It would appear that World View’s business plan has changed considerably since it applied for the Arizona Commerce Authority’s (ACA) Spring 2014 Arizona Innovation Challenge (AIC). World View, in heavily redacted documents from the ACA submitted for that award, advised that their headquarters and laboratory are located in Tucson, Arizona and the launch site is in Page, Arizona.
In fact, World View writes, “Danny Ball, NASA’s foremost scientific ballooning expert, selected Page Arizona for launch operations because of its exceptional weather…. We are assuming a single launch site in the US, which will be in Page, Arizona. It is possible that we will have multiple launch sites around the world by 2018. Adding additional international launch locations could increase ticket sales due to more exposure in new tourist markets.”
Nowhere in the non-redacted portions of the documents is there any mention of abandoning their Tucson headquarters or a specific reference to a Tucson launch site.
However, in a memo dated April 15, 2016, Pima County administrator Chuck Huckelberry claims: “Three states competed for the World View headquarters: Florida, New Mexico, and Arizona. In the three state competitive process, the County had to define in some detail the size and function of the World View building. The County was told by World View that they had a forecast for demand that required completion of their facility by November 2016 and that both Florida and New Mexico, as part of their incentive packages, had committed to meeting that delivery date.”
What is remarkable about Huckelberry’s claim is that in October 2015, at the Page Municipal Airport, World View “successfully completed a major milestone test flight… keeping the company on track to meet its 2017 goal for private flights with passengers to the edge of space. This test flight carried a scaled down, replica spacecraft to a final altitude of 100,475 feet (30624 meters), successfully marking the transition from sub-scale testing to a historical next stage of development – full scale testing.”
Andrew F. Antonio, Director, Marketing and Communications for World View, advised the ADI in an email on May 9, “Page, Arizona offers ideal weather conditions and beautiful views of the grand canyon (sic) on launch and at altitude. Therefore, it will be a very viable option for human-tended flight in the future.” When asked when Tucson was added to World View’s plans in light of the fact that no mention of it as a launch site was made in the ACC documents, Antonio only replied, “ Tucson is a viable option as well and we do plan to fly commercial flights from Tucson.”
Tucson has been home to World View founders Jane Poynter and Taber MacCallum since they participated in the Biosphere 2 debacle in the early 90s. Poynter and MacCallum, lived in the Biosphere, described by Wired.com as an “eccentric, privately funded science experiment,” for two years. Time Magazine named the Biosphere experiment one of the 100 worst ideas of the century.
Wired.com covered the duo in a report about their plans to fly to Mars. “The couple’s far-out dreams of space travel differ from those of many others because theirs could, potentially, come true. They founded a private space company called Paragon Space Development Corporation to find the most feasible way to send two people on a round-trip flyby of the Red Planet,” reads the Wired.com article.
According to the Wired.com article, the couple began dreaming up their space travel plans while in the Biosphere despite the fact that “Neither MacCallum nor Poynter had gone to college or had any formal training in science, engineering, or business. But their trajectory toward space began early in their lives, long before entering Biosphere 2. MacCallum’s father was an astronomer and his grandfather helped build propellers for the Wright brothers.
Poynter, who grew up in England and came to the U.S. “After high school, says her deep fascination with space sprouted from reading Isaac Asimov and other science fiction authors as a kid. Their eyes had long been tilted toward the sky” continues the article. “After high-school, both began training with other Biosphere 2 candidates in remote conditions, including on a ranch in the Australian Outback and an ocean-research vessel that sailed around the world, both organized by the privately-funded Institute of Ecotechnics that invented Biosphere 2.
MacCallum and Poynter met during this time and sparked a friendship that turned to romance and led to marriage 9 months after leaving Biosphere 2.”
Despite the fact that they lack education and money, the couple received support from the Arizona Technology Council (ATC) in their ACC application. The ATC wrote a letter of recommendation that reads in part: “The Arizona Technology Council is thrilled that World View is adding to the already strong aerospace industry in our state. Further, we are happy that World View headquarters are located in Tucson and that your launch site will be in Page.” Later, Steven G. Zylstra, President and CEO of ATC joined others in a letter to Goldwater asking that they withdraw their lawsuit against Pima County. (Read here)
The company also received the support of Michael Hannley from the Bank of Tucson. Hannley wrote, “I am interest n (sic) World View as both a local good investment and as a technology company that will benefit the state. Jane Poynter, CEO and President of World View, has been very successful in building Paragon Space Development Corporation with Taber McCallum. She is a proven businesswoman and an asset to Arizona.”
One of Paragon Space Development Corporation’s board members, Ron Sable, served on the Board of Directors of the Bank of Tucson. According to sources, the Bank of Tucson is expected to “hold” the money for World View.
World View’s application reads in part:
World View’s technology provides easy access to the stratosphere for hours, days, or weeks. Without this technology, this region of atmosphere/space is otherwise inaccessible to humans for more than mere minutes. World View makes transportation to the space frontier as accessible as flying on a commercial airplane, for all of us, for science, for humanity. The lower atmosphere, where planes fly, is home to more than a trillion dollar market. Now, World View is creating a new economy in the stratosphere. Using our deep expertise in extreme equipment design we are continually innovating to significantly drop the cost of access to space. World View’s headquarters and laboratory are located in Tucson, Arizona and the launch site is In Page, Arizona. We expect to turn Arizona into the center of the stratosphere industry.
What we do: At World View, we launch people and equipment to the stratosphere and beyond. Half of our business focuses on space tourism; we will send passengers to the edge of space for a meaningful and moving experience. The other half of our business is devoted to serving Industrial and research customers who need to launch people and payloads to the stratosphere for business and research purposes.
Who we are: Jane Poynter, CEO and Founder, is a Tucson resident of 25 years, who has a proven track record of building a thriving local business (Paragon Space Development Corp est. 1993). She has attracted management and advisory teams with world-renowned experience in luxury tourism, human spaceflight, aerospace engineering, earth and space science, and FAA regulation.
Disruptive Technology: Currently, the technology used by World View is the only method that provides access to the stratosphere for multiple hours, days, months and ultimately years. World View’s innovation plan will produce an ongoing series of inventions that will significantly lower the price of launching people and payloads into the stratosphere and into space. A lower cost access to the stratosphere changes the game for many companies who want access to the stratosphere. To mitigate technology risk, the initial launches will be done with thoroughly tested high-altitude balloon technologies that have been in use for decades.
Business Model: World View’s business model includes two main revenue streams -B2B and B2C. The -B2B customers are companies that send people and equipment to the stratosphere for industrial and research purposes. The B2C customers are individuals who wish to travel to the stratosphere as tourists for entertainment purposes.
Market Conditions: World View is turning the very expensive into the very attainable. The invention of the personal computer changed the computing market drastically. PCs made it possible to do heavy computing without having to purchase a hugely expensive mainframe. World View’s far cheaper technology will allow people and businesses to access the stratosphere without having to use a rocket. This changes everything.
The space tourism market is now famous due to the excitement drummed up by companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic. Initially, space tourism will be possible only for the very wealthy, but as prices drop the market will develop to include a much larger subset of the world’s population.
The industry and research markets are less obvious to the general public than space tourism. These behind-the-scenes markets include researchers who wish to collect data for research on solar events, atmospheric changes, weather patterns, and the stratosphere itself. Businesses are interested to use the stratosphere for communications, navigation, weather, and surveillance.
Job and wealth creation in Arizona: Anticipated hires in the next year: 22. [REDACTED] When World View is successful, Arizona stands to gain a growing company that includes sales, operations, high tech manufacturing, and R&D. Within a year, World View will stand up a US-based manufacturing facility dedicated to making the balloons that are critical to these flights.
Launches will occur out of Page, Arizona, which stands to gain an influx of wealthy tourists. World View’s headquarters and R&D are both located in Tucson, Arizona.
For two high school graduates, the founders Paragon Space Development Corporation thought of everything and planned for every contingency. According to Blog for Arizona:
The Arizona Republic’s Political Insider had a bit of fun mocking Rep. Ethan Orr (R-Tucson) on Sunday:
Tucson, we have a problem … The Arizona Legislature has yet to agree on how to stop texting and driving, fix the state’s broken child-protection agency or improve K-12 education. But it’s apparently all over the whole space-travel thing.Rep. Ethan Orr, R-Tucson, has introduced a bill that would assure a company is not legally liable for any injuries, emotional distress or death a space-flight participant may incur if the participant signed a liability release.
Next up, proposed regulations for teleporting.Beam me up, Scotty.
Ha!Ha! You guys at the Republic are hilarious. The only problem is your superficial reporting in an attempt to reduce politics to humor ignores the obvious: legislators don’t file these kinds of bills unless they are carrying it on behalf of a special interest, probably one that is a contributor to his or her campaign.
The bill passed and was signed by Governor Jan Brewer on April 23, 2014. According to the Secretary of State’s website, Poynter contributed $400 to Orr and ATC contributed a total of $1000.
Given the fact that Paragon was making so many plans and putting so many pieces in place, it is difficult to grasp the nature of the “emergency” Pima County declared when they approved the World View deal.
There is a race though to market. According to World View’s ACC application:
“The space tourism industry consists of a direct competitor (Zero21nfinity) and indirect competitors (SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and XCOR). Indirect competitors are rocket-based companies. Direct competitors are other balloon-based companies. This is a small community world-wide; we are friendly with many of the people in competing companies.
Zero2Infinityis World View’s closest competitor for balloon-based space tourism. They have publicized that they are building InBloon, their high-altitude balloon vehicle. Their ticket price is twice World View’s at$150,000. They are keeping their development quiet, so we don’t know exact details.Zero21nfinity is based in Spain. We are intimately aware of a few R&D challenges that anyone in this business will have to overcome. We know the world-wide limitations for R&D, vendors, and equipment. Success will be more difficult for them than it is for us due to a couple of unfair advantages that we possess.”
In 2013, Universe Today reported:
The newly announced World View balloon flight concept shares a number of “striking” similarities to an older proposal for ‘near-space flight experience’ balloon rides, according to the head of the zero2infinity Inbloon project.”
Both concepts are competing in the nascent high-altitude balloon market, which would see these craft fly high in the stratosphere with paying clients and/or payloads on board. Some of them would be paying tourists to look at the view, while others would be institutions looking to get above most of the Earth’s atmosphere for scientific and other purposes.
The groundwork for zero2infinity’s Inbloon has been in the works since about 2002, founder Jose Mariano Lopez Urdiales said. So far, the Spanish company has run three test flights with micro versions of its balloon; the last one was in September. A ride high in the atmosphere would (when it happens) cost the equivalent of $150,000 (110,000 Euros).
World View — backed by Arizona’s Paragon Space Development Corp., which is involved in several startup space projects — announced in late October that it would offer rides to the high atmosphere for $75,000 each. Few details were provided, but Paragon president Jane Poynter told Universe Today that more announcements will come. She added that the company has been thinking about this kind of work seriously for at least a decade.
The companies were in talks for Paragon to provide life support systems for Inbloon, Urdiales said, but Paragon decided to go its own route. The World View announcement came shortly after Urdiales was told of Paragon’s decision, he added.
“We were speaking to them for a couple of years. They learned about our business and what we were doing,” Urdiales said in late October.
“A month ago or so, they said ‘We’re not going to be able to supply you. We don’t think we’re going to be able to export this to Spain.’ And then we said, ‘Fine, we’re talking to other suppliers’ … and then they launched this thing. The commonalities are striking.”
As examples, Urdiales said a lot of the marketing language was similar and that the artists’ concepts of the balloon designs for the two companies also appeared to be about the same. He added, however, that he is not planning to pursue any formal action because he would rather focus on running safe flights. The first human-rated Inbloon flight is expected in 2014, he said.
“The hard part is getting the investment, and doing the flight. Both things are pretty hard, and require a level of integrity. Otherwise the tests don’t work and you break something and you [could] kill people.”
World View told Universe Today that Paragon has been pursuing this idea independently for years, long before they heard of Urdiales’ plans. The company did not comment on Urdiales’ claims about previous business talks.
Currently, space explorers can book a flight with Zero2Infinity. Their website reads:
You can already book your flight! The ticket price is €110,000, and it can be paid in 3 steps:
€10,000 to put your name on the list and become our priority customer
€50,000 after our first successful human flight
€50,000 upon flight date confirmation
Book now, secure your price and be among the first to fly! We will make your experience unforgettable and you’ll be with us every step of the way.
It does appear however that World View does have an advantage in timing and price. CNN reports, “With extensive unmanned testing already underway, the hope for World View is that it could launch as soon as the end of 2016, with Bloon expecting to begin flights in the next few years.” Space News reported in January 2014: “With commercial flight services slated to begin in about three years, World View in December began accepting deposits for the $75,000 ride.”
Thanks to the largess of Pima County, on April 28, World View announced that venture capitalists ponied up another $15 million. With all that capital and possible money, in the form of deposits, flying around it is unclear why Pima County taxpayers are on the hook. One thing is very clear though; taxpayers just might help an immigrant with only a high school education achieve the American Dream while they slog through the nightmare of living in the 8th poorest metropolitan area in the country and hoping they might get 1 of the 22 jobs promised by World View.
Editor’s note: After this article was published, Antonio advised the ADI that despite promises to the ACC, World View “began a national competitive search in early 2015 and received compelling economic incentive proposals from a number of states.”
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