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WASHINGTON - They still want to go.
Ten days after the space shuttle Columbia was lost and the seven astronauts on board were killed, space industry entrepreneurs pledged this week to forge ahead with their mission - to turn a buck by sending ordinary people into space.
Ordinary in this case means people who might not be astronauts or members of the military but who are instead very, very rich. It costs at least $15 million to vacation in space these days - and there are few takers at that price.
But as the cost comes down, enthusiasts say, the market can only grow.
"You get it down to $5 million and you'd be amazed at the number of people in this country who have $5 million to burn - lottery winners, inheritances, Hollywood," said Jeffrey Manber, president of MirCorp, which helped arrange California millionaire Dennis Tito's 2001 flight in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
Manber was among several hundred executives and government officials who gathered this week for the Federal Aviation Administration's annual conference on commercial space travel - an event where the difficulty of building a hotel on the moon is the stuff of a sober panel discussion.
One panelist opened her presentation with the somber strains of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and closed with REM's more upbeat "Man on the Moon."
But this is no joke. Although the Columbia disaster was on everyone's mind, many said it would not set back the fledgling space tourism market or scare off potential customers - or, as conference attendees like to call them, "citizen explorers."
"I don't think the interest in seeing the Earth from God's perspective has changed," said Jay Edwards, head of Oklahoma's space development program.
He expects, in all seriousness, to launch citizens into suborbit from Oklahoma's spaceport on a former Air Force base in three or four years.
Within reach
Skeptics say such notions are better suited to sci-fi conventions than government conferences, but others say it's well within reach.
The technology is nearly ready, they say, and soon only the government's approval will stand in the way.
Customers are lining up. Space Adventures Ltd. of Arlington, Va., has sold 100 tickets at $98,000 each to send people into space as soon as a private launch vehicle is available.
A spokeswoman said the head of the company called each client after the Columbia explosion, and none asked for a refund.
Neither Space Adventures nor Oklahoma will build the spacecraft that will carry paying customers. That job falls to the 24 companies competing for a $10 million cash prize that goes to the first to build and safely launch a manned space vehicle.
It's called the X Prize, modeled on the $25,000 reward that lured Charles Lindbergh to fly nonstop across the Atlantic in 1927.
For this contest, the vehicle must carry three people into suborbit - at least 62 miles up - then return safely to Earth and repeat the feat within two weeks. On most proposed suborbital vehicles, the entire round trip would take 20 minutes (plus a week of training).
"If you're an adventurer and explorer, the risk is part of the attraction," said Peter H. Diamandis, president of the X Prize Foundation, based in St. Louis. It raised the prize money from foundations, banks and private investors, including author Tom Clancy.
Ten days after the space shuttle Columbia was lost and the seven astronauts on board were killed, space industry entrepreneurs pledged this week to forge ahead with their mission - to turn a buck by sending ordinary people into space.
Ordinary in this case means people who might not be astronauts or members of the military but who are instead very, very rich. It costs at least $15 million to vacation in space these days - and there are few takers at that price.
But as the cost comes down, enthusiasts say, the market can only grow.
"You get it down to $5 million and you'd be amazed at the number of people in this country who have $5 million to burn - lottery winners, inheritances, Hollywood," said Jeffrey Manber, president of MirCorp, which helped arrange California millionaire Dennis Tito's 2001 flight in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
Manber was among several hundred executives and government officials who gathered this week for the Federal Aviation Administration's annual conference on commercial space travel - an event where the difficulty of building a hotel on the moon is the stuff of a sober panel discussion.
One panelist opened her presentation with the somber strains of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and closed with REM's more upbeat "Man on the Moon."
But this is no joke. Although the Columbia disaster was on everyone's mind, many said it would not set back the fledgling space tourism market or scare off potential customers - or, as conference attendees like to call them, "citizen explorers."
"I don't think the interest in seeing the Earth from God's perspective has changed," said Jay Edwards, head of Oklahoma's space development program.
He expects, in all seriousness, to launch citizens into suborbit from Oklahoma's spaceport on a former Air Force base in three or four years.
The technology is nearly ready, they say, and soon only the government's approval will stand in the way.
Customers are lining up. Space Adventures Ltd. of Arlington, Va., has sold 100 tickets at $98,000 each to send people into space as soon as a private launch vehicle is available.
A spokeswoman said the head of the company called each client after the Columbia explosion, and none asked for a refund.
Neither Space Adventures nor Oklahoma will build the spacecraft that will carry paying customers. That job falls to the 24 companies competing for a $10 million cash prize that goes to the first to build and safely launch a manned space vehicle.
It's called the X Prize, modeled on the $25,000 reward that lured Charles Lindbergh to fly nonstop across the Atlantic in 1927.
For this contest, the vehicle must carry three people into suborbit - at least 62 miles up - then return safely to Earth and repeat the feat within two weeks. On most proposed suborbital vehicles, the entire round trip would take 20 minutes (plus a week of training).
"If you're an adventurer and explorer, the risk is part of the attraction," said Peter H. Diamandis, president of the X Prize Foundation, based in St. Louis. It raised the prize money from foundations, banks and private investors, including author Tom Clancy.
