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Space
Space Research
Space Tourism
Open-access content Tereza Pultarova —
Thu 2 Jan 2025 — updated 3 Jan 2025
Image credit | Space Perspective
Stratospheric balloons are cheaper and easier to build than rockets and spaceplanes. They can offer hours of magnificent views ofthe Earth from within a comfy space capsule. But something has been holding their developers back.
This space race has been unfolding largely away from the spotlight. While the attention of global media has been fixated on the likes of Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin and their rocket-powered rides to the edge ofspace, a handful of companies have been working in the background to offer a more affordable alternative to space tourism, suitable for those with weaker stomachs and in less robust health than required to fly a rocket.
Using helium- or hydrogen-filled balloons, these firms want to fly paying passengers to altitudes ofover 30km. There, above 99% of the Earth’s atmosphere, the sky overhead appears black, and the curvature ofthe planet underneath arises wrapped in the luminescent shroud of the troposphere. Drop the balloon and let the capsule freefall before deploying its parachute, and you can create a short spell ofmicrogravity too.
Two of those companies have emerged over the past year as frontrunners in this race, claiming they are on the verge of offering paid trips within the next 12 months. Madrid-headquartered HALO Space announced in August that it intended to test fly the prototype ofits Aurora capsule from Saudi Arabia in September to “validate its critical systems at a 30km altitude”. This is so high above the Earth’s surface, and the pressure of the thin gases of the residual air so low, that if the capsule were to rupture its passengers would “explode” as their blood would “turn into gas in a few seconds” unless they wore pressurised spacesuits to protect them, Carlos Mira tells E+T. Heis HALO Space’s founder and CEO, and former president of technology consultancy Arthur D Little Spain.
“At the altitude of about 30km, the air pressure is almost nil,” Mira says. “It’s about 0.35 kilopascals compared to 700 kilopascals you have at 3,000 metres and 1,000 kilopascals that you have at sea level.”
Temperatures so high above the planet are also less than pleasant – around -40°C. The test flight will ensure that the aluminium space capsule is ready for the challenge and could begin crewed test flights next year.
“This mission is designed to meticulously validate all our critical systems we’ve been developing for the past three years,” the company’s chief technology officer AlbertoCastrillo said in a press release announcing the test flight.
HALO Space has already conducted six test flights and appears to be slightly ahead of its American competitor, Florida-based Space Perspective. Space Perspective was founded by Jane Poynter and Taber MacCallum, a now married couple who rose to prominence through their participation in the Biosphere 2 experiment. This had a group of eight live in an artificial ecosystem, sealed from the surrounding world, in the early 1990s.
Space Perspective is not the first stratospheric balloon company set up by the duo. In 2012 they founded World View, which originally intended to fly paying tourists in balloon trips in the stratosphere. It later switched to flying scientific experiments for Nasa and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and reconnaissance cameras for US defence forces. Poynter and McCallum left World View in 2019 and launched Space Perspective that same year.
In February, the company unveiled its Excelsior test capsule, a prototype ofthe firm’s Spaceship Neptune, which it describes as “the third-ever commercial suborbital spacecraft successfully built and just the seventh new human spacecraft designed and manufactured in the last 50 years”.
The company too said it planned to conduct test flights this year, but no information about the progress is available. Space Perspective didn’t respond to E+T’s queries.
HALO Space was to test the prototype of its Aurora capsule from Saudi Arabia in September. Image credit | Space Perspective
Tried-and-tested technology
The idea to use balloons to study the Earth’s atmosphere is not new. Not even the idea to fly humans to the stratosphere in them is a novelty. Swiss inventor Auguste Piccard, the inventor of the bathyscaphe, did it in 1931.
The claustrophobic aluminium gondola that housed Piccard and his co-explorer Paul Kipfer reached an altitude of 16km on 27 May that year, making the two the first humans in history to visit the stratosphere.
Through the tiny windows of their capsule, they could observe the unusually dark sky above and the curvature of the planet underneath encased in the bluish mist of the atmosphere. The journey was far from uneventful, according to the Science History Institute. A motor that was supposed to spin the gondola around to regulate sun exposure failed, turning the interior into a sauna. A valve regulating gas release from the balloon froze over, leaving the explorers unable to regulate their ascent. At some point, a small rupture opened in the capsule’s shell, threatening to suck out the air from within. Piccard fixed the leak with a makeshift patch made of Vaseline and a piece ofcloth.
The descent back to Earth was completely uncontrolled, occurring spontaneously after sunset when the air inside the balloon naturally cooled down. The knife-edge experience didn’t deter Piccard, and a year later he conducted a second stratospheric flight, breaking his high-altitude record.
A few adventurers repeated the feat in the following decades, reaching higher and higher altitudes. In the 1950s, the US Navy ran the Strato-Lab manned high-altitude balloon project in preparation for the US manned rocket programme. The programme culminated in 1961 with a record-setting flight by Malcolm Ross and Victor Prather. During the flight, the two researchers ascended to an altitude of 34.67km – even higher than the altitude targeted by the aspiring near-space tourism providers oftoday. During the flight, they tested space suit prototypes for the then upcoming Project Mercury – America’s pioneering space flight programme.
The flight, however, ended in tragedy. The balloon landed in the Gulf of Mexico as expected, but things went awry during the recovery operation and Prather drowned. No balloon with a human crew aboard has reached a higher altitude since.
That same year, Soviets launched Yuri Gagarin into space, as well as rockets capable of propelling humans beyond the edge of space, pushing balloons to the fringes. The technology has however remained indispensable in meteorological research and is still used for astronomical experiments.
While the resourceful Piccard was able to solve potentially mission-ending failures as they emerged during his pioneering flight, operators of commercial near-space balloon trips can’t take such risks. “The big challenge,” says Mira, “is to take people safely again and again. There is a big difference between building a prototype for an experimental flight and something that is safe enough to fly people on a commercial basis.”
Space Perspective’s Excelsior capsule. Image credit | Space Perspective
HALO Space wants to sell seats on its flight for $164,000 – about a third of the ticket price charged by Virgin Galactic for its sub-orbital jaunts. Describing the balloon flight as space-tourism’s equivalent to glamping, Mira thinks that the market for stratospheric balloon tourism could be much broader than that for the physically taxing rocket flights. Butone early failure could scare customers away. The disaster ofthe experimental Titan submersible – which imploded in June 2023 on its way to the Titanic wreck, killing four people – reminded the space tourism industry that experimental technology is not infallible.
“We have started this project with the approach of getting the [safety] certification from the Federal Aviation Administration,” says Mira. “We want to be the guinea pig that will allow them to develop the regulations that could also be used for the other companies.”
To prove that the system is safe, the inventors must demonstrate, for example, that the danger that the capsule will crack and lose air pressure is less than one in 100 million, adds Mira.
Yet both HALO Space and Space Perspective’s capsules present engineering challenges. Unlike Piccard’s spherical gondola with tiny, submarine-like windows, spaceships for tourists have to offer unobstructed views to the passengers on-board. Space Perspective, for example, claims that the windows of its Neptune space capsule will be the “largest windowsever flown to[near] space”.
“We are using aeronautical aluminium – the same type of material used for aeroplanes,” says Mira. “The windows are made of a synthetic glass that is very thin because weight, for us, is very important. We have to make sure to seal all the joints to ensure that the environment is closed to minimise any leakages of air.”
The capsule is fitted with a similar life-support system as used in submarines or the International Space Station, which replenishes oxygen and removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to maintain breathable air.
Image credit | Space Perspective
The drama
According to José Mariano López-Urdiales, the founder and CEO of Barcelona-based Zero 2 Infinity, developing balloon-based near-space tourism systems comes at less than a 10th of the cost of developing a rocket or a spaceplane.
The Barcelona-based rocket engineer was the first person to suggest that flying paying customers for stratospheric sightseeing trips in balloons could be a viable alternative to then emerging suborbital rocket flights. In 2002, he presented the idea at the International Astronautical Congress in Houston, Texas, and seven years later founded Zero 2 Infinity. The company flew several test flights, including three with a miniature pressurised capsule, but then their progress stalled as investors were not interested in supporting the project.
“That was in 2012 and 2013 but then, when we wanted to scale up, we needed €1m and that became a problem,” López-Urdiales tells E+T. “Now we keep the company afloat by flying experiments for the likes of Airbus and testing small satellites before they get sent to space.”
According to Dallas Kasaboski, a space industry analyst at technology consultancy firm Analysys Mason, balloons lack rockets’ excitement and don’t thrill investors as much, despite their lowercomplexity.
“Theoretically, the balloon market should be an easier one to target,” Kasaboski says. “The technology is less challenging than rockets, but the market has been very slow for a long time. They have a harder time getting funding because they are not as interesting.”
But there may be another reason that gives investors cold feet. Although developing their respective space capsules largely away from the spotlight, the space balloon sector has a cut-throat history.
Mira’s HALO Space, Arthur D Little Spain and another Spanish space balloon start-up EOS were indicted in Madrid in October 2023 for stealing Zero 2 Infinity’s trade secrets. The founders of the two aforementioned firms had been involved with fundraising for Zero 2 Infinity and bound by non-disclosure agreements that forbade them from using López-Urdiales’ insights for another business.
The embattled Zero 2 Infinity had also been in talks with Poynter and McCallum of Space Perspective in the early 2010s, before the two founded their balloon venture World View. At that time, the two ran Paragon, which builds life-support systems for spacecraft and submarines.
The convoluted relationships betweenthe proponents of stratospheric ballooning make investors uneasy, Kasaboski says. “There are a lot oflitigation problems going on. And that has slowed the balloon industry in the last few years where one company is suing another, or there’s confusion over the value proposition ofthis company versus that one.”
Is the stratosphere about to open to those with deep enough pockets as HALO Space and Space Perspective promise? We shall see. Both companies still have a few test flights to nail.
This article appeared in the Volume 19, Issue 6 - November/December 2024 issue of E+T Magazine.
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