It may soon be possible to fly from Cape Breton to Vancouver in 45 minutes — the only catch is it's going to cost about $250,000 a person and there will still be three-hour wait at the airport.
PlanetSpace, a consortium of international companies and stakeholders, have announced a "team agreement" with the province of Nova Scotia and are in talks with the Canadian Space Agency that would see Cape Breton become the launching site for Canada's first commercial manned space program.
"That's the future of suborbital vehicles, any place on earth is really only 45 minutes away," said Geoff Sheerin, the Ontario-based CEO of PlanetSpace, which aims to launch Canada's first suborbital space flight by 2008 and its first orbital flight by 2010.
The program is expected to cost about $200-million and will primarily be funded by private investors, although the province of Nova Scotia has shown some interest in investing, according to PlanetSpace.
But why Cape Breton?
It's because it's on the same latitude as the Russian space station, the Baikonur Cosmodrome, which supplies many of the parts for the International Space Centre and is better positioned to save fuel flying to the site than the Kennedy Space Centre. NASA is intending to put out contracts for those wishing to fly there by 2010.
"If you put your finger on the globe at the Russian space centre and rotate it around, you'll come to Cape Breton," Mr. Sheerin said, adding that there is also a lot of coastal space available in the area. "It's not like trying to find a launch site down the U.S. East Coast."
The spacecraft is a hypersonic glider named the Silver Dart and was originally designed by the U.S.'s military space program in 1962, before it was disbanded in favour of a civilian program.
The Silver Dart weighs 6,300 kilograms, is 15 metres long, and carries up to eight passengers and some cargo. It's powered by 28 rockets. Initially, the program will see space tourists taken on a sub-orbital ride that would last only 15-minutes, and cost each passenger roughly $250,000.
"We're not really planning to fly to Vancouver, it's just an example of the capabilities of these vehicles," Mr. Sheerin said, adding that the first flights will basically shoot straight up, and descend for an ocean recovery within an hour.
"It's an extraordinary view, you're weightless for 4 1/2 minutes, you see the Earth from the same view that the shuttle astronauts do, and it doesn't cost millions of dollars to go into orbit," Mr. Sheerin said. "I know it doesn't sound like a bargain price from a regular price stand point, but there are plenty of people around the world willing to do it."
PlanetSpace's chairman, Chirinjeev Kathuria, whose MirCorp launched the first privately funded manned space program in 2000, said there are plenty of people interested in taking the trip. Virgin Galatic, billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson's space tourism venture, reportedly already has 50,000 people lined up.
"The interest in space tourism has grown phenomenally," Mr. Kathuria said. "That's why you have a lot of entrepreneurs going after this market."
The economic impact in the area will almost certainly be felt as well. The State of New Mexico Economic Development Department estimated in 2005 that a similar program to the one planned in Nova Scotia would generate $450-million (U.S.) in new economic activity in the region and more than 3,400 jobs.
Those figures are expected to jump to $552-million and more than 4,300 jobs by 2020.
In addition, the rocket is run on ethanol, which is a burgeoning industry in the East, as well as in Canada as a whole.
"There's a large movement in the Maritimes to produce a lot of [ethanol] for gasoline, so we will become a major customer for that," Mr. Sheerin said, adding that besides the economic reasons for using alternative fuels, it's also very "Canadian."
"When we're taking you for a ride into space, you can look back and see this very thin atmosphere, but you know you didn't wreck it just to get up there for the view."
