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Xcor, Space Experience Curaçao, and KLM Airline: Get ready to rumble
by Jim Davidson
[email protected]

Special to The Libertarian Enterprise

Are you ready for a street fight? That's the question I have for my old friend Aleta Jackson, co-founder of XCor Aerospace, and her associates. Because, in simple truth, that's what I experienced with Space Travel Services, that's what Walt Anderson experienced after making waves with MirCorp, and that seems to be what it takes to get off this planet.

Now, the news has been coming out from company press releases, and I must say that I'm very excited. I remember when my deal was featured in the New York Times many years ago (see week of 17 December 1990, e.g.) and thinking that was really nice. And I see from XCor.com that there is a link to a long article at the NY Times explaining the latest perk available to frequent fliers on KLM Airlines.

Yes, Space Experience Curaçao has wet leased XCor's Lynx suborbital vehicle. See this press release.

"SXC has chosen the Lynx due to its innovative but straightforward and robust design, as well as its enormous commercial potential and competitive viability" said Ben Droste, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of SXC. "The combination of the Lynx experience with the beautiful and highly suitable location of the Caribbean Island of Curaçao is a winning experience in our book. Spaceflight participants will not only have the incredible experience of flying in XCOR's Lynx spacecraft beyond Earth's atmosphere, they will have the added benefit of taking off from and returning to one of the world's best vacation destinations."

XCOR Aerospace is a California corporation located in Mojave, California. The company is in the business of developing and producing safe, reliable and reusable rocket powered vehicles, propulsion systems, advanced non-flammable composites and other enabling technologies. XCOR is working with aerospace prime contractors and government customers on major propulsion systems, and concurrently building the Lynx, a piloted, two seat, fully reusable, liquid rocket powered vehicle that takes off and lands horizontally. The Lynx production models (designated Lynx Mark II) are designed to be robust, multi-commercial mission vehicles capable of flying to 100+ km in altitude up to four times per day and are being offered on a wet lease basis. www.xcor.com.

Space Experience Curaçao (SXC) was founded in 2008 to lead the world in providing commercial space launch facilities and suborbital flight services from the Caribbean island of Curaçao. SXC intends to offer suborbital space tourism flights and scientific research missions out of Space Port Curaçao. SXC is led by its two founders and Managing Partners, former Royal Netherlands Air Force Chief of Staff, Ben Droste and active Royal Netherlands Air Force F-16 pilot, Harry van Hulten. General Droste (retired) also led the Netherlands Agency for Aerospace Programs (NIVR), the precursor of today's Netherlands Space Office, and NASA's counterpart in the Netherlands and was Professor and Dean of the Aerospace Faculty at the prestigious Delft University of Technology. Major Harry van Hulten, is a graduate of the US Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, was assigned to Edwards AFB as an F-16 test pilot, and is involved in the F-35 program for the Netherlands Air Force, the lead international customer for this fifth generation US fighter aircraft. Harry is also a distinguished former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan veteran. He has a special dispensation to participate as a founding Managing Partner of SXC while performing his military duties.
www.spaceexperiencecuracao.com.

And, yes, KLM is serious about offering flights to frequent fliers as part of their rewards program. "Today KLM Royal Dutch Airlines announced to the Netherlands press that they were embarking upon a new relationship with Space Experience Curaçao (SXC). KLM will be supporting future suborbital flights through purchases, inclusion in their frequent flyer program, inclusion in future KLM vacation packages to Curaçao, and other yet-to-be-named support. The flights will be made on the XCOR Lynx suborbital spacecraft."

So, everything is just fine, right? Americans get to build suborbital space jets, and travellers with enough frequent flier miles get to fly. A robust space tourism business is just around the corner. It won't have to await the complexities of Richard Branson's new technology with Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites and whatever rigorous testing regime those guys at Virgin Galactic demand. Prices are going to be competitive, given what I know of the Lynx technology (from reading the XCor site) and quickly reach the level where ordinary travellers can plan to book a vacation and fly into space. In a very few years, Bigelow Aerospace will have its space hotels in orbit, and all will be "all systems green" for flights to orbital destination resorts.

Wrong.
None of these things are going to happen. The tourist flights that Branson said in 2004 at the conclusion of the X Prize flights would happen in 2007 have not happened. They will not happen in 2010, nor in 2012. XCor is not going to be allowed to wet lease their spacecraft, by hook or by crook, and no flights are going to proceed from Curaçao.

But, you say, Jim, that's so wrong. Aleta has already negotiated the wet lease. It is a done deal. Yeah? Where is the export licence? That there is a "controlled munitions device." What do you want to bet that NASA gets to put the kibosh on this deal? Homeland Security, too. Oh, their buddies in Lockheed and Boeing and the rest of the military industrial complex will pretend to be enthusiastic. But this deal is going to be still born.

Yes, it pains me to say it. But the David Rockefeller types at the Council on Foreign Relations decided against frontiers a long, long time ago. No frontiers allowed. That's why Antarctica was closed to private settlements and development in 1957. That's why space was closed in 1967. That's why the high seas and sea beds were closed in 1982.

Yes, of course they've read Frederick Jackson Turner. For all I know they've read Robert Zubrin. The people who make policy on this planet don't want you and me to leave. They don't want us beyond their power. They are very likely quite concerned about the strategic implications as outlined by Robert Heinlein in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. But most of all, they want you and me to be slaves. And slaves who can leave are no slaves at all.

The circumstances are always different. George Abbey and his cronies on the nationalist socialist space council conspired to have me and David Mayer falsely accused of felony gambling promotion of a lottery in February 1991, a charge that was dropped in an agreed injunction in which the state of Texas and the Harris County district attorney acknowledged that we had been operating a lawful sweepstakes—in May of 1991 after we were bankrupted.

Walt Anderson is in federal prison where I suspect he'll be kept until he's dead. The trumped up charges in his case were tax evasion. They kept him in jail without a trial for years until he finally gave up and pleaded guilty.

George Koopman is dead. Gerald Bull is not only dead, but everyone acknowledges that he was murdered by the Mossad for daring to develop his super gun satellite launching technology for Iraq in the 1980s (back when Cheney and Rumsfeld were buddy-buddy with Saddam). Gary Hudson doesn't even talk about flying tourists into space, last I heard.

And these are only a few of the names that come to mind when I consider all the space entrepreneurs who have had their efforts destroyed by the powers that be, whose lives have been ruined, whose work has been turned to ashes. Some of us have been put in cages. Some of us have been killed.

The long and short of it is that you aren't ever going to leave this planet. Not while David Rockefeller and his sycophants and minions are running things. And if you don't like it, children, what are you gonna do about it? Hmm?

Jim Davidson is an author, entrepreneur, and anti-war activist. His 1990 venture to offer a sweepstakes trip into space was destroyed by government action as was his free port and prospective space port in Somalia in 2001. His 2002-2007 venture in free market money and private stock exchange was destroyed by government action in 2007. He's going to Mars if he has to walk. His second book, Being Sovereign is now availble from Lulu and Amazon. He is currently working on a book about travel to Mars with John Wayne Smith, a book with international fugitive Chad Z. Hower on his story, a book on sovereign self-defence, and a book compiling his letters and essays in The Libertarian Enterprise since 1995. Contact him at indomitus.net or indsovu.com. Davidson has withdrawn from public life and does not make speaking appearances.

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