Space travel firm plans its next giant leaps

Rising price tag for orbital flight?
Anderson said he has more candidates in the pipeline for future orbital trips: There's a firm contract with the Russians for a spot on a Soyuz spaceship next year, and a "preliminary understanding" for a flight in 2007. One candidate's name has even leaked out, despite Anderson's best efforts: Japanese entrepreneur Daisuke Enomoto is reportedly on deck for next year's flight.

But there's a problem on the horizon. The continuing problems with the space shuttle mean that the Soyuzes are currently the only vehicles cleared for taking people back and forth to the station, and that is putting a squeeze on those Soyuz seats.

"The Russians have a lot of people they need to fly on Soyuzes," Anderson said. "We need to find a way to get more Soyuzes flying to the station. We're working on that also."

The ideal answer would be to double the number of Soyuzes going to the station every year, from the current two to four, Anderson said. But that won't come cheap: Even though the Russians can launch Soyuzes at perhaps a tenth the cost of a shuttle flight, that's still serious money. In August, Russian news media reported that Moscow was planning to charge NASA $65 million for Soyuz launches starting next year.

"Until someone can come up with a better way to take people to orbit than the Soyuz, the price is going to go up," Anderson said.

Rising competition in suborbital flight?
In contrast, Anderson expects the cost of sending tourists into suborbital space to come down in future years, as competition and economies of scale come into play. Space Adventures is talking with several of the companies who are working on suborbital spaceships, and Anderson said he has a client list of "pretty close to 200" people so ready to take a ride to the edge of space they've put down a deposit.

"We had about 10 [sign up] last week," he said during the mid-September interview with MSNBC.com. "In Japan, some people are paying in full."

Space Adventures has also arranged future suborbital giveaways for companies ranging from Oracle to the Norwegian candy company Nidar.

Anderson estimated that it would be 2007 or 2008 at the earliest before any of the spaceships begin service, but that at least three or four companies will be offering suborbital packages by 2012. "It certainly won't be just Virgin Galactic, I know that," he said.

And by that time, perhaps that round-the-moon trip just might be a reality as well.

Of course, not all of Space Adventures' business plans have panned out. For example, the state of Florida nixed a proposal to set up a suborbital space lottery, citing focus-group studies showing that winners would want to take the money instead. And Space Adventures hasn't yet come up with a long-rumored deal for a space-based reality-TV show. (The latest reports from Hollywood focus on a faux space-camp project code-named "X Quest.")

But Anderson isn't deterred by space dreams deferred. He said he feels his work at Space Adventures is more than just a job.

"I got into this because I feel it's very important for the future of humanity," he said. "It is the epitome of what we look for in the future, in terms of what's positive, what inspires us, what sparks our curiosity. Any type of exploration is not only good for the pocketbook — it's good for the soul."

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