Space tourism

Space tourism
byErik Seedhouse

ARTICLE from the Encyclopædia Britannica

Space tourism, recreational space travel, either on established government-owned vehicles such as the Russian Soyuz and the International Space Station (ISS) or on a growing number of vehicles fielded by private companies. Since the flight of the world’s first space tourist, American businessman Dennis Tito, on April 28, 2001, space tourism has gained new prominence as more suborbital and orbital tourism opportunities have become available.

Orbital space tourism

The advent of space tourism occurred at the end of the 1990s with a deal between the Russian company MirCorp and the American company Space Adventures Ltd. MirCorp was a private venture in charge of the space station Mir. To generate income for maintenance of the aging space station, MirCorp decided to sell a trip to Mir, and Tito became its first paying passenger.

However, before Tito could make his trip, the decision was made to deorbit Mir, and—after the intervention of Space Adventures Ltd.—the mission was diverted to the ISS. Tito, who paid $20 million for his flight on the Russian spacecraft Soyuz TM-32, spent seven days on board the ISS and is considered the world’s first space tourist. However, given the arduous training required for his mission, Tito objected to the use of the word tourist, and since his flight the term spaceflight participant has been more often used to distinguish commercial space travelers from career astronauts.

Orbital space tourism continued to grow following Tito’s mission, with flights to the ISS by South African computer millionaire Mark Shuttleworth in 2002 and American businessman Gregory Olsen in 2005. These travelers were followed by Iranian-born American entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari, who became the fourth spaceflight participant and the first female fee-paying space traveler when she visited the ISS in September 2006. The following year American billionaire Charles Simonyi joined the ranks of spaceflight participants when he shared a ride with two cosmonauts on board Soyuz TMA-10 for a 10-day stay on the ISS.

The sixth spaceflight participant, American video game developer Richard Garriott, was launched in October 2008. In making his flight, Garriott became the first second-generation American in space, since his father, Owen Garriott, was a former astronaut. (Cosmonauts Aleksandr Volkov and his son Sergey were the first father-and-son space travelers. Sergey Volkov was on the ISS when Garriott arrived.) Since 2007 Space Adventures has offered a spaceflight around the Moon on a Soyuz spacecraft for a fee of $100 million.

Suborbital space tourism

Although the orbital space tourism industry garnered much media attention following Tito’s flight, other companies were also hard at work trying to make space tourism a profitable proposition by developing suborbital vehicles designed to take passengers to an altitude of 100 km (62 miles).

In addition to the goal of making space tourism commercially viable, the companies were competing for the Ansari X Prize, a $10 million reward offered by the X Prize Foundation to the first nongovernmental organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. (A portion of the prize money was donated by Anousheh Ansari and her brother-in-law, Iranian-born American entrepreneur Amir Ansari.) On Oct. 4, 2004, SpaceShipOne, funded by Virgin Galactic and designed by American engineer Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites, won the X Prize and, in doing so, ushered in a new era of commercial manned spaceflight and space tourism.

In 2004 the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act (CSLAA) provided guidelines for regulating the safety of commercial human spaceflight in the United States under the auspices of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Under the CSLAA, FAA representatives will attend every launch, evaluate every landing, and work alongside the space tourism operators; however, the FAA will not be permitted to impose any safety regulations until 2012 unless there is a serious incident. The guidelines require space tourism operators to inform spaceflight participants in writing about the risks of launch and reentry and about the safety record of the launch vehicle. The CSLAA guidelines also require spaceflight participants to provide informed consent to participate in launch and reentry.

At this early stage in the development of the suborbital space tourism industry, it is difficult for the FAA to control how companies design their vehicles or to assess the safety of launching spaceflight participants into space. Despite safety concerns, Virgin Galactic has sold more than 300 seats at $200,000 each for its suborbital space tourism flights, which are scheduled to commence in 2012. Carrying Virgin Galactic’s spaceflight participants into space will be SpaceShipTwo, which will be launched from a permanent spaceport near Upham, N.M.

Virgin Galactic is not alone in its interest in space tourism, an industry that may prove to be especially lucrative in the 21st century. For example, Astrium, a subsidiary of European aerospace giant European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, announced its own space tourism project in June 2007.

The Astrium project is the first entry into space tourism by a major aerospace contractor and features a rocket plane with a large wingspan and a pair of canards. Development of the rocket plane commenced in 2008, with the objective of the first suborbital flight in 2011.

The ticket price of $250,000 will include a round-trip to the spaceport (located in Tunisia), spaceflight participant training, luxury resort accommodation, and a thrilling Mach 3 ride into space. Competing with Virgin Galactic and Astrium is XCOR Aerospace, a California company that in 2008 unveiled the Lynx, a suborbital spaceship that will provide front-seat rides into space by 2010. In Texas, Blue Origin, a privately funded aerospace company set up by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, has developed its New Shepard spacecraft (named for American astronaut Alan Shepard), scheduled to commence a weekly suborbital tourist service to space in 2010

With its bullet-shaped fuselage, New Shepard is designed to take off and land vertically, in contrast to the conventional runway takeoff and landing of the Astrium and XCOR rocket planes and the mother-ship deployment of SpaceShipTwo.

The efforts of Virgin Galactic, Astrium, XCOR, and Blue Origin represent just some of the developing space fleets projected to ferry tourists to and from space. Having overcome daunting technical challenges and significant financial constraints, these companies are on the threshold of opening the frontier of space to a much greater section of the population.

As the space tourism industry evolves, the ranks of spaceflight participants will grow, and suborbital and orbital flights will inevitably give way to lunar excursions and trips to Mars and beyond, by which time space tourism will be operating as a full-fledged industry capable of truly opening the frontier of space.