MUMBAI - India's first space tourist says he has no regrets about paying
$200,000 for a two-hour sub-orbital flight aboard the "world's first
spaceliner", and is promising to film the out-of-this-world experience for
prosperity - if he returns to Earth safely.
Santosh George Kulangara, 37, a globetrotting diamond entrepreneur and travel
show presenter, booked his ticket for Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, which is
set to launch its maiden flight early next year, during a visit to London in
2007.
He showed off his ticket to excited school children in the Nehru Planetarium in
Mumbai on September 27, sharing his experiences
in astronaut instruction, which have so far has included zero-gravity training
at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
"When Abul Kalam [former Indian president and a space scientist] invited me to
the Rashtrapati Bhavan [presidential residence in New Delhi] he said I must
tell as many people, particularly school children, about my space travel
experience," says Kulangara, who is the producer of Sancharam, a weekly
travel program, and has permission from Virgin Galactic to film his experience
and sell it to satellite TV channels.
He, five fellow space tourists, and two pilots, are scheduled to take off from
the Mojave Spaceport in the California desert aboard the Virgin Galactic
SpaceShipTwo, a brainchild of British billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson.
Virgin Galactic has announced plans for first weekly and then daily space
flights if the project does not suffer anymore delays.
SpaceShipTwo's reputation has been severely dented by a series of postponements
and a fatal rocket fuel explosion which occurred in July 2007, when three
engineers were killed and another three were injured after a propellant system
blew up during testing.
A year after the explosion, Virgin Galactic unveiled WhiteKnightTwo - Eve -
named after Branson's own mother, which will carry SpaceshipTwo to an altitude
of 15 kilometers before detaching. SpaceshipTwo will then be propelled a
further 100 km into the stratosphere.
Despite the setbacks, market confidence, and Kulangara's enthusiasm, for space
tourism are soaring.
"I have no regrets at all about paying $200,000 for the space flight and feel I
am very fortunate," Kulangara told Asia Times Online. "Even though there were
some skeptics, now I have so many people telling me that they too want to
travel to space."
At $200,000 for the 150-minute space ride, Virgin Galactic announced as early
as November 2007 that the "Founders List" of the first 100 passengers was full.
Four Indians - two US-based and one each in the United Kingdom and India
(Kulangara) - are among the 200 space tourists.
"According to market reports, there are between 50,000 to 60,000 people ready
to pay for a space tourist flight provided the first flight is successful,"
Kulangara said. In other words, if he returns to Earth alive.
"The interest in space tourism is not surprising because $200,000 is not that
big these days," said Kulangara. "In my hometown of Cochin [in Kerala, South
India], a reasonable-sized apartment costs around $200,000. And look at the
thousands of people who regularly spend more on farm houses and yachts."
Virgin Galactic also seems to believe so, having placed orders for five
SpaceShipTwo spacecraft and two WhiteKnightTwos, to be built by the SpaceShip
Company, a joint venture between Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites and Branson's
Virgin Group.
Space tourists such as Kulangara, and Virgin Galactic-like companies are
largely the result of work done by the legendary aviator Rutan, the creator of
SpaceShipOne, which won the $10 million Ansari X Prize in 2004 for being the
first privately funded spacecraft to be successfully launched.
SpaceShipOne, now preserved for posterity at the Smithsonian in Washington DC,
was the first non-governmental spacecraft capable of carrying three people to
the sub-orbital height of 100 km above the Earth's surface twice in a
fortnight.
The Ansari X Prize was the first major international effort to create new
technology for cheaper space travel, with Branson's Virgin Galactic becoming
the first privately-owned corporate company to offer space rides to the paying
public.
The most recent space tourism industry entrants include Elvon Musk, co-founder
of PayPal Inc, who launched his first commercial rocket Falcon 1 into orbit on
September 29, after three previous failures. Jeffrey Bezo, Amazon founder, has
also started his space travel company Blue Origin to launch satellites and
passengers into orbit.
As a passenger aboard SpaceShipTwo, which is approximately the size of a Falcon
900 executive jet, Kulangara will have breathtaking views of Earth out of
portholes, and experience weightlessness if he leaves his cushioned seat. The
nearly three-hour flight will zoom around the planet at 4,000-km-per-hour,
three times the speed of sound.
Looking at the bigger picture, beyond the hype of the rich and famous booking
multi-million-dollar space rides, Kulangara points out that technology
spin-offs are immense considering current private industry efforts to find a
cheaper, safer way to space travel. For example, making terrestrial air travel
cheaper, faster and safer.
"I feel that I have not just bought a joy ride but invested in the future of
transport technology," said Kulangara. "The idea behind SpaceshipTwo is that
the new space travel technology will enable aircraft to leave the earth's
atmosphere, travel to its destination on earth and then re-enter the earth's
atmosphere."
This would smash the current 800 kph speed limit of regular passenger aircraft
and would bring the travel time from Kulangara's hometown Cochin to New York
down from 14 to about two hours. "We had the Concorde that could travel at
supersonic speeds," he said. "But that is no more, now SpaceshipTwo could
launch the next generation of faster, safer, more environment-friendly
passenger travel aircraft."
Veteran space industry professional and current president of Virgin Galactic,
Will Whitehorn, told Space.com during its launch that, "WhiteKnightTwo has the
best fuel efficiency of any aircraft ever built in history. It is the world's
first 100% carbon composite aircraft ... 100% minus the blades and
undercarriage. Even the control wires are carbon composite, a first in
aviation, and a patented technology."
Kulangara has had to undergo periodic amateur astronaut training in preparation
for his flight. The second phase of training, at the National Aerospace
Training and Research Center in Southampton, Pennsylvania, was to enable him to
cope with the immense gravity forces he must endure as he leaves and enters
Earth's atmosphere.
"When we get into space, the gravity will rise up to three times and while
returning to the atmosphere, it will grow up to six times," said Kulangara, who
used the same facilities as NASA astronauts during his zero-gravity training at
the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in August 2007.
During the training, Kulangara and 10 fellow space tourists were put aboard a
special G Force aircraft which was flown to a height of 40,000 feet, and then
which dove to recreate the zero-gravity effect. "I floated like a piece of
paper from one end of the plane to the other with my hands stretched," said
Kulangara.
With a deep interest in space technology, Kulangara plans to set up a space
academy in India and sees a definite market for space tourism. He regularly
acknowledges the support he has had from the Indian Space Research Organization
(ISRO): "Madhavan Nair [chairman of ISRO] and senior officials are regularly in
touch with me with encouragement."
ISRO is scheduling its first unmanned mission to the moon this October.
Virgin Galactic has given space passengers the choice of a refund, but
Kulangara doesn't plan to use the option. "Twenty years ago, people would have
called you crazy if you said you were starting a space tourism business, or if
you said you bought a $200,000 ticket," Kulangara said. "Now, national leaders
and scientists congratulate me."
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