Executive Suite: He's over the moon about space tourism

BOSTON -- Either selling outer-space vacations to wealthy business moguls is easy or Eric Anderson's a superb salesman.

Just 33, Anderson is CEO of the decade-old company Space Adventures, a Northern Virginia-based firm that sells space trips aboard Russian spacecraft to extremely rich private citizens. The price: $30 million to $40 million, depending on details of the trip. He's been the middleman in all five deals in which the Russians have delivered a tourist to the International Space Station and returned them safely.

When he first started the venture, he said while traveling here recently on business, "Everyone said, 'You're crazy.' " But Anderson's dad, a real estate entrepreneur, taught him to never take no for an answer, and he hasn't.

"I'm the only one who can get you a trip into space," he says while hurtling through Boston streets in a limousine on his way to speak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Driven by the love of outer space and of business deals, Anderson has demonstrated to skeptics that a market for private space travel exists. And while the initial fares to outer space are well beyond the means of the masses, it may not always be that way. Considering Anderson's fast start in the exotic business of selling space vacations, he may still be the one selling tickets when prices come into the reach of more ordinary folks.

George Whiteside, executive director of the National Space Society and an adviser to Briton Richard Branson's space-tourism-related venture, Virgin Galactic, credits Anderson with injecting excitement back into a languishing space movement by proving there's demand for private space travel.

"Orbital flight has really proven that space tourism is real," Whiteside says.

Space Adventures isn't your ordinary adventure-travel company.

The company operates with about 20 employees out of a modern office on the 10th floor of a 17-story tower in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Vienna, Va., not far from Anderson's home. It's filled with space memorabilia, including a suit used for spacewalks bought as surplus in Russia and toy light sabers. Anderson founded the company in 1997 with mentor and private-space-travel guru Peter Diamandis and adventure-travel pioneer Mike McDowell. It's privately held, with Anderson as the largest shareholder.

The firm initially offered flights aboard Russian MiG fighter jets, zero-gravity airplane flights and space-related experiences on the ground, such as VIP tours of Russian launches in Kazakhstan. It has dropped the MiG flights, but since 1999, Space Adventures has been selling trips to the Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket.

Space Adventures doesn't have a formal arrangement with the Russians for exclusivity. It's just the only company doing it. Recently, Space Adventures has been seeking to buy one seat on a Soyuz spacecraft for two flights a year when the Russians make that many available. The company has bought all the commercially available seats into 2009. It's in negotiations for all the seats available through 2011. The company hopes to be able to sell as many as 10 seats a year in 2012.

So far, five clients have taken the Soyuz trip, which lasts about 10 days. They launched into space after about four months of training, including continuous training in Russia for the final two months. Anderson says the time commitment — as opposed to the price — is the biggest obstacle for many potential customers.