RocketShip Tours is an American

space tourism Space tourism is human space travel for recreational purposes. There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital and lunar space tourism. During the period from 2001 to 2009, seven space tourists made eight s ...

company founded in 2008 by travel industry entrepreneur Jules Klar and which planned to provide sub-orbital human spaceflights to the paying public, in partnership with

rocketplane A rocket-powered aircraft or rocket plane is an aircraft that uses a rocket engine for propulsion, sometimes in addition to airbreathing jet engines. Rocket planes can achieve much higher speeds than similarly sized jet aircraft, but typicall ...

developer

XCOR XCOR Aerospace was an American private spaceflight and rocket engine development company based at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California, Midland International Air and Spaceport in Midland, Texas and the Amsterdam area, the Netherl ...

Aerospace. Klar created RocketShip Tours to act as General Sales Agent for

Aerospace. Jules Klar got his start in the travel business in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in 1961. He founded ''$5-A-Day Tours'' in partnership with

Arthur Frommer Arthur Frommer (born July 17, 1929) is a travel writer. He founded the Frommer's brand of travel guides. Frommer was born in Jefferson City, Missouri, and moved to Brooklyn, New York when he was 14. He graduated from New York University in 1950 ...

Frommer's Frommer's is a travel guide book series created by Arthur Frommer in 1957. Frommer's has since expanded to include more than 350 guidebooks in 14 series, as well as other media including an eponymous radio show and a website. In 2017, the compan ...

fame. Klar's company
Great American Travel
became one of the most successful wholesale travel organizations in America through the succeeding years. The company's space tourism package included screening, training and a trip into suborbital space. Jules selected

Aerospace to partner with, due to its record of reliable rocket engine development and technological approach towards suborbital space travel. In 2012 XCOR signed Space Expedition Corporation (SXC) as their new General Sales Agent For Space Tourism Flights. Note: The information visible on Infobox Company with that the URL of website is not found. The landing page is not found.

Spacecraft

Designed and built by

XCOR Aerospace XCOR Aerospace was an American private spaceflight and rocket engine development company based at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California, Midland International Air and Space Port, Midland International Air and Spaceport in Midland, T ...

, the

Lynx rocketplane The XCOR Lynx was a proposed suborbital horizontal-takeoff, horizontal-landing (HTHL), rocket-powered spaceplane that was under development by the California-based company XCOR Aerospace to compete in the emerging suborbital spaceflight marke ...

will have four liquid rocket engines at the rear of the

fuselage The fuselage (; from the French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an engine as well, although in some amphibious aircraft t ...

burning a mixture of LOX-Kerosene and each of them will give between 2500-2900 lbf (11 120-12 900 N) of thrust. The Lynx is projected to carry one pilot, a ticketed passenger, and/or a payload or small satellites above 100 km altitude. The occupants would wear pressure suits made b
Orbital Outfitters
The Lynx was initially announced on March 26, 2008, with plans for an operational vehicle within two years.
That date has since fallen to late 2011.XCOR Ready for Liftoff - Sept. 13, 2010
/ref> Mark I Prototype Maximum Altitude: 61 km (200,000 ft) Primary Internal Payload: 120 kg (265 lbs) External Dorsal Mounted Pod: 280 kg (617 lbs) Secondary payload spaces include a small area inside the cockpit behind the pilot or outside the vehicle in two areas in the aft fuselage fairing. Mark II Production Model Maximum Altitude: +100 km (+330,000 ft) Primary Internal Payload: 120 kg (265 lbs) External Dorsal Mounted Pod: 650 kg (1433 lbs) and is large enough to hold a two-stage carrier to launch a microsatellite or multiple nanosatellites into low Earth orbit. Secondary payload spaces include the same as the Mark I.

Overview

Suborbital flight tickets are now available ($95,000 per person with a $20,000 deposit). The initial deposit qualifies the passenger for a four-day orientation, medical screening and G-Force training at an Arizona resort. A final payment is required to take the flight aboard the

. It is expected that the spacecraft will be piloted by

Richard A. Searfoss Richard Alan Searfoss (June 5, 1956 – September 29, 2018) was an American aviator who was United States Air Force colonel, NASA astronaut and test pilot. Early life Searfoss was born on June 5, 1956, in Mount Clemens, Michigan, but had consider ...

, a retired

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

colonel,

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

Astronaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...

and current

test pilot A test pilot is an aircraft pilot with additional training to fly and evaluate experimental, newly produced and modified aircraft with specific maneuvers, known as flight test techniques.Stinton, Darrol. ''Flying Qualities and Flight Testing ...

. The craft is projected to be a one-passenger, one pilot rocketplane. Its planned trajectory will overlap the Earth's atmosphere at 70,000 feet (21,000 m), which will make it a

sub-orbital A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the atmosphere or surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched, so that it will not complete one orbital re ...

journey with a short period of weightlessness. The spacecraft, the

, is a Suborbital

rocket-powered aircraft A rocket-powered aircraft or rocket plane is an aircraft that uses a rocket engine for propulsion, sometimes in addition to airbreathing jet engines. Rocket planes can achieve much higher speeds than similarly sized jet aircraft, but typicall ...

being developed by the California-based company

Aeorospace. When operational, the vehicle will fly over 100 km (the Kármán line, a common definition of where "space" begins). The time from liftoff of the Lynx until the touchdown of the vehicle after the sub-orbital flight will be about 1.0 hour. The sub-orbital flight itself will only be a small fraction of that time. The weightlessness will last approximately 5 minutes.

Competition

Besides RocketShip Tours, there are numerous other companies actively working on commercial passenger suborbital spaceflight. Additionally, there are several others developing commercial manned orbital spaceflight capability (including some which are initially designed for, or may eventually be used for, commercial passenger spaceflight), which is a significantly more difficult problem than suborbital spaceflight. In 2013, tickets were available through the

partnership with Space Expedition Corporation (SXC). Priced at $95,000, they were around half the $200,000 cost quoted by

Virgin Galactic Virgin Galactic is an American spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson and his British Virgin Group retains an 11.9% stake through Virgin Investments Limited. It is headquartered in California, and operates from New Mexico. The compan ...

, the main competitor in the commercial

spaceflight Spaceflight (or space flight) is an application of astronautics to fly spacecraft into or through outer space, either with or without humans on board. Most spaceflight is uncrewed and conducted mainly with spacecraft such as satellites in o ...

market.Hollingham, Richard (25 June 2012
Space: A travel guide
BBC News, Future, Retrieved 19 February 2013

Base

Test launches are planned to take place from the

Mojave Spaceport The Mojave Air and Space Port at Rutan Field is in Mojave, California, United States, at an elevation of . It is the first facility to be licensed in the United States for horizontal launches of reusable spacecraft, being certified as a spa ...

, where XCOR Aerospace is constructing the spacecraft. RocketShip Tours expects that initial passenger flights will take place there, as well.

References

External links