If Jane Poynter has her way, a regular person will be able to ride up to the edge of space quicker than they could take a commercial flight across the country--without the hassle of a lengthy security line.
Her company, World View Enterprises, is pioneering travel to the top of the atmosphere. The entire journey should take about four hours, no anti-gravity training required.
Sound crazy? Not to a new crop of entrepreneurs eyeing the final frontier of tourism. Richard Bransons Virgin Galactic enterprise has been making headlines for several years. Yet while the thrill-seeking Branson pursues commercial flights on spaceships with rocket engines for the heart-stopping price tag of $200,000, World Views plans are somewhat more modest.
Thats because the company isnt aiming to turn average individuals into astronauts. Instead, World View is perfecting a sub-orbital flight to 100,000 feet (airplanes usually cruise at about 31,000) via a pressurized capsule pulled up by a high-altitude balloon and parafoil. The idea is to float up and glide back. Its a gentler experience than a rocket launch in which astronauts are subject to 3g force--survivable, but not without special gear and training. There will be a fully stocked bar, Poynter adds, laughing, So you can get your beverage of choice. Vodka and Tang, perhaps?
Joking aside, World View is getting close to making this a reality. In June, the company successfully completed a scaled test flight (10% of the actual size) of a balloon and the companys Parawing (patent pending). The journey broke the world record for highest parafoil flight when the balloon rose to 120,000 feet and came back down to 50,000 when it transitioned to the parafoil, validating the system the company plans to launch (couldnt resist) to voyagers in 2016. Indeed, the companys already booked its first reservations at $75,000 per seat.
I am somebody driven by big ideas, Poynter asserts, And space travel is huge. Poynter may sound brash, especially considering shes not as familiar a face as Branson, but shes been working on this in some form for more than 20 years.
A pivotal event for Poynter occurred when she was one of the eight researchers sealed into the Biosphere 2 for two years and 20 minutes. It was one of the very first commercial space ventures, Poynter explains, because the sealed environment was created specifically to see if it could support human life elsewhere, not unlike being sealed in a spaceship and traveling through the universe.
A more moving realization dawned on Poynter from that experience. We were really part of [that biosphere] viscerally and literally, completely dependent on plants for oxygen, drinking the same water, growing our own food really changed the perspective on world we live in, she says. Poynter likens that "a-ha moment" to ones shes heard from astronauts who initially are intent on exploring space, but find themselves looking back at the Earth and are gobsmacked by the view of that small blue and white ball that is home. It is that change in perspective that is firing the engines of this company, Poynter contends, I want to give it back to people.
While she was in the Biosphere, Poynter and a fellow crew member Taber MacCallum began working on a business plan that would become Paragon Space Ventures. In a TED talk, Poynter frankly admits that many have been quick to criticize the Biosphere experiment as a failure because the oxygen levels dipped so low at one point that the crew suffered from sleep apnea and other health problems.
But Poynter and the others, like good entrepreneurs, took the failure and pivoted. The rapid iteration, to find the lost oxygen and regain the precious balance needed to sustain life, makes Poynter view the entire experiment as a success. Emerging and starting a business, even one that was bootstrapped with credit cards, was kind of fun, she says.
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Why This Company Wants To Take You On a Balloon Ride To The Edge Of Space