Space Adventures’ Press Release |
September 25, 1997 |
New Company Offers Public A Flight Path to Space During “Golden Age of Space Flight” |
New York, NY – Adventures in space will no longer be the exclusive preserve of movies and
astronauts if Space Adventures Ltd. has its way. As a pioneering venture of a daring group of
aerospace engineers, scientists, astronauts and travel experts, this new company is betting it
will. Just as it is predicting it will be in on the creation of a commercial space-tourism
industry. Joining forces to form the new company are Virginia-based Omega World Travel,
the second-largest privately owned travel agency network in the United States, and
Connecticut-based adventure travel specialist Quark Expeditions. In addition, Space
Adventures has assembled a prestigious Advisory Board including four former astronauts —
an aerospace think tank even the HAL “2001: A Space Odyssey” computer would have found
hard to outwit.
Space Odysseys Before 2001
As the first company to roll out a program of bookable space-related adventures, there is the
sense of history being made. According to Mike McDowell, president of Space Adventures,
founder/director of Quark Expeditions and longtime adventure traveler, “We’re convinced that
the advent of commercially viable space tourism will dramatically change the perception that
space is ‘out there’ for astronauts only. We’re going to put it well within the reach of ordinary
citizens.” In Space Adventures’ vision of exploration, this is an historic moment. “The next
few decades will be remembered in the distant future as the ‘Golden Age’ of space flight,”
McDowell said.
“The creation of commercial space-tourism won’t just create jobs but launch a whole new
industry — one that will play a crucial role in allowing humanity to permanently open the
space frontier. Seventy years after Charles Lindbergh made his solo flight across the Atlantic,
600 million airline tickets are sold in the U.S. alone. Now, 36 years after the first sub-orbital
flight by Alan Shepard, you and I can venture to the threshold of space, banish gravity and
behold the breathtaking curvature of the Earth. A few years hence we’ll take the next step to
space, using sub-orbital flights to transform civilians into astronauts,” said McDowell.
However exciting the future prospects for space travel, Space Adventures is also “very much
into the here and now,” said Gloria Bohan, executive vice president of Space Adventures and
founder/president of Omega World Travel. “We’ve also looked to presently-available
technology and expertise for inspiration. This is about today as much as tomorrow.”
Armed with its toll-free number for space-related travel, 1-888-85-SPACE, Space Adventures
will accept bookings, effective immediately, for such adventures as zero gravity (weightless)
flights and journeys to the outer limits of Earth’s atmosphere at the edge of space (80,000 feet
high). Those who prefer to stay closer to the ground may peruse the stars in a Space
Adventures program that ushers them behind the scenes of a leading Space Observatory, or
allows them to build and launch their own rocket with an experienced team of rocket
enthusiasts.
But the crowning touch will undoubtedly be the sub-orbital flights to 62 miles above the Earth
(its curvature splayed below, the star-filled darkness of infinite space above) which Space
Adventures and leading aerospace experts believe are only three to five years away. Space
Adventures is now accepting reservations for sub-orbital flights (through deposits to be held
in protected escrow accounts).
Space Adventures has assembled an Advisory Board with pioneering experience in travel and
adventure (including first-ever Arctic and Antarctic expeditions). This blue-ribbon panel
includes such luminaries of the aerospace industry as former U.S. astronauts (Space Shuttle
and Skylab missions) Dr. Byron Lichtenberg, Dr. Owen Garriott, and Capt. “Hoot” Gibson
and Dr. Charlie Walker. It also includes leading academics in their field such as Dr. Giovanni
Fazio of the Harvard Smithsonian Observatory, Dr. Suzanne Churchill, space physiology and
medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Laurence Young, Apollo Professor, MIT
Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and director of the National Space Biomedical
Research Institute.
Most significantly, Bohan noted, “this is not a largely symbolic Advisory Board. Instead,
every member is a company shareholder who participates as an advisor, in planning
adventures, and periodically leading tours thus providing clients with the most up-to-date,
exciting and factual space-related adventures possible.”
Included in Space Adventures’ progressive series of Steps to Space are Terrestrial Tours, Zero
Gravity Flights, Journeys to the Edge of Space, and Sub-Orbital Flights (described in “Steps
to Space” news release).
Omega World Travel serves more than five million customers in 60 countries every year.
Quark Expeditions and its sister company Adventure Network International have opened the
Arctic and Antarctica, assisting thousands of adventurous spirits in exploring these formerly
inaccessible frontiers.
For more information, call 1-888-85-SPACE or 703-524-7172 outside the United States. Or
visit our website at www.spaceadventures.co