The late Rocketplane which was to have flown from Oklahoma.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has an account of George French’s odyssey from billboard king to bankrupt NewSpace entrepreneur. His Rocketplane Global and Rocketplane Kistler ventures were once in prime positions to capture large shares of both the suborbital space tourism market and commercial cargo delivery to the International Space Station. And yet both efforts collapsed amid funding woes, multiple bankruptcy filings, and a flood of lawsuits from unpaid employees and vendors.

For NewSpace advocates, this is a sad story. But, it’s really not unusual. A vast majority of start ups fail, for a whole host of reasons ranging from mismanagement to simply bad timing. Rocketplane is certainly not the first — nor will it be the last — NewSpace company to fail.

Rocketplane Global Vice President Chuck Lauer said today that the company expects to begin flying space tourists on suborbital rides out of Cecil Field in Jacksonville by 2013. Rocketplane has signed a letter of intent with the Jacksonville Aviation Authority to become the first commercial space operator to use the former Naval air base turned spaceport, Lauer told attendees at Space Access ’10 in Phoenix.

Lauer  said that that Rocketplane would fund development of its six-person space plane as part of a $300 million project that would also create a Spaceport Visitor’s Center at the Jacksonville site. The center would include full motion 3D/HD suborbital flight simulators that would allow visitors to experience a 4-minute version of the 45-minute spaceflight that well-heeled passengers will fly aboard Rocketplane’s suborbital vehicle.

Selling day passes to the visitor’s center would generate revenues of $100 to $150 million to support operations.  Lauer said that broadening the revenue stream makes sense to the investor community. He expects to announce a funding package within the next few weeks that will cover the development of ground facility and Rocketplane’s XP space plane.

Lauer said that Cecil Field is the first spaceport that is already in a major tourist destination. The Jacksonville area has 10 million visitors per year, providing a good base to support the Visitor’s Center. By contrast, Spaceport America is located in a sparsely populated area of New Mexico.

Rocketplane had done a lot off the design work and some testing on its six-passenger vehicle. However, it has been unable to obtain funding  in order to conduct a flight testing program due in part to the global economic meltdown. Last year, it laid off most of its employees and closed its offices at the Oklahoma Spaceport. At Space Access ’09, Lauer said it would take more than $100 million to get to the first flight.

Rocketplane’s teams are on standby, ready to get begin work again once funding is in place. He estimated that it will take about two-and-a-half years to develop the real estate element of the plan. While that work is being done, Rocketplane will rebuild its Oklahoma operations and proceed with building the space plane and conducting a flight test program, Lauer said.

The first space tourism flights would take place in 2013. Prior to flying passengers, Rocketplane will fly scientific experiments aboard test flights. The research market could be larger than the one for space tourists, Lauer said.

Cecil Field has obtained a flight corridor that will take passengers out over the Atlantic Ocean. They will experience several minutes of weightlessness as they view the entire Florida peninsula.

Rocketplane wants to base XP vehicles at sites around the world. Possible spaceports include:

• Oklahoma
• Hawaii
• Hokkaido, Japan
• Singapore
• United Arab Emirates
• Spain
• Sweden.

The Hawaiian flights would go between two islands, allowing passengers to see the entire island chain. The XP vehicle has conventional engines that allow for a powered descent and landing and cross-range capability to land at different airports. By contrast, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo glides to a landing without engine power.

Lauer said the XP could begin to link spaceports around the world with point-to-point flights. He foresees Rocketplane developing an evolutionary  family of vehicles over the next ten years based on the XP design.

Saying his state is losing money, an Oklahoma legislator wants to place tighter restrictions on a type of tax credit that Rocketplane Global and other companies have received, the Oklahoma Gazette reports:

Under the state’s transferable tax credit statute, a company that receives the credit may turn around and sell the credit to receive up-front cash. In most cases, the company sells the credit for a discount. But the purchasing company, usually a bank or insurance company, can use its share of the tax credit as it sees fit, which according to Dank may be selling the credit to another company, or writing off the company’s tax liability.

“Transferable tax credits are wrong to me,” Dank said. “A company not having anything to do with (the industry the tax credit is aimed at) can get money through the tax credit.”

One example is Rockeplane Global, which in 2003 was awarded an $18 million tax credit from the state. The company, designed to launch space tourism flights from Oklahoma, sold the credit to a bank and received $15 million in up-front cash for the deal. But the bank then had an $18 million credit to spend at its will…

Several companies that have bought tax credits are using the credits to write off insurance premiums to the state. According to information Dank obtained from the Oklahoma Insurance Department, between 2006 and 2008, more than $100 million of tax credit money has been used against a company’s state premium tax liability.

Dank said he has no problem handing out tax credits to companies who need the extra funds to hire workers and stimulate the state’s economy. He just doesn’t want those companies selling its tax credits to other companies who may just write off its tax liabilities.

Earlier this year, Rocketplane Global laid off most of its employees and moved out of state without ever flying a suborbital tourism vehicle. The company needs about $200 million dollar to complete development and testing of its planned business jet sized space plane. The company says it still wants to fly out of Oklahoma but it is also looking at sites in Hawaii and Florida.

The Oklahoma Gazette has the full story on the tax credit controversy.

Trip to space in aisle 4
MinnPost

Some scoff at Penny Markt customers’ prospects of even getting airborne. “I saw the story and laughed my head off,” said Scott Cooper, a reporter at the Oklahoma Gazette who has been following Rocketplane’s activities since it first landed in Oklahoma. “In the 10 years they’ve been going they have never built a ship, and they have broken promise after promise after promise.”

Among other potential sore points for Oklahomans is Rocketplane’s $18 million in tax credits from Oklahoma state agencies since 2004 on the promise the company would bring jobs to the state. “I went to their headquarters near the airport in March and found they were locked up. The company had been packed up and gone,” Cooper said.

Lauer confirmed Rocketplane received the $18 million tax incentive, which he said was sold to a bank for $12.7 million in cash, which he says was spent on developing Rocketplane XP. He also confirms that it moved its headquarters from Oklahoma to Green Bay, Wisconsin, early this year. Nevertheless, he said, “We are committed to building and operating our vehicles from Oklahoma.”

But Lauer also said Rocketplane was looking at a “multi-spaceport strategy” involving new ones in Hawaii and Jacksonville, Florida and maybe one in Europe. “The tourist infrastructure is already there.”

Read the full story.

Rocketplane Global’s snake bitten efforts at launching a suborbital tourism business have taken another curious turn.

When we last left the story, Rocketplane had laid off most of its employees, abandoned its base in Oklahoma for Wisconsin, and needed in excess of $100 million just to get to the first flight of its prototype.

This week, it emerged that the company is selling tickets for its non-existent space plane in an Austrian discount supermarket:

Penny Markt doesn’t just sell groceries. As of Thursday, shoppers can pony up a small fortune for a trip into space. All inclusive.

Penny Markt, owned by the Germany-based REWE Group, is offering the space trips in cooperation with Rocketplane Global.

The report indicates that tickets are selling at €209,555 ($313,955), not including the pre-flight EKG. The flights are not expected to take place before 2011.

I dunno. I’m by no means an expert in marketing, but from what little I do know, it seems likely that if I’m shopping for bratwurst at a discount supermarket, I probably don’t have an extra quarter million euros to drop on a space flight.

Of course, I could be wrong about this. Plenty of people with money shop at Costco. Still, it’s an usual approach to things.

Rocketplane Global recently shuttered its office in Oklahoma - dealing a blow to the state's efforts to create a commercial spaceport.

Despite Rocketplane Woes, Oklahoma Spaceport Remains Operational
Oklahoma Gazette

“We’ve really been concentrating on the aerospace side,” said Bill Khourie, executive director of the Oklahoma Space Industrial Development Authority (OSIDA), which operates the Spaceport. “I made a presentation to Boeing Commercial Aircraft last year. They would like to have us on their list to test flights.”

Looking into flights that stay within the Earth’s atmosphere may have to be the route Khourie takes for keeping the Spaceport’s doors open….

“We’re really pursuing the unmanned aerial systems,” he said. “They are being heavily utilized by the Department of Defense, U.S. Forest Service, (U.S.) Border Patrol and others. But there has been reluctance from the FAA for these vehicles to fly unless it is in restricted air space. They are still of the opinion that potential for midair collisions needs refinement.We’re doing this in conjunction with (the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University).”

Read the full story.

Businesses and many economists say Oklahoma needs to offer corporate tax breaks to expand its economy and remain competitive with other states hoping to lure new jobs. “For us to be able to bring the quality jobs that Oklahomans long for and deserve, we must have these tools,” said state commerce secretary Natalie Shirley.

But with Oklahoma facing a budget shortfall of more than $600 million, some lawmakers say its time to reassess how tax breaks are doled out in order to protect taxpayers from being taken for a ride on risky ventures.

Quartz Mountain Aerospace got $32 million in financing through Oklahoma’s rural venture capital tax credit programs before closing its doors in Altus, failing on promises to build 130 pilot training planes in 2008 and 285 in 2009.

Before the Rocketplane and Quartz Mountain ventures ran aground, the Legislature kicked in $27 million to get Great Plains Airlines up and running from Tulsa as a regional carrier, with flights to the west and east coasts. It went bankrupt in 2004 after three years of limited operations.

Read the full story.

Aerospace Company Says It’s Far from Finished in Oklahoma
News9.com

“When you run out of money, you lay people off. That’s what we’ve done. A lay-off does not mean we’re dead, it means that we’re on hold,” said Lauer. “We’re in suspended animation until we get more money.”

Lauer blames the bad economy for what’s happened with Rocketplane, but said the company has plans to return to Oklahoma, despite what others think.

Just two week ago, the news was announced in Hawaii that state lawmakers there were in talks with Rocketplane over a proposed space tourism project.

That’s not what Oklahoma lawmakers wanted to hear, especially since the state has granted the company $18 million in tax credits, but Lauer said the plan has always been to have Rocketplane based in multiple locations.

“We never abandoned the plan to fly in Oklahoma. We will build vehicles in Oklahoma. We’ll have jobs in Oklahoma. We will fly from the Oklahoma spaceport”, said Lauer.

Read the full story.

In a move that has left Oklahoma lawmakers furious, space tourism company Rocketplane has pulled out of Oklahoma City and relocated most of its remaining operations to Wisconsin due to lack of investment and high costs.

The Oklahoman reports:

The company closed its Oklahoma City headquarters at Will Rogers World Airport several months ago and relinquished its hangar at the Oklahoma Spaceport in Burns Flat, Rocketplane President and Chief Executive George French said Wednesday.

An $18 million tax credit in 2003, at least $10 million in equity, other investments and efforts to raise capital by selling tickets to the moon barely have been enough to keep the company afloat.

“We’ve stayed alive, but it’s not easy,” French said.

Relocating most of the company’s employees and operations to Wisconsin was necessary because they could no longer afford the office in Oklahoma City, he said. A few key employees remain in the state, he said.

The sudden move has left some state lawmakers furious, KOTV reports:

“We were told they left in February,” said State Representative David Dank. “Just packed up and left overnight. The last we heard, the guy in charge was working out of his garage in Wisconsin. They have no presence here in Oklahoma and I think that’s an absolute sin against the taxpayers.”

In 2003 Rocketplane was granted an $18 million tax credit from the state. The first launch was scheduled for 2006 but was eventually pushed back to 2010. Following years of financial troubles and turbulence with the staff, plans to go to the final frontier from Oklahoma were a flop.

“Hundreds and thousands of millions of dollars have been flushed down the toilet because of these tax credits that have been given indiscriminately,” Dank said.

Rep. Dank created a task force this year to crack down on companies that receive tax credits by the state to ensure this situation never happens again.

Chuck Lauer, Rocketplane’s vice president of business development, was at NASA Ames last week for the NewSpace 2009 conference. He expressed optimism that the company had found a new source of funding that would enable it to fly suborbital flights out of three U.S. locations and one overseas spaceport. Lauer would not go on the record about details of the investment deal.

(Thanks to Clark Lindsey at Hobby Space for the link)

After $18 Million, RocketPlane Only Launched Empty Promise for Oklahoma
OK Gazette

A drive by the Will Rogers World Airport is all one needs to know something has gone awry. Along Amelia Earhart Drive sits the office of Rocketplane, home to what might have been America’s first commercial space flight passenger company. Based out of the Oklahoma City office for nearly five years, engineers and executives plotted and tested their plans for building a rocket ship.

But today, the doors are locked, the windows are dark and a “For Lease” sign stands outside the office.

“I can’t give you an official date that they left. They didn’t actually close until they moved out of our building,” said Laura Ohrenberg, office manager for The Ninety-Nines International Organization of Women Pilots, which sits directly across from the shuttered Rocketplane office. “They moved out of our building in February.”

Rocketplane had been subleasing their space from the museum, which owns the buildings and leases property from the airport.

“I saw one of the last employees a couple of weeks ago, and he told me about their last financial investor pulling out of them,” Ohrenberg said.

Oklahoma Gazette contacted Rocketplane president George French in Green Bay, Wis., but he would not comment on the record about the company. French became Rocketplane’s biggest investor several years ago and eventually took over the company.

So what of the $18 million Oklahoma taxpayers gave the company? No one has answered that question.

Read the full story.

The Big Island of Hawaii

Hawaii seeks to launch space tourism initiative
Associated Press

Space pioneers envision launching high-end Hawaii tourists from the sand to the stars, taking island-hopping to new heights.

Hawaii won’t win the race to become the first state with space tourism, but in a new twist, it probably will be the first place where travelers can use the planes for real transportation. Hawaii’s planes would take off in one place and land in another – from an airport on the Big Island to a landing on Oahu.

Within a decade, space travelers could island hop from Hawaii to Japan in 45 minutes. And promoters promise a unique perspective during the flight.

“Flying down the Hawaii island chain, it’s a completely different view of the planet than you’ll see when you launch from landlocked states,” said Chuck Lauer, vice president of business development for Oklahoma City-based Rocketplane Global. “It’s the blue planet view of the world.”

Read the full story.

Unlike its brethren in California, New Mexico and Sweden, the Oklahoma Spaceport has been keeping a low profile. So low, in fact, that the last update on its website’s News page is dated June 1, 2007 – nearly two years ago.

With its major tenant, Rocketplane Global, struggling to find financing for its suborbital spacecraft, things have been quiet. Far too quiet for at least one member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, NewsOK reports:

[Rep. Mike] Reynolds, R-Oklahoma City, called the Oklahoma Spaceport near Burns Flat a “pie in the sky” venture. However, Rep. Ryan McMullen, D-Burns Flat, said research is going on at the facility.

It’s operated by the Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority, which is scheduled to receive about $493,000 in the 2010 fiscal year, or 7 percent less than this year.

We’ll have to see if anything changes. If Rocketplane can obtain funding for its project, then activity should begin to pick up.

The 203-page book, titled “I Will Go to Space Next Week,” is a comprehensive round-up of commercial space activities being undertaken around the world. Topics include suborbital and orbital vacation options, marketing and branding opportunities, and commercial projects such as zero gravity manufacturing and commercial lunar development.

Onuki is an aerospace business consultant and Rocketplane Global’s director of Asian business development. She recently organized a space fashion event in New York in cooperation with Rocketplane. It was a competition in which the winner got the opportunity to design clothing for future space tourists.

So far, the book is only available in Japanese. Onuki — who is a director and Asia liaison for the Space Frontier Foundation — said there are no current plans to publish the book in English.

Rocketplane Global CEO Chuck Lauer raised a really interesting question during his presentation at Space Access ’09 on Saturday: Does it make sense to launch space tourists from a place with notoriously bad weather?

Lauer was referring to a proposal being explored by rival space tourism company Virgin Galactic to launch from Scotland – a country with notoriously overcast weather. A key selling point for millionauts is the view of the Earth they will get from 100 kilometers up. If it’s largely clouds, then what is the benefit of that?

Lauer said the idea left him scratching his head. Rocketplane Global will launch its suborbital vehicle from Oklahoma, which Lauer said has good weather most of the time. Virgin Galactic has committed to launches from Spaceport America in New Mexico, which also has good weather much of the year.

Lauer raises an excellent question, actually. I would have asked Virgin Galactic about it today, but they didn’t send anyone to the conference here in Phoenix. I’ll put it on my list.

 

Expressing confidence in the design and technology for his company’s suborbital tourism vehicle, Rocketplane Global CEO Chuck Lauer told participants at Space Access ’09 on Saturday that the biggest problem his company is facing is financial, not technical.

Lauer said the company had terrible timing, going out with the business plan for its six-person vehicle at a time when the current economic meltdown was getting underway. The hedge funds and venture capitalists who once had more money than they knew what to do with were already pulling up the welcome mats.

Lauer was more upbeat about his Oklahoma-based company’s technology, which is designed to carry a pilot and five passengers in a shirt-sleeve environment on short suborbital trips. There will be eight HD cameras on board that will be accessible each passenger’s digital video monitor. They can choose different cameras to watch to watch the ship’s flight.

Lauer praised Paragon Space Development Corporation, the Tucson-based company that is building the vehicle’s life-support system. He called them a “really super company” that is building a system that will allow millionauts to enjoy the trip safely without the burdens of wearing pressure suits.

Lauer said although you cannot always guarantee that passengers will get to space, you must ensure that they return back to Earth safely, he noted. Rocketplane is building abort scenarios and auto shutdowns into the vehicle to ensure that it can continue to fly even with an engine failure. If the rocket engine fails, the vehicle can still fly under jet power for up to 90 minutes, he said.

The company has been successful in selling seats to customers who give them away. Nestle gave away two tickets as part of a promotion that it did in relaunching its Kit Kat bar. Lauer said the campaign was very effective and the company saw a significant uptick in sales.

Lauer said that he was encouraged to hear about NASA’s efforts to purchase space on commercial suborbital vehicles to conduct microgravity experiments. Officials from the space agency’s Ames Research Center gave a presentation on Friday about the program.

“The non-tourist market is, we believe, a substantial part of the market for all of us,” he said, adding that it could account for 15 to 20 percent of Rocketplane’s business.

The company also is looking at providing point-to-point transportation within the Hawaiian islands. Lauer said he thinks that they could combine a real spaceport with a theme park that would have virtual reality rides to the Moon and Mars.