Space tourism

The curvature of Earth seen from orbit provides one of the main attractions for tourists paying to go into space.

Space tourism (or spaceflight) is the recent phenomenon of tourists paying for flights into space. There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital, and lunar space tourism. Tourists. Orbital space tourism opportunities are still limited and expensive.

Private astronauts are able to visit the International Space Station. Suborbital space tourism vehicles have been developed by aerospace companies like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic.

Among the primary attractions of space tourism are the uniqueness of the experience, the thrill and awe of looking at Earth from space, the notion of it being an exclusive status symbol, and the feelings of weightlessness.

Early dreams

After early successes in space, much of the public saw intensive space exploration as inevitable. In people's minds, such exploration was symbolized by wide public access to space, mostly in the form of space tourism. Those aspirations are best remembered in science fiction works (and one children's book), such as Arthur C. Clarke's A Fall of Moondust and also 2001: A Space Odyssey, Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, Joanna Russ's 1968 novel Picnic on Paradise, and Larry Niven's Known Space stories. Lucian in 2 C.E. in his book True History examines the idea of a crew of men whose ship travels to the Moon during a storm. Jules Verne (February 8 1828–March 24 1905) was one of the first who introduced the theme of lunar visits in his books, From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and Around the Moon (1870). Robert A. Heinlein’s short story The Menace from Earth, published in 1957, was one of the first to incorporate elements of a developed space tourism industry within its framework. During the 1960s and 1970s, it was common belief that space hotels would be launched by 2000. Many futurologists around the middle of the twentieth century speculated that the average family of the early twenty-first century would be able to enjoy a holiday on the Moon.

The end of the Space Race, however, signified by the Moon landing, decreased the emphasis placed on space exploration by national governments and therefore led to decreased demands for public funding of manned space flights.

Precedents

The Soviet space program was aggressive in broadening the pool of cosmonauts from the very beginning. The Soviet Intercosmos program also included cosmonauts selected from Warsaw Pact members (from Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania) and later from allies of the USSR (Cuba, France, Mongolia, Vietnam) and non-aligned countries (India, Syria, Afghanistan). Most of these cosmonauts received full training for their missions and were treated as equals, but especially after the Mir program began, were generally given shorter flights than Soviet cosmonauts. The European Space Agency took advantage of the program as well.

The U.S. space shuttle program included payload specialist positions which were usually filled by representatives of companies or institutions managing a specific payload on that mission. These payload specialists did not receive the same training as professional NASA astronauts and were not employed by NASA, so they were essentially private astronauts. NASA was also eager to prove its capability to Congressional sponsors, and Senator Jake Garn and (then-Representative, now Senator) Bill Nelson were both given opportunities to fly on board a shuttle. As the shuttle program expanded, the Teacher in Space program was developed as a way to expand publicity and educational opportunities for NASA. Christa McAuliffe would have been the first Teacher in Space, but was killed in the Challenger disaster and the program was canceled. During the same period a Journalist in Space program was frequently discussed, with individuals such as Walter Cronkite and Miles O'Brien considered front-runners, but no formal program was ever developed. McAuliffe's backup in the Teacher in Space Program, Barbara Morgan, trained and flew aboard STS-118 as a fully trained NASA payload specialist and spoke to many students as an educator during the trip.

Soyuz MS-20 crew on the International Space Station, from left to right: Yusaku Maezawa, Alexander Misurkin, and Yozo Hirano

With the realities of the post-Perestroika economy in Russia, its space industry was especially starved for cash. The Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) offered to pay for one of its reporters to fly on a mission. For $28 million, Toyohiro Akiyama was flown in 1990 to Mir with the eighth crew and returned a week later with the seventh crew. Akiyama gave a daily TV broadcast from orbit and also performed scientific experiments for Russian and Japanese companies. However, since the cost of the flight was paid by his employer, Akiyama could be considered a business traveler rather than a tourist.

In 1991, British chemist Helen Sharman was selected from a pool of public applicants to be the first Briton in space. As the United Kingdom had no human space program, the arrangement was by a consortium of private companies who contracted with the Russian space program. Sharman was also in a sense a private space traveler, but she was a working cosmonaut with a full training regimen.

Orbital space tourism

At the end of 1990s, MirCorp, a private venture by then in charge of the space station, began seeking potential space tourists to visit Mir in order to offset some of its maintenance costs. Dennis Tito, an American businessman and former JPL scientist, became their first candidate. When the decision to de-orbit Mir was made, Tito managed to switch his trip to the International Space Station (ISS) through a deal between MirCorp and U.S.-based Space Adventures, Ltd., despite strong opposition from senior figures at NASA.

In conjunction with the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation and Rocket and Space Corporation Energia, Space Adventures facilitated the flights for the world's first private space explorers: Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Gregory Olsen, Anousheh Ansari and Charles Simonyi. The first three participants paid in excess of $20 million (USD) each for their ten-day visit to the ISS.

The first space tourist, Dennis Tito (left) aboard the ISS

On April 28, 2001, American businessman Dennis Tito became the first "fee-paying" space tourist when he visited the International Space Station (ISS) for seven days. He was followed in 2002 by South African computer millionaire Mark Shuttleworth. The third was Gregory Olsen in 2005, who was trained as a scientist and whose company produced specialist high-sensitivity cameras. Olsen planned to use his time on the ISS to conduct a number of experiments, in part to test his company's products. Olsen had planned an earlier flight, but had to cancel for health reasons.

After the Columbia disaster, space tourism on the Russian Soyuz program was temporarily put on hold, because Soyuz vehicles became the only available transport to the ISS. However, in 2006, space tourism was resumed. On September 18, 2006, Anousheh Ansari, an Iranian American (Soyuz TMA-9), became the fourth space tourist (she prefers spaceflight participant). On April 7, 2007, Charles Simonyi, an American billionaire of Hungarian descent, joined their ranks (Soyuz TMA-10).

In 2003, NASA and the Russian Space Agency agreed to use the term "Space Flight Participant" to distinguish those space travelers from astronauts on missions coordinated by those two agencies. Tito, Shuttleworth, Olsen, Ansari, and Simonyi were designated as such during their respective space flights.

Space tourist Mark Shuttleworth

Suborbital flights

A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched. Hence, it will not complete one orbital revolution, will not become an artificial satellite nor will it reach escape velocity.

More affordable suborbital space tourism is viewed as a money-making proposition by several other companies, including Space Adventures, Virgin Galactic, Starchaser, Blue Origin, Armadillo Aerospace, XCOR Aerospace, Rocketplane Limited, and others. Suborbital flights reach an altitude beyond the Kármán Line, the arbitrarily-defined boundary of space. Passengers experience three to six minutes of weightlessness, a view of a twinkle-free starfield, and a vista of the curved Earth below.

The X Prize

The X-Prize being awarded to the Scaled Composites team

On October 4, 2004, Mojave Aerospace Ventures' SpaceShipOne, designed by Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites and funded by Virgin Galactic, won the $10,000,000 X Prize, which was designed to be won by the first private company who could reach and surpass an altitude of 62 miles (100km) twice within two weeks. The prize was designed to lower the risk and cost of going to space by incentivizing the creation of a reliable, reusable, privately financed, crewed spaceship that would make private space travel commercially viable.

Successful projects

• Mojave Aerospace Ventures won the $10 million X Prize in October 2004 with SpaceShipOne, as the first private company twice within two weeks to reach and surpass an altitude of 62 mi (100 km); an altitude beyond the Kármán Line, the arbitrarily-defined boundary of space. The first flight was flown by Michael Melvill on June 21, 2004 to a height of 62 miles, making him the first commercial astronaut. The prize-winning flight was flown by Brian Binnie, which reached a height of 69.6 miles, breaking the X-15 record. There were no space tourists on the flights even though the vehicle has seats for three passengers. Instead there was additional weight to make up for the weight of passengers.
• In 2005, Virgin Galactic was founded as a joint venture between Scaled Composites and Richard Branson's Virgin Group. Eventually Virgin Group owned the entire project. Virgin Galactic began building SpaceShipTwo-class spaceplanes. The first of these spaceplanes, VSS Enterprise, was intended to commence its first commercial flights in 2015, and tickets were on sale at a price of $200,000 (later raised to $250,000). However, the company suffered a considerable setback when the Enterprise broke up over the Mojave Desert during a test flight in October 2014. Over 700 tickets had been sold prior to the accident. A second spaceplane, VSS Unity, completed a successful test flight with four passengers on July 11, 2021 to an altitude of nearly 90 km (56 mi). Galactic 01 became the company's first commercial spaceflight on June 29, 2023.
• Blue Origin developed the New Shepard reusable suborbital launch system specifically to enable short-duration space tourism. The capsule is attached to the top portion of an 18-meter (59-foot) rocket. The rocket successfully launched with four passengers including founder Jeff Bezos on July 20, 2021, and reached an altitude of 107 km (66 mi). The second crewed flight of New Shepard on October 13, 2021, successfully carried actor William Shatner and three other paying passengers on a suborbital space flight.

Legality

Under the Outer Space Treaty signed in 1967, the launch operator's nationality and the launch site's location determine which country is responsible for any damages occurred from a launch.

United States

In December 2005, the U.S. Government released a set of proposed rules for space tourism.

Under current US law, any company proposing to launch paying passengers from American soil on a suborbital rocket must receive a license from the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation (FAA/AST). This is in accordance with the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act passed by Congress in 2004.

Advocacy, education, and industry organizations

Several organizations have been formed to promote the space tourism industry, including the Space Tourism Society, and others.

Since 2003 Dr. Robert A. Goehlich has taught the world's first Space Tourism class at Keio University, Yokohama, Japan.

Attitudes towards space tourism

A 2018 survey from the PEW Research Center identified the top three motivations for a customer to purchase a flight into space as:

• To experience something unique ( e.g. pioneering, one of a kind)
• To see the view of Earth from space
• To learn more about the world

The PEW study also found that only 43 percent of Americans would be definitely or probably interested in going into space.

An earlier web-based survey had suggested that over 70 percent of those surveyed wanted less than or equal to two weeks in space; in addition, 88 percent wanted to spacewalk, of whom 14 percent would pay a 50 percent premium for the experience, and 21 percent wanted a hotel or space station.

NASA astronaut Megan McArthur has a message to space tourists: spaceflight is uncomfortable and risky, and takes grit.

The concept has met with some criticism; Günter Verheugen, vice-president of the European Commission, said of the EADS Astrium Space Tourism Project: "It's only for the super-rich, which is against my social convictions".

On October 14, 2021, Prince William suggested that entrepreneurs should focus on saving Earth rather than engaging in space tourism.

Objection to "Space Tourist" terminology

Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Gregory Olsen, Anousheh Ansari, and Richard Garriott have all preferred to be called something other than "space tourist." In each case, they explained their preferences by pointing out that they carried out scientific experiments as part of their journey; Garriott prefers "cosmonaut" or "astronaut," but will accept "private" in front of either. He emphasized their training is identical to requirements of non-Russian cosmonauts, and that teachers or other citizens chosen to fly with NASA are called astronauts. Tito has asked to be known as an "independent researcher." Shuttleworth proposed "pioneer of commercial space travel."

Although many space enthusiasts subscribe to the notion of space tourism as a potential burgeoning industry that could further the development and settlement of space, some of these same enthusiasts object to the use of the term "space tourist." Rick Tumlinson of the Space Frontier Foundation, for example, has said

"I hate the word tourist, and I always will …. 'Tourist' is somebody in a flowered shirt with three cameras around his neck."

Others with perhaps less enthusiasm for space development seem to agree. Alex Tabarrok has categorized it as a kind of "adventure travel." The mere fact of people paying for a travel experience does not, in his view, make that activity "tourism."

At best and for the foreseeable future space travel will remain akin to climbing Everest, dangerous and uncommon. Yes, we might see 100 flights a year but that's not space tourism - tourism is fat guys with cameras.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Comins, Neil. The Hazards of Space Travel: A Tourist's Guide. New York, NY: Villard, 2007. ISBN 1400065976
• Seedhouse, Erik. Tourists in Space: A Practical Guide. New York, NY: Springer, 2014. ISBN 3319050370
• van Pelt, Michel. Space Tourism: Adventures in Earth Orbit and Beyond. New York, NY: Springer, 2005. ISBN 0387402136

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