by Mary Lyn Fonua

Pursuing a dream to develop a private space port in Tonga, a couple of space entrepreneurs have the blessing of Tonga's king to build a small rocket launch site on the king's estate on the southern tip of 'Eua this year, with the aim of launching a rocket before the end of 2010.

Roderick Milliron, a US rocket engineer, said in Tonga recently that his company Interorbital Systems (IOS) expects to be ready to launch a first rocket from 'Eua into a low-earth orbit "by November or December 2010", using a US Launch License.

They want to launch their own IOS NEPTUNE 30 rocket that can carry a 30kg payload into lower earth orbit at 315km. With four booster engines each giving 6,000lb thrust at sea level, it will be the largest rocket ever launched by Interorbital, whose project history includes development of pressure-fed rocket engines of up to 10,000lbs thrust. The liquid rocket engines are designed and assembled at the IOS facility in Mojave, California.

It will be a first for Tonga, and the early stages of the project have been approved by the Tongan Government who are planning to extend the access roads in 'Eua for heavy vehicles.

But Busby Kautoke at the Prime Minister's Office said today they still had to work on details of the project, including the aviation issues and the frequency of launches, and the allocation of the land.

Neptune 30 rocket

Interorbital Systems was founded in 1996 by Roderick and his wife Randa Milliron, with a mission to build low-cost orbital and interplanetary launch vehicles. The couple who were in Tonga in November said they were "finalising the paperwork" hoping to return in July to start building a concrete launch pad on 'Eua.

They want to ship their IOS NEPTUNE 30 three stage rocket in a 40ft container from California to Tonga, along with containers for the launch site equipment. The 9.6 metre rocket has a 1.86m girth and a lift-off weight of 8,477 kg.

They envisage that the NEPTUNE 30 rocket will carry and deploy up to 32 small, privately-owned satellites, called "TubeSats" into a low-earth orbit, in a launch that will cost over USD$256,000. Their website states that TubeSat launches will commence when a manifest of 32 TubeSats has been filled, or a sole customer purchases an entire launch.

TubeSat

IOS CEO Randa Milliron said today that orders for the TubeSats and a larger unit called the CubeSat, were going well, and the rocket testing would begin soon as a lead-up to the Tonga launch.

"At the moment it's self-funded from satellite sales, and that's why it's taken us time to develop, but things will be different once we start testing," she said.

"The test flights will occur beginning in February, with a single modular unit of the NEPTUNE 30 called a Common Propulsion Module (CPM) and continue through May and July, with final testing of the five-component version of the dummy core vehicle in August/September."

The final test of the launch vehicle will carry a TubeSat deployment system to 50,000 feet from a private launch location in the Mojave Desert.

The TubeSats are low-cost, short-life satellites weighing less than a kilo each that were developed by IOS. They are selling for USD$8000 each in anticipation of the first deployment launch from Tonga this year with customers including American universities and a Naval Research School who will use them for research projects.

"TubeSats are placed into self-decaying orbits (310 km) and after a few weeks of operation, they re-enter the atmosphere and burn-up," IOS stated.

Low population

The chief engineering designer for IOS, Roderick, cites a number of reasons why they want to launch a satellite from Tonga. "Primarily, because of big empty space to the south of 'Eua, but there are also other essentials such as low population density, low air traffic density, a clear rocket staging area, a warm climate, close to the Equator giving earth rotation advantage and access to both polar and equatorial orbits."

However, another unstated reason is, probably, the ease with which the project can be set up here. So far there has been no requirement for any studies of the possible impacts of such a project and it's future development plans on the people and environment of Tonga.

The Milliron's relationship with Tonga began during the late 1990s. A third minor shareholder in IOS is Eric Gullichsen who had worked closely with the then Crown Prince Tupouto'a (now King George Tupou V) in projects, such as the establishment of the internet domain ".to", and the last project before the Crown Prince retired from the Civil Service in May 1998 was the launching of a new Distant Education Computer Program. The notion of establishing a rocket launching site in 'Eua has been around since then.

Palace Office

The Palace Office in Nuku'alofa is co-ordinating the project, and government officials from the Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Lands and the Prime Minister's Office flew to 'Eua in November to inspect the launch site that will be fenced off.

CEO of the Ministry of Transport, 'Eleni Aho, said today that it is an entirely new kind of venture for Tonga and the government ministries were asked to provide reports of what is required.

"There is no formal approval procedure for Civil Aviation," she said. "We have looked at our laws and we also need to establish the clearance from the US regarding the licence," she said. 'Eleni believed the US launch licence has provisions that the launch must be environmentally-friendly so that it doesn't destroy that part of the island and that the re-entry vehicles don't contain hazardous materials.

"The Palace Office is putting the pieces together. We are waiting for the next steps be drawn up in order to push it through," she said.

'Eleni said that the idea was exciting because of the jobs prospects for Tongans and also because it might possibly be an opportunity for Tonga to eventually get access to free bandwidth and improve its communications. The satellites launched by the rocket may also have photographic capability, or Earth-from-space video imaging, which would be of interest to Tonga.

Google Lunar X-Prize

In the long-term, IOS hope that a successful launching from 'Eua this year will set the stage for a bigger endeavour and that is to compete for the Google Lunar X-Prize of $USD30 million. The requirement to win the prize is for the soft landing of a privately funded spacecraft on the moon, then deploy a rover that must travel 500 meters on the Lunar surface, and transmit a set of data and HD video back to earth.

Roderick said that IOS is part of the team, Synergy Moon, that is competing for the prize and their input is for the construction of a launching facility.

A lunar lander would require the building of a bigger rocket, the Neptune 1000, which has a total of 24 Booster CPMs in its first stage generating 240,000 pounds (1,067,520-n) of thrust, according to IOS.