World View plans to take passengers to the edge of space - by balloon
A former NASA astronaut who spent six months on the International Space Station plans to pilot the first commercial journey to the edge of space in a high-altitude balloon.
Ron Garan was so transformed by his experience viewing Earth from orbit he wants as many people as possible to experience a vision of the world from space.
It'll cost you $US75,000 ($99,000) and the first trips are planned for 2018.
"Looking out from the space station, I didn't see an economy, I saw an iridescent biosphere teeming with life," he said. "At the moment our primary focus is on the economy, but we need to shift from thinking economy-society-planet ...
The capsule at the outer edge of the atmosphere, as seen by an artist.Credit:World View
"The economy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the biosphere: we need to flip that thinking so our priorities are planet-society-economy."
Speaking in Sydney on Tuesday at a BBC Future summit on world-changing ideas, the retired colonel delivered a blisteringly optimistic speech about the possibilities for human co-operation.
Colonel Garan flew missions on NASA's space shuttle and Russia's Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station. He has orbited Earth 2842 times.
He now works for World View Enterprises in Tuscon, Arizona. World View plans to take paying customers 32 kilometres above Earth in a balloon-carried space pod, complete with bar and WiFi. Passengers will require no special training or space suit.
The balloon would rise until the sky turned black, as shown in this illustration. Credit:World View
Each pod will carry eight people, including two crew. At the peak of its altitude, the pod will detach from the helium balloon and descend to Earth on the wings of a navigable parachute.
For $US75,000 – a little above the average 10 per cent deposit for a Sydney house – you can spend two hours floating above 99 per cent of the Earth's atmosphere. Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic is charging $US250,000 for its future space trips, which, while faster, will be shorter.
Up and away: Ron Garan plans to take passengers to the top of the atmosphere.Credit:Louise Kennerley
Rising at a gentle 18 kilometres an hour, passengers would first see a spectacular sunrise, said Colonel Garan. Then, far above the clouds, they would view the curvature of the Earth and watch the sky slowly fade from familiar blue to black as the sun took its place among the stars of our galaxy.
His company has built a space port in Arizona, but eventually they'd like to build launch stations across the planet, including in Australia.
Colonel Garan's message about the transformative possibilities of viewing Earth from space was contagious.
"I used to think that space travel hadn't changed me but, over time, I realised that one thing that did change was my definition of 'home'," he said. "That definitely expanded to encompass the whole Earth."
Preparing for his trip to the International Space Station in 2011, he was struck by the sight of a US flag on a Soyuz spacecraft at the launch site in Kazakhstan.
"I spent the first 15 years of my professional life training to fight the Russians, now I was going to spend six months in space with them," he told the audience in Sydney on Tuesday.
After his six months in space, Colonel Garan returned to Earth with a thump: his window that had previously looked out onto space was facing the ground. He could see a rock and a flower.
"I'm home," was his first thought, "but I'm in Kazakhstan".
It was then he realised his idea of home had been completely transformed. He wants to offer this moment to the general public. But at $US75,000 it doesn't come cheap.
"We hope to bring that price down eventually but we're also very committed to allocate seats – ideally one seat per mission – for somebody who normally wouldn't be able to afford it," Colonel Garan told Fairfax Media.
"To date, we've sent scientists and pilots and engineers to space," he said. "Imagine what will happen when we spend poets and musicians and artists. How much better will they be at communicating that experience, that unique perspective on our planet."
Colonel Garan said World View would love to take representative passengers from Israel and Palestine and North and South Korea to the edge of space.
"Space changed me," he said. "I believe there is a profound, transformative potential in seeing our planet from the vantage point of space.
"The more people that have that perspective, that can see our planet as a whole living system, the better off all of us on the Earth are going to be."
Marcus Strom is Science Editor at The Sydney Morning Herald.