NRI offers space travel @ Rs 1.10 crore

Are you a billionaire and want to zip into the space for a quick ride? An NRI Sikh now offers you a chance to do just that. At a price.

Dr Chirinjeev Kathuria, an NRI businessman and one of the promoters of MirCorp, that signed up US billionaire Dennis Tito to space as earth's first space tourist last year, has tied up with a Canadian space firm to form PlanetSpace Corporation.

The goal of the company is to make space flights available to the public by 2006.

"PlanetSpace expects to fly almost 2,000 new astronauts in the first five years of flying and generate revenue from suborbital flights of $200 million in the fifth year," Kathuria said in an e-mail interview.

"We are first offering suborbital flights that take our customers for short trips into space. These flights will take off high enough (100 km) so that travellers get their astronaut wings and are able to have the same view the Shuttle astronauts get when they shut down their main engines," he says.

"We are also looking forward to faster and higher flights that eventually could take you all the way to orbit. We are not yet taking reservations but expect to start the process this year. Initially, we are expecting around 1,000 responses. The waitlist would be several years as the travel would be on first-come-first-serve basis," he says.

Since the announcement earlier this month, we have even received tremendous response from the Indian subcontinent about taking suborbital flights, he says.

"Imagine going from Mumbai around the world and back in 45 minutes. From Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days, it is now 45 minutes."

"Our flights would be around 15-30 minutes long. We have a ground-based system that allows for rapid transit through the atmosphere to reach the space in less than two minutes. After one year, we will offer around the earth suborbital flights -- 45 minutes to encircle the globe," Kathuria says revealing his plans.

The cost is $250,000 or about Rs 1.10 crore, he says, adding that "at first we are going to launch three people per crew cabin but eventually we found that we can accommodate from five to seven persons per flight."

The demand for public space travel is real, robust and is one of the few areas where growth can be predicted for the launch industry, says Kathuria.

A recent survey of a group of high net worth individuals in US found that nearly 20 per cent of them were interested in a suborbital flight. According to US census data, there are over 7000,000 people who meet the high net worth definition in America, he says.

He reveals that the launch site would be located somewhere in the great lakes on the Canadian side of the border. "We expect to set up not just one but eventually up to six Canadian Arrow rockets on the same day for launches at different times during the day."

With half a dozen companies in the US and Canada chasing the space dream, Kathuria also talks about the competition they face from others.

"Virgin Galactic has signed up almost 30,000 people expressing interest in flying to space. The flights by SpaceShip One in 2004 and announcements by Galactic of potential flights in 2008 have focused attention on this burgeoning industry."

"However, PlanetSpace is the only company that will have access to both orbital and suborbital capabilities and will begin its flights in 2006. This will place the company at least 18 months ahead of its potential competitors," he claims.