31 December 2006
Connect the dots: Space tourism, Rickenbacker and Wright-Pat
Sunday, December 31, 2006 Categories: Space
A Chicago
startup’s interest in bringing commercial space
tourism to Rickenbacker
International Airport has sparked a buzz among
space fans in the Buckeye state. Me, I’m ready to
scream.
Latest news: A Dec. 27 Columbus Dispatch report that Ohio development officials are offering incentives to PlanetSpace to open a spaceport at Rickenbacker where tourists would take off for suborbital space flights. (PlanetSpace is a joint venture between Chicago-based entrepreneurs and the startup rocket company Canadian Arrow, based in Barrie, Ontario.)
It isn’t clear to me exactly what PlanetSpace has in mind for Rickenbacker. Its website describes concepts for two basic space business models.
•Suborbital tourist flights would blast off from a barge floating on the Great Lakes. The booster and its passenger-carrying nosecone would separate, and both would parachute back for a water splashdown.
•Orbital flights would involve a cluster of booster rockets and a spaceplane dubbed the Silver Dart from a spaceport in Nova Scotia. The Silver Dart, an angular lifting body design, would glide back for a hypersonic landing. It’s aimed at meeting NASA’s request for a commercial company to ferry astronauts into orbit and back.
I can’t see the FAA or Ohio permitting manned rocket launches from an airport next to Columbus. I can see spaceplanes recovering on Rickenbacker’s 12,102-foot runway — when Ohio’s weather permits it.
But I can’t help noticing how much of PlanetSpace’s orbital plan hinges on work directed from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in the 1950s and 1960s. The company boasts its Silver Dart is based on an old concept called the FDL-7. FDL stands for Flight Dynamics Laboratory – what’s now the Air Force Research laboratory’s Air Vehicles Directorate.
FDL-7 was a part of the program that developed the lifting-body concept for hypersonic gliders. It led to the Martin X-24B, which flew re-entry landing profiles at Edwards Air Force Base in the 1970s and paved the way for the space shuttle. (The X-24B went to the Air Force Museum in 1976.)
So, it seems that Ohio has the technology, the facilities and the seed money for a commercial space enterprise. Why does it take out-of-state entrepreneurs to connect the dots?
Latest news: A Dec. 27 Columbus Dispatch report that Ohio development officials are offering incentives to PlanetSpace to open a spaceport at Rickenbacker where tourists would take off for suborbital space flights. (PlanetSpace is a joint venture between Chicago-based entrepreneurs and the startup rocket company Canadian Arrow, based in Barrie, Ontario.)
It isn’t clear to me exactly what PlanetSpace has in mind for Rickenbacker. Its website describes concepts for two basic space business models.
•Suborbital tourist flights would blast off from a barge floating on the Great Lakes. The booster and its passenger-carrying nosecone would separate, and both would parachute back for a water splashdown.
•Orbital flights would involve a cluster of booster rockets and a spaceplane dubbed the Silver Dart from a spaceport in Nova Scotia. The Silver Dart, an angular lifting body design, would glide back for a hypersonic landing. It’s aimed at meeting NASA’s request for a commercial company to ferry astronauts into orbit and back.
I can’t see the FAA or Ohio permitting manned rocket launches from an airport next to Columbus. I can see spaceplanes recovering on Rickenbacker’s 12,102-foot runway — when Ohio’s weather permits it.
But I can’t help noticing how much of PlanetSpace’s orbital plan hinges on work directed from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in the 1950s and 1960s. The company boasts its Silver Dart is based on an old concept called the FDL-7. FDL stands for Flight Dynamics Laboratory – what’s now the Air Force Research laboratory’s Air Vehicles Directorate.
FDL-7 was a part of the program that developed the lifting-body concept for hypersonic gliders. It led to the Martin X-24B, which flew re-entry landing profiles at Edwards Air Force Base in the 1970s and paved the way for the space shuttle. (The X-24B went to the Air Force Museum in 1976.)
So, it seems that Ohio has the technology, the facilities and the seed money for a commercial space enterprise. Why does it take out-of-state entrepreneurs to connect the dots?
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