Marc Newson

Photo: Richard Harbus for International Herald Tribune

The spaceplane (interior designed by Marc Newson) was unveiled in Paris last week by its manufacturer, Astrium, part of the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company, as the latest challenger in the space tourism market.

Astrium plans to take people into space and straight back again. It expects to charge up to €200,000, or about $265,000, for a ticket when commercial flights start in 2012. Another competitor, Space Adventures, will offer multimillion-dollar eight-day holidays at a space station. When Astrium contacted Newson's design studio in early January, it had already completed the engineering of the spaceplane as a single craft with both jet and rocket engines. Most of the other leisure spacecraft will consist of a mother ship and a rocket. Astrium's jet engines will take the spaceplane, its pilot and four passengers to 15,000 meters, or about 49,000 feet, the rocket engine will power it to 60,000 meters, and the craft will then float up to zero gravity at 100,000 meters. It will return to Earth under its own power, landing like a conventional aircraft."They had engineered the basic configuration, and gave us an empty shell to design the interior and everything else relating to the passengers," explained Newson. "Obviously you have to respect the basic dimensions of the cabin and safety issues. Beyond that, it's a question of trying to understand the conditions that passengers will have to withstand, without losing sight of the ultimate goal of enhancing their experience of being in space."