Jane Poynter has a mesmerizing way of describing what it will be like to be shuttled to the ends of the Earth in the souped-up space balloon being developed by her company, World View.
You’ll arrive at the launch site predawn, Poynter says, and step inside a comfortable capsule with a few other passengers. You’ll lift off the ground, and float upward for an hour and a half, gently rising at a speed of about 1,000 feet a minute. When you arrive at the top of the atmosphere, Poynter says, you’ll see “the most unbelievable panorama of stars” around you. The sun, rising up over the ground below you, will begin to creep over the horizon and light up the Earth below. You’ll hover in that place for about an hour before gliding back to the ground using a rectangular parachute called a parafoil.
Jane Poynter.
World View EnterprisesOh, and there will be appetizers and booze. Mustn’t forget about the appetizers and booze.
Today, this vision is still the stuff of Poynter’s imagination, but recently, that vision moved a lot closer to reality when World View completed a flight that took its balloon 100,000 feet in the air, and safely landed it using a parafoil. Though parafoils have been used by the military to airdrop huge pieces of equipment, this was the first time one had ever successfully drifted down from 100,000 feet.
World View still has a long way to go before it can bring actual human beings this high. The test flight carried only research equipment, but its success suggests World View is steadily inching its way toward making a balloon ride to space possible.
“This means it works, which is pretty crucial,” Poynter says, laughing. “That was the big, risky part of the whole development. We still have some refinements to do on it, but we’ve at least proven that it’ll work, which is huge.”
The Race to Space
Of course, World View is far from alone in its mission to bring average people to space. Space tourism has become the obsession of some of the world’s most accomplished businessmen, from Elon Musk to Richard Branson. But while these players have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build their own spaceships, World View is taking a comparatively simple — and more affordable — approach. Poynter won’t say exactly how much the company has poured into developing its space balloon, but she predicts by the time it’s ready for launch as early as 2016, World View will have spent less than $100 million on development. That means tickets aboard a World View balloon—$75,000 each—will also cost less than half as much as a ticket on one of Virgin Galactic’s flights, she says.
“It’s all about making space as accessible as possible, so eventually, everyone can go if they so choose,” Poynter says.
From Biosphere to Balloons
World View is just the latest venture for Poynter and her husband, Taber MacCallum, who met in the early `90s as crewmembers in Biosphere 2, an experiment in which a group of researchers spent two years living inside a glass and steel structure to see whether they could live off the land within the enclosed dome. After leaving Biosphere, Poynter and MacCallum launched Paragon Space Development, a company that creates life support systems for organizations like NASA, with the eventual hope of supporting manned missions to Mars.
Last fall, however, Poynter and MacCallum announced they were stepping down from their role at Paragon to focus full time on World View, an idea that Poynter says MacCallum first proposed back in 2011. The pair had spent years talking to astronauts about their travels to space, Poynter says, and always heard it described as a life-changing experience. They decided they wanted to recreate that experience for other people, but the challenge was figuring out how. It wasn’t until MacCallum suggested using balloon technology, which had traditionally been used to carry equipment such as weather observation gear to near-space, that Poynter and MacCallum felt they had an idea that was actually achievable.
“If you’re not getting into developing a new rocket or designing a spacecraft, it doesn’t require completely new technology,” Poynter says. “It seemed like an incredibly accessible way to do it.”
Getting to Space Sooner
When it’s complete, World View’s balloon will consist of three parts: a helium balloon, not unlike the ones NASA has used for years to take payloads to space; a standard parafoil used by the military that World View has adapted to its own needs; and a capsule that borrows from existing spacecraft design. “We don’t have to invent technology,” Poynter says. “We’re just pushing the boundaries of how this technology is being used.”
All this means World View may be able to begin shuttling passengers to space sooner, and more affordably, than other players in this field. According to Poynter, tickets have already been selling.
In the meantime, World View has begun working with NASA on commercial applications for its technology. Just last weekend, World View completed its first major commercial mission, carrying research equipment built by university students to near space as part of NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program. The goal of this program is to let researchers take advantage of the growing number of commercial flight companies out there. World View’s balloon allows these researchers to test how their technology performs at a fraction of the cost of other types of technology.
“These devices can’t be tested on the ground, so getting them to those altitudes, above the majority of the atmosphere, you can see these instruments work in the vacuum of space,” says Ron Young, program manager for NASA Flight Opportunities. “These balloons are give us a huge advantage in terms of a gaining cost effective access to space-like environments.”
And for World View, this partnership means the company can begin bringing in revenue to fund more research and development for its space tourism business, which could take several more years to, quite literally, get off the ground. But when it does, Poynter says she’ll be first in line for the journey.
“I could give you all these high concept ideals about why we’re doing this,” Poynter says, “but at the end of the day, its because I want to go.”
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