Conceptual Approach to a Space Tourism Vehicle With Respect to Technical, Commercial and Legal Aspects

Triggered by the efforts which are under way for defining the servicing vehicle of the International Space Station, space tourism is evolving to an attractive application. In the first generation suborbital flights with smaller vehicles and a li mited number of passengers seem to be possible. Starting at a rather small scale with some individual space tourists on-board of Soyuz capsules and the Space Shuttle, an increasing number of potential passengers is asking for affordable space transportation opportunities. Dedicated space tourism studies have confirmed this public interest and have evaluated the impact of low-cost space access on launcher demand. Since the mid- and long-term space tourism market is growing, several companies are in charge of de-fining and providing viable vehicle concepts. Meanwhile the first Rutan Concept was flown responding to the Xvehicle competition. For sub-orbital missions, studies were performed also at EADS-ST ('Bremen Engineering Operations Science' = BEOS). The aerodynamic con-figuration was upscaled from an earlier test vehicle design, but with LOX/Kerosene main engine. The preliminary space-tourism vehicle de-sign is capable to transport up to eight passengers along a sub -orbital trajectory. The fuselage is 12.3 m in length and 2.1 m in width, the wing span is 7.4 m. The gross take-off mass is 19 Mg including the passengers and their luggage. The vehicle shall be launched piggy-back from a conventional subsonic carrier airplane, thus extending the possible flight envelope. Then its performance allows acceleration to Mach 7.7 and up to 95 km altitude along the ballistic trajectory. For the space-tourism missions a dedicated safety concept with redundant subsystems was implemented. In parallel to the conceptual approach also operational, commercial and legal aspects were investigated in some detail. In particular questions of legal delimitation were looked at. The principle difference between space and aircraft applicable laws is decisive . Its border is at around 100 km altitude. There are also notable differences with respect to the respective launch state in terms of vehicle certification and operation..