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Image courtesy of PlanetSpace Inc.
Chirinjeev Kathuria’s PlanetSpace Inc. is targeting potential space tourism. The company’s “Silver Dart” space-liner will transport people at an altitude of 62 miles above the ground and at a speed of 17,500 miles per hour. On the Silver Dart, for example, passengers could travel to India from North America in only 45 minutes. |
CHICAGO — Sometimes people choose a career because they love doing it. But Chirinjeev Kathuria chose to enter the world of business because that's what his girlfriend loved to do. However, even though the pair has long since broken up, Kathuria does not regret entering the business world, having become a successful entrepreneur and an architect for setting up businesses across continents.
"That's what I tell people jokingly," Kathuria, 39, said. "I spend one-third of my day with the existing companies, the other one-third with my space projects and the other looking for a wife."
A graduate of medicine at Brown University, Kathuria received a master's degree in business administration from Stanford University and was planning to do surgical residency when his then girlfriend urged him to change track and move to India to start a mobile phone company.
He ditched his plans of doing residency and instead traded the medical coat for a business suit and headed to New Delhi.
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"I went to India to help start one of the earliest mobile companies in India," Kathuria said. "I helped start Usha Phone in Delhi and we provided cellular services in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Orissa."
The economic boom in India in the early 1990s kept Kathuria in the country and he helped start India's first foreign investment bank and was also behind the launch of JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s first India offices in 1994.
After that, he went to the United Kingdom and continued his Midas touch on the industry. He helped pioneer the free Internet service provider concept. He launched X-Stream Network Inc. and helped it become the third largest Internet service provider in the United Kingdom. X-Stream was sold for US$ 75 million in cash and stock and merged with LibertySurf.
Soon, however, Kathuria's childhood passion toward astronomy took him into uncharted space, quite literally. Kathuria formed MirCorp BV, named after the famed Russian space program. A joint venture between Rocket & Science Corp. and Energia, MirCorp became the first private company to launch and fund a manned space program in 2000.
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"We signed up Dennis Tito, the world's first space tourist," Kathuria said. "He paid $20 million to go into space."
The red-letter day came on April 28, 2000 when MirCorp launched Tito into space.
Once Kathuria set foot in the space tourism industry, he became firmly sold on the concept of launching commercial passengers into orbit. On the look out for someone who shared a similar vision and passion, he was introduced to Canadian Geoff Scheerin through a common friend. They soon came together to form Planet Space Inc. in January 2005. Planet Space operates out of Kathuria's current hometown in Chicago and Scheerin's base in London, Ontario.
"After MirCorp, we wanted to build a successful space program," Kathuria said. "And we formed Planet Space. Now Planet Space has taken over from where MirCorp had left off."
Unlike MirCorp, Planet Space hopes to provide a variety of services for a host of sectors from the travel industry to NASA. Apart from sending manned missions to the space, Planet Space is in the race for building a shuttle for NASA.
"NASA is going to retire its existing space shuttle in 2010," Kathuria said. "They're going to have private space companies to build space shuttles and Planet Space is in the reckoning."
But the main project that Kathuria wants to see to fruition is the suborbital flights program. With Scheerin's company Canadian Aero, Planet Space hopes to construct a space-liner that will transport people across continents in 45 minutes.
"We call the space-liner the Silver Dart," Scheerin said. "The engine comes from the V2 rocket that was used in World War II. It will fly out of the atmosphere, through the vacuum of the space. It doesn't stay in the orbit and glides back into the atmosphere."
The Silver Dart will fly at an altitude of about 62 miles above the ground and at a speed of about 17,500 miles per hour.
"The Internet brought commerce instantaneously," Kathuria said. "Similarly with suborbital flights travel can be instantaneous."
To wit, Kathuria estimated that a suborbital flight between Chicago and New Delhi would take 45 minutes.
"Can you imagine the benefits for a country like India to be just 45 minutes away from the rest of the economies of the world," Scheerin said. "The Silver Dart will use the same fuel as the jet engine with an ethanol mix and it will use up its fuel to thrust above the atmosphere."
To accomplish that, Kathuria and Scheerin are working on proposals with the government of Ohio and the government of Nova Scotia in Canada for a launch site. Already, Nova Scotia has allocated 500 acres of land for Planet Space to construct an orbital launch facility.
"The Silver Dart will have the capacity to carry nine passengers," Scheerin said. "We will medically screen passengers before we take them on board."
Though the cost of taking suborbital flights will be expensive initially, Kathuria said it will come down once people begin taking more flights.
"You are going to see a trend where suborbital flights would be the norm of the day," Kathuria said. "And it would change the way companies do business as executives can travel to any part of the world in 45 minutes."
Kathuria said about $200 million has been invested in Planet Space and the company already has about 3,000 people on the waitlist to get to space. He also expects demonstration runs of the suborbital flights in 2009. | 
