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Middle East Takes One Step Closer to Space
The Middle East: a variable region which, depending on whether one asks a geographer, anthropologist or political scientist, encompasses around 5% of planet earth.
It’s unbearably hot all year round. Arable land is incredibly sparse and the region does not have nearly enough fresh water to support its burgeoning population. The region is host to an abundant number of unending conflicts, both active and latent, and residents face a more realistic threat of nuclear war than any other region on earth.
It is understandable that many Middle Easterners would prefer to go, at least temporarily, elsewhere.
Residents of the Arabian peninsula came a step closer to that goal on Wednesday after a United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) investment house bought a large stake in the world’s first project to launch passenger flights into space.
Aabar, an investment house linked to the government of Abu Dhabi, the U.A.E.’s capital, announced a $280 million agreement Wednesday to take a 32 percent equity stake in Virgin Galactic, set to be the world’s first commercial ‘spaceline.’
The deal gives Aabar exclusive rights to the pilot the program in the Middle East and includes a $100 million plan to build a spaceport in the U.A.E.
“The investment is into Virgin Galactic’s holding company which is flying from New Mexico,” Nick Fox, Director Financial Communications at Virgin Group, told The Media Line.
“Aabar also bought the rights to launch Virgin Galactic space flights from the Middle East,” he continued. “They plan to use the technology that we are developing and set up their own Middle Eastern spaceport to be funded, designed and built by themselves.”
Virgin officials have indicated plans for further launch sites. Fox said that Abu Dhabi was seen as providing ideal weather for space launches.
“Part of the business plan is to make this plan much more global than just launching from New Mexico… the heat doesn’t matter so much, essentially you need reasonably clear, benign conditions.”
The spaceline, set to launch within two years, has to date been wholly owned and funded by Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group.
The Virgin – Aabar deal was signed in concert with the flying debut of Virgin’s WhiteKnightTwo, an aircraft designed to launch a ship into space, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, U.S.
Known for his ostentatious announcements, Branson signed the deal while sporting a black Virgin flight suit and within minutes put on a helmet and boarded his first WhiteKnightTwo flight.
The WhiteKnightTwo is designed to lift a passenger spacecraft or satellite to an altitude of 50,000 feet (over 15,000 meters), where it would then detach from the aircraft and sail into space.
The Virgin Galactic is being developed by Scaled Composites, a California based aeronautics company which won the X Prize to build the world’s first privately-funded passenger spaceship, and is set to be unveiled at the end of the year.
“Then you’ve got a lot of testing before the commercial flight,” Fox said.
While Virgin has yet to successfully take commercial passengers on a round-trip journey into space, the company has already taken reservations from 300 future passengers, each of whom has paid $200,000 for the ticket. Virgin has invested a further $100 million into the venture.
The Virgin Galactic will first launch from a base in New Mexico, in the Western U.S., but in addition to the $280 million Aabar deal, the investment house plans to spend another $100 million to fund the development of a Virgin Galactic spaceport and a small space satellite launch site in Abu Dhabi.
Aabar plans to base Virgin WhiteKnightTwo satellite launches out of Abu Dhabi within three years.
Space Adventures, a Virgin competitor, announced plans to build a $265 million spaceport in Ras al-Khaimah in the northern U.A.E., but there have been few developments on the project since.
“The nouveau riche in the Arab petro-dollar world have traditionally looked for very high profile, high prestige projects, some of which succeed but most of which end up disappearing,”Dr Gerald Steinberg, the Chair of Political Studies at Bar Ilan University and an expert on the politics of space exploration, told The Media Line.
“Richard Branson is a very attractive investment opportunity in terms of publicity, but if the investors in Abu Dhabi really expect to turn a profit off this, even in 50 years, I would say they are getting bad advice,” Steinberg added. “The profitability of commercial space activities in general, in particular in relation to manned spacecraft, is extremely speculative.”
With most of the country’s oil reserves, Abu Dhabi is the wealthiest of the U.A.E.’s seven semi-autonomous emirates. Aabar has invested principally in oil-based ventures but has branched out over the past few years.
“Virgin Galactic is the leader in the realm of space tourism, having successfully established a potential global market for its offering in a very short span of time,” Khadem Al Qubaisi, the chairman of Aabar, said in a statement. “Aabar’s stake in Virgin Galactic will open a new avenue of opportunity for Abu Dhabi in this unique and dynamic business.”
Aabar Investments is owned by Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the U.A.E.’s Minister of Presidential Affairs. Sheikh Mansour is the Chairman of First Gulf Bank, the International Petroleum Investment Company and the Emirates Horse Racing Authority. He is most famous for owning a majority share in the U.K.’s Manchester City football club and is believed to have a personal fortune of around $54 billion and a family fortune of over $900 billion.
He is married to the daughter of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, prime minister of the U.A.E. and the ruler of Dubai.
Benjamin Joffe-Walt
The MidEast News Source