Dubai Conference Seeks Investors in Space Tourism

DUBAI March 4, 2010— -- Space travel could get a boost from a meeting of the minds and wallets in Dubai this week when the World Space Risk Forum brings together companies, insurance firms, and financiers interested in underwriting privately-funded trips into orbit.

The consensus, said the forum organizers, is that space travel could be viable within the next two to three years.

"Space tourism is coming," said conference head Laurent Lemaire, who pointed to the "shift from governmental to private sector" in advancing space travel. His company, Elseco Limited, insures against space risk, damage that ranges from technical malfunctions to mid-air collisions with space junk.

The commercial interest in space has come in part from a U.S. government decision to cut NASA's budget, which included a trim of the Constellation Project.

Major elements of the program, which handles human space flight, have been supplanted by government outsourcing to companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Foreign governments, notably China and India, have grown their space programs. China launched its first manned spaceflight in 2003, while India plans its own by 2016.

But major news in spaceflight development has come from private companies, foremost Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic. For a $200,000 ticket, passengers on a reusable spacecraft will make a 2 ½ hour trip into low orbit, for associated weightlessness and a view of the earth from 50,000 feet above.

'You're going to be sick, you're going to be shaken, it's not going to be pleasant. But when you stop in the silence and see the earth from above, it's probably something that's deeply fulfilling,' said Lemaire.

The company says prices will fall over time, allowing more private astronauts to fly. At the Dubai conference Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn said 330 people had signed up, at least 20 of them from the Gulf region.

Abu Dhabi, which took a 32 percent stake in Virgin Galactic for $280 million, has the regional rights to host a spaceport on UAE soil. But the company says that, for now, operations and space flights would be centered on its headquarters in New Mexico.