UK start-up ShipInSpace is set to shake up the emerging space tourism market after receiving initial funding to test a craft that could carry 44 people, according to founder Fabrizio Boer. The group secured £5m from British investment firm Blackstar…
UK start-up ShipInSpace is set to shake up the emerging space tourism market after receiving initial funding to test a craft that could carry 44 people, according to founder Fabrizio Boer.
The group secured £5m from British investment firm Blackstar Global, headed by ShipInSpace’s head of marketing Matthew Nicol, in return for a stake understood to be 35%.
Speaking to SatelliteFinance on the sidelines of the International Space Commerce 2013 Summit in London, Boer said his reusable vertical take-off vehicle will cost around £200m to develop because his design experiences less vibration than usual, enabling it to slash costs while also improving reliability and safety.
That design, which comprises multiple four-person passenger modules that in an emergency situation could independently parachute back to Earth, recently embarked upon 18 months of tests with support from the European Space Agency.
After those tests are completed, Boer is confident of raising the rest of the financing it needs to start launching from the second half of 2018, possibly through a mixture of debt and equity.
“After the phase one testing is completed, we will have removed our ‘start-up’ label,” he said.
The venture is already sounding out ideas for a launchpad and is in talks about repurposing a military base in the UK, where the spacecraft will be assembled.
The vehicle is currently being designed in an office the group has in Italy, but ShipInSpace is also considering export credit agency support to manufacture its parts elsewhere.
As well as potentially carrying more passengers than other vehicles being developed by space tourism groups Virgin Galactic and XCOR Aerospace, the group promises to take them deeper into space than its rivals are planning within the next five years.
Its vehicle would take people for short rides some 268km above the Earth, passed the 100km Kármán Line definition of the edge of space and around 168km further than it claims any other space trip operator is planning.
However, unlike fellow British firm Virgin Galactic, which is gearing up for its first commercial sub orbital flight next year, ShipInSpace does not have millions of pounds in customer deposits.
It plans to offer tickets for roughly US$66,000 in total, which it claims is a quarter of the cost of the other operators.
But despite these advantages, the group raised only €596 of a €100,000 goal when using crowd funding website Indiegogo earlier this year. It also received no commitments for its offer of 10% of equity for €100,000.
Boer put this down to not having the funding at the time to paint a high quality picture of the venture, with people doubting the group’s ability to surpass the capabilities of NASA without the space agency’s “almost unlimited funding”.
He said: “Now with the £5m funding we are sure to accomplish the phase one and arrive to the qualification of the passengers module. After this milestone everything will be much easier.
“I also think that the success of a crowd funding campaign much depends on the reputation a company has at that moment, ours was certainly not that of [recently announced asteroid mining start-up] Planetary Resources, sponsored by Virgin among others – this makes the difference!”
