Armadillo has reportedly given exclusive marketing rights for suborbital passenger flight to Space Adventures. I’m not sure that’s a great idea — it might restrict the market somewhat if others, like Incredible Adventures, can’t sell them as well. I wonder what they got for it.
8 thoughts on “Hmmmmm…”
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Interesting. Surely this must be an agreement for a limited period of time. Fortunately, we’ll have an entire month of idle and mostly baseless speculation to look forward to!
I’d be willing to bet that the deal is for a limited time, and an exclusive deal makes sense for a firm with limited manpower like Armadillo. After all, manned suborbital flight is only one of their target markets, and I’m sure they’d prefer to just have Space Adventures worry about dealing with customers so that Armadillo can concentrate more on rocket-building and launching.
Without exclusive marketing rights it might not have been worth making any deal for Space Adventures. I think your concerns are legitimate.
Armadillo is making rockets for all sorts of purposes. They are engineers and builders, not marketers. Why shouldn’t they sign a deal with someone else to do all the ticket selling and that sort of thing? I am sure Carmack and company are smart enough to have performance guarantees that will allow them to find other sellers if Space Adventures does not sell enough seats.
The 2010 space access video (put on youtube by Clark) suggests that the fish bowl design may be dead 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsdpB6UmrAw#t=7m35s
“Vienna-based Space Adventures Ltd., which has arranged space travel adventures to the International Space Station for millionaire customers through Russia’s space program, may soon be sending tourists into space with an American partner.
Space Adventures says it has signed an exclusive marketing agreement with Rockwall, Tex.-based Armadillo Aerospace LLC for commercial passenger space tours. Armadillo has been developing suborbital spaceflight vehicles for the past decade.
“A decade of research and development has gotten us to the point where we can credibly talk about commercial passenger experiences,” said Armadillo Aerospace chief technical officer John Carmack.
“Everything is coming together – there is enough clarity in the technical, regulatory, and market factors that it is the right time to form a partnership with Space Adventures to help us take things through to commercial operation.”
Space Adventures chief executive Eric Anderson says the companies will announce more details next month.
Space Adventures advisory board includes former Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, as well as Space Shuttle astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut.”
April 29, 2010 – Washington Business Journal
Just great, now I have to pay european taxes if I want to ride a Texan’s rocket. Dumb move, Carmack.
The Vienna where the Space Adventures headquarters is located is in Virginia, not Austria, Mikey. Cool your jets.