Anyone can be a Gagarin

Fifty years after Yuri Gagarin’s orbital flight as the first man in space, Space Expedition Curacao opened ticket sales for suborbital flights from Curacao starting in January 2014.

The company Space Experience Curacao (SXC), founded by Ben Droste and F16 pilot Harry van Hulten, is set to operate a spacecraft, called Lynx, developed by the US’s XCOR Aerospace company, offering commercial trips to the edge of space. A launch will cost about 70,000 euros ($95,000 dollar), and approximately four launches can be performed per day.

At a press conference held at the National Aerospace Laboratory in Amsterdam last Tuesday – on the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s space flight on 12 April 1961 – SXC unveiled a number of Dutch celebrities who had accepted an invitation for one of the first 100 flights. Among these ‘founder pilots’ are DJ Armin van Buuren, Martinair founder, Martin Schröder (79), film star and top model Doutzen Kroes, and Olympic Commissioner Erica Terpstra.

For Maarten Wormer, president of aerospace student society VSV Leonardo da Vinci, the biggest news was that a ticket to space was offered to one lucky aerospace engineering student. Would Wormer go? “Oh, yes,” he quickly replied. “It’s worth the risk. No guts no glory!”

Fellow aerospace student and Delta columnist Olga Motsyk was also keen: “Yes, definitively,” she said, adding that  she’d love to go, even if it only involves departing from and arriving back at Curacao, because no other spaceports are available for landing.

The XCOR Lynx spacecraft that SXC will operate exclusively is currently being built, says Professor Boudewijn Ambrosius (AE). The spacecraft’s engine is special because it uses a piston-driven engine to pump the fuel into the rocket engine. Technical details have not been revealed, but XCOR claims it is safer than using electrical pumps. The rest of the spacecraft will be “built around the engine”, Prof. Ambrosius says. Differing from SpaceShip One (built by Burt Rutan for Richard Branson’s Virgin), the XCOR will start from an airstrip autonomously. It will take off horizontally, using most of its fuel in a steep climb to 30 kilometres before eventually reaching an altitude of 60 to 80 kilometres, Prof. Ambrosius estimates. The spacecraft will then glide back to Earth before restarting its engine to assist in landing. The trips will mainly be an attraction for the rich and famous, the professor expects, because travelling via space (so-called ‘hopping’) requires a much larger plane that can reach much higher in space and carry more passengers.

Dr Chris Verhoeven, who developed the first nano satellite, Delfi-C3, sees parallels to the beginnings of air travel, when the first flights were mainly attractions for the rich who were happy to land at the same place where they started from. According to Dr Verhoeven, who works at Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science faculty, the real mission for the XCOR is not space tourism – which is very sensitive to incidents and accidents – but rather the launching of small satellites. The XCOR can bring a rocket with a payload to the edge of space for a reasonable amount of money on any day one might wish. That is pure luxury for people who until now had to wait endlessly for an opportunity to have their satellites launched into space. Dr Verhoeven admires Droste’s audacity and is glad that building, launching and operating nano-satellites will soon be an all-Dutch affair. Personally, he is preparing for a mission to the moon by 2020. No manned spaceflight for Dr Verhoeven, heaven’s forbid, but rather simply done using his own little satellite.