieved and how long that portion of the experience might last.

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: Once the pod separates from the balloon, it free-falls and a stabilizer parachute is deployed. The parachute can regulate how much it opens using a cord at its rim. A control system operates that cord using as data input the acceleration felt by the pod. This technique can reproduce different acceleration profiles. Typically lower acceleration levels can be sustained for shorter times. Thus microgravity can be felt for about 20s and lunar gravity could be about a minute and so on.

Q: What training would I need as a participant?

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: Strictly speaking, with a half a day briefing on security procedures it should be enough. However many participants will likely enjoy other preparatory activities to make the most of their flight. These may include, space photography, basic astronomy, discussions with scientists providing scientific piggyback payloads, etc.

Q: And now a personal question from looking at the graphics on your website, does the bloon cabin include a drink bar and bathroom? With such a long experience(!), as a participant, I would probably appreciate both?

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: bloon does include both as we want our clients to be as comfortable as possible and to really enjoy the experience. Food to the taste of the clients can also be provided.

Business-related Questions:

Q: What is your source of company funding (Grants, Friends/Family, Angels, VC’s, Bank Loans, etc.)?

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: After a year funding it myself, I’ve been blessed with angels that have been able to propel the project beyond what I could achieve with my own resources.

Q: How much funding do you need to raise (and how much have you raised to date)?

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: The whole project requires about €16M in capital. I cannot disclose the amount committed to date as we are in the middle of a funding round.

Q: Your price point of $100K per ticket is half of Virgin Galactic’s. Talk about your pricing strategy (why not $10K, why not $200K?).

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: You are correct about the ticket price. From our experience, there is another metric that is as important as the ticket, that is the price per minute of experience. Since the view from near space is the core of the experience (who would pay to fly on a windowless spacecraft?), our price is over an order of magnitude below rocket-based alternatives.

We have to cover our costs and make a profit and that sets a minimum, we could not do $10K with our current technology. We are also very keen to provide highly customized solutions such as taking off and landing from a part of the world, or flying into a solar eclipse, to customers willing and able to afford such extras.

Q: Do you see a market in scientific applications?

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: Definitely. Just as suborbital reusable crewed rockets are an improvement over conventional sounding rockets, and specific programs like NASA’s CRuSR will support them, bloon signifies an improvement over conventional high altitude balloons. Regardless of the overall density of the means to reach near-space (heavier or lighter than air), having a human physically in the loop is an outstanding advantage for research. If it is valuable at labs at ground level and on orbit as well, I do not see why it would not be valuable for intermediate altitudes.

Q: What has been your greatest success to date with bloon?

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: With so much to do I tend to move on and think of the next steps and challenges rather than reflect on any particulars events of success. If pressured I’d say: we’ve flown and successfully recovered a pressurized scaled prototype to near space altitudes.

Q: What has been your greatest disappointment (or challenge) with bloon, to date?

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: I had this romantic idea of the venture capital firms as risk takers and out-of-the-box thinkers that, like free spirits, partner with entrepreneurs to change the world at a profit. Well, I have utterly failed to find any of that, and that was a disappointment. Fortunately, other ways of getting funded exist. And if there are any VCs reading that want to prove me wrong, I’d love to hear from you.

Q: What is your next big challenge to overcome?

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: We are very much concentrated in our first piloted flight to near space.

Q: Your company is founded in Spain, talk about the experience of starting a space-related company in Spain, with its business and regulatory environment.

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: For some reason many of the brightest students in Spain tend to pick aerospace engineering as a career choice. From my experience in the USA, France and the Netherlands that is not the case there. Law, Computer Science or Biotech are much better magnets for talent there. Full labor costs (wages + insurances) in Spain are significantly lower than in most other advanced economies. Another huge advantage is the absence of ITAR restrictions. We will be able to fly passengers from any nationality, regardless of the embargo status of their home nation. This is an incredible advantage over firms developing in the USA. And the weather here is amazing, which is equally good for quality of life and test flying.

Q: You have attended the International Space University’s Summer Session. Talk about that experience and how it affected this project. Would you recommend ISU’s Summer Session to other budding Space Entrepreneurs?

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: I would highly recommend the ISU experience; it really helps to get things to happen. I went to ISU in the Chilean winter of 2000 for their two months program. There I worked on two projects, one the creation of a Chilean Space Agency and the other one was titled Space Tourism: from dream to reality. I find remarkable that in 2001 the Agency was setup along the lines of the white paper we prepared at ISU and that very year the first so-called space tourist, Dennis Tito flew to the ISS. That report was the first time I wrote, and as far as I know anybody else, how balloons can offer the benefits that private space explorers desire.