Private sector to bridge gap in US space flight

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla, June 23 (Reuters) Far from being a hiatus in US manned space travel, the gap between the retirement of the US space shuttle and the debut of replacement ships looks set to be a renaissance led by private companies.

NASA, which yesterday saw the safe return of the shuttle Atlantis, is providing financial assistance to two private companies and technical advice and oversight to five others.

''By stimulating the growth of commercial space enterprise, NASA will free itself to focus on long-range exploration of the moon and Mars,'' said Scott Horowitz, a NASA associate administrator.

NASA needs to find another way to get cargo and crew to the space station once the shuttles are retired in 2010 and until the Orion capsules, under development to replace the shuttles, are ready to fly people in 2014 at the earliest.

Not that industry seems to need NASA's help. Three years ago a group known as the X Prize Foundation organized a 10-million dollar challenge for private enterprise to create and fly a manned ship to suborbital space.

Aircraft designer Burt Rutan teamed with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen to create SpaceShipOne, a rocket-powered craft that slipped beyond Earth's atmosphere three times in 2004 to clinch the prize and make history.

The vehicle now hangs in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, but its legacy lives on. Enchanted by the flights, Virgin Atlantic Chairman Richard Branson ordered a fleet of ships to launch a commercial suborbital spaceflight service called Virgin Galactic.

Test flights begin next year and passenger service is set to commence in 2009. The company already has collected 25 million dollar in deposits for the rides, which cost 200,000 dollar per person, and a reservation list that could take the firm years to fulfill.

The wait -- and the price -- may be significantly reduced if, as Branson plans, the spaceships can make daily flights. A recent study by Futron Corp predicts the cost of a suborbital spaceflight will drop to about 50,000 dollar by 2021, fueling an industry worth 0 million a year in the United States alone.

''We hope this starts a cycle that leads to orbital flight, and who knows, maybe something on the moon,'' said George Whitesides, director of the National Space Society, who plans to make a Virgin Galactic flight.

''We've been trying to get routine spaceflight, commercial or otherwise, to happen for decades now,'' added John Gedmark, executive director of the newly formed Personal Spaceflight Federation, a Washington-based industry advocacy group.

''Billions of dollars have been spent and it's still not getting done. We have a real opportunity with commercial companies and entrepreneurs taking the lead to make it happen,'' Gedmark said.

In addition to Virgin Galactic, the aspiring commercial spaceliners include Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos' Blue Origins, XCOR Aerospace of Mojave, California, Benson Space Co. of Poway, California, and Space Adventures of Vienna, Virgnia, which is parlaying the Russian connections that already have landed five tourists on the International Space Station into a new venture for suborbital passenger spaceflight.

NASA is spending 278 million dollar to help PayPal creator Elon Musk get his commercial launch services firm Space Exploration Technologies of El Segundo, California, off the ground.

The space agency also awarded 207 million dollar to Oklahoma City-based Rocketplane Kistler, which, like SpaceX, is developing vehicles to carry cargo and crew into orbit. Other firms winning NASA's support, but not its funds, are SpaceDev of Poway, California, SPACEHAB of Houston, Constellation Services International of Laguna Woods, California, Transformational Space Corp of Reston, Virginia, and PlanetSpace Inc, of Chicago.

REUTERS PDS BST0434