A fledgling space tourism company intends to begin flying suborbital test flights out of Kennedy Space Center by 2015, officials say.
Andrew Nelson, chief operating officer of XCOR Aerospace, Mojave, Calif., says they’ll start with a work force of about 20 to 30 and hopefully build to 150 or more. The number of jobs created will depend on the flight rate out of the three-mile-long shuttle runway.
XCOR is developing a two-seat rocket plane that will be able to fly tourists, scientists or microgravity research payloads on suborbital flights – quick flights out of the atmosphere and back down to the ground.
Nelson says that tickets to ride are being sold for $95,000. More than 300 already have been sold, including about 60 to carry payloads.
Asked why they chose KSC, Nelson said the Central Florida tourism market was a big reason.
“With 30 million tourism visitors a year, there’ve got to be a few million who want to fly to space,” he says.
The local work force with its know-how also was a big attraction - as was the Space Coast’s history.
“The DNA. It is the history. This is human spaceflight,” says Nelson. “If you want to do it, you have to do it from here.”
XCOR’s rocket plane would take off like an airplane from a runway. Its rocket engines would burn for three minutes, boosting the plane and its occupants to an altitude of 190,000ft. The plane would continue to coast upward to altitude of 382,000ft. The pilot and passenger would experience just over four minutes in orbit before a glided re-entry and an airplane-like landing 30 minutes after take-off. Altogether, those on the plane would experience 4G’s.
XCOR has been negotiating with Space Florida, the state’s aerospace economic development agency, in order to set up test and flight operations at the Shuttle Landing Facility. NASA, meanwhile, is negotiating with Space Florida to turn over maintenance, operation and development of the landing facility. Doing so would open it up to commercial users, officials say.
KSC Director Robert Cabana, a former astronaut, says that turning the SLF into an airport and a spaceport is “key to our future. It’s really important.”