Orbital Expeditions

Interorbital Systems, an American NewSpace firm which is probably better known in Europe than it is in the U. S., is moving ahead with a program to offer tourists, and others, orbital spaceflights. Launched from the waters of the South Pacific kingdom of Tonga, the IOS spacecraft will carry up to six passengers plus a pilot. IOS is planning a two-man orbital flight sometime in 2011-12, with commercial flights to begin in the 2012-13 period.

Orbital Expedition flights will last about a week and cost $5 million per ticket. However, the company is offering a bargain deal-- the first ten tickets sold will go for $250,000 apiece. Two of the ten have already been snapped up, and, according to IOS CEO Randa Milliron, the company will begin a marketing effort to tell the public about the program soon. In an interesting comparison, Virgin Galactic is offering suborbital flights that will feature a few minutes of weightlessness in a fairly small cabin for $200,000 whereas a few people, for $50,ooo more, would get to experience true spaceflight-- days of weightlessness in a module with a large enough volume to allow real exploration of the possibilities of microgravity, dozens of sunrises and sunsets, and extended opportunities to observe the Earth and other celestial bodies from space-- on an early Orbital Expeditions flight.

Whether IOS, or, indeed, VG, can actually turn their plans into profitable reality is still open to question, but IOS is moving across a broad front, pursuing both manned and unmanned projects. It is even looking at the Moon-- in the context of the Google Lunar X-Prize competition, but also in flying a lunar sample return mission, and in establishing a substantial, private, manned lunar base in just a few years. If IOS succeeds across the board, it will have secured a place as one of the most important corporations in human history.