Art Dula, who founded the company in 2005, announced a plan to carry out the
first test flight in 2014 and the first civilian voyage a year later in a
speech at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London yesterday. He later told the
: "This is not space tourism, it
is real scientific expedition – they would go further than anybody has gone
before in space. "We want to have the same kind of tradition that Britain had in the 16th
and 17th centuries when its explorers went to the ends of the earth seeking
knowledge and information and bringing back wealth."I don't know how much wealth they will bring back, but the first person
to fly it will earn a place in the history books."
Crew members, numbering up to three per shuttle, would spend a year in
training before launching the shuttle from a base in
Kazakhstan and docking
with a space station, which would then use thrusters to ferry passengers
through space. The slow speed of the thrusters, compared with more expensive rockets, would
mean a mission to the moon and back would take four months to complete, with
the craft spiralling through space "like an etch-a-sketch", Mr
Dula explained.
He said: "The engines are very low-thrust, they are very dependable but
they run on electricity. This kind of technology has been used before but
never for a big habitation module like ours.
"We are probably not going to have a professional astronaut because
frankly, this type of space flight is so different to anything that has been
before that there is no advantage in having someone what has a steely eye
and can make a decision in half a second. With the kind of equipment we have
you could make a decision overnight and sleep on it."
From the space station the crew would be able to carry out any scientific
experiments they wished, using equipment ferried with them on the shuttle,
and later missions could potentially even orbit the moon, he added.
Excalibur Almaz acquired its fleet from NPO Mashinostroyenia, the Russian
company which designed the Almaz space programme, and refitted the six craft
with "off the shelf" modern systems.On its website the company says: "Each EA space station boasts 90 cubic
metres of pressurised volume, which is plenty for a crew to survive in
relative comfort for months at a time. The fleet is at a very high level of
space readiness and, crucially, has a proven emergency-escape system."
Mr Dula admitted his plan sounded "somewhat unbelievable" but
insisted he would have no shortage of takers.He said: "A sovereign government could certainly afford it, it is not
anywhere near what an Apollo mission would cost because we have well over £1
billion of costs that the Soviets have sunk into it. But this have to be a
government body.
"There have always been very wealthy individuals who have sponsored
scientific missions ... we simply do not know who is going to do it, who
since childhood has desperately wanted to go into space, but I expect we
will have a lot of interested people."Dr Dave Parker of the UK Space Agency said the move was part of a "whole
new world" of private space travel but added that he was "pretty
sceptical" that a civilian could be trained to fly a spacecraft in the
space of a year.He said: "What they are doing is trying to put together some pieces of
existing technology from Russia with a few bits of new technology so that
they can re-use it and they have been trying to develop this idea for a good
few years now.
"Obviously the reality is they do not have the investment to do any of
this at the moment. But good luck to them, people have got to try things
like this."
--
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9342210/Fly-to-the-moon-for-100m.html
