SPACE TOURISM

SPACE TOURISM

Space tourism is human space travel for recreational purposes. There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital and lunar space tourism.

-Orbital space travel means the spacecraft is traveling around the planet with enough speed to avoid falling back to Earth. The International Space Station (ISS) is an example of orbital space travel.

-Suborbital space travel takes people into space and then returns to Earth at a slower speed than orbital travel. Most space tourism companies for private citizens currently offer suborbital space flights.

Since technology has opened up the opportunity to bring humans to space that experience has been limited to professional trained astronauts. Visits to space have been discovering journeys for scientists but now space is being looked at as a new market place. The term space tourism is being used more and more frequently like it is in the near future. That near future could be closer than ever now with some companies already offering seats costing up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Space tourism is for people who want an out of this world experience. Wealthy businesses have already started setting up commercial space tourism services.

The ideas of space tourism have had a lengthy history beginning with the Space Race lasting from 1955 to 1975. On April 12, 1961, a soviet cosmonaut named Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. He made a 108-minute orbital flight aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft. After the first man in space, the race to space became even more competitive with the US sending a man to space shortly after Gagarin and in 1962 John Glenn became the first man to orbit the Earth. The rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union intensified the pressure of technological developments. President Kennedy proposed sending an Astronaut to the moon and in 1969 Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the moon. This event led to the end of the Space Race, but it was not the end of sending people to space.

Space flight is possible and there have already been a few cases. On April 28, 2001, Dennis Tito paid his way onto a Russian Soyuz spacecraft making him the first space tourist. He paid a hefty amount of 20 million for his seat. Since Tito only seven people in 19 years have shared the same encounter. The hefty amount Dennis and his fellow space tourist paid showed entrepreneurs the opportunity to make massive profits from space tourism. Companies and NASA have been proposing plans to make this a reality. NASA is focusing on testing low Earth orbit for lunar exploration plans. These low Earth orbits would be the ideal tourist commercial spaceflight journeys. The international space stations are making a priority to manufacture and promote commercial services and products to further push the space economy. 2020 is just the start of the future where astronauts are sent to the ISS to perform commercial activities. NASA’s main goal is to purchase services from independent and commercial low Earth orbit destinations. This will change how we see space economy and how mankind can reach beyond Earth’s atmosphere.

NASA has granted more than 50 companies a change to conduct commercial research and development on the space station. Reports released by the US National Laboratory on the International Space Station have shown significant progress in promoting more commercial travel. NASA has installed more than 14 commercial facilities on the space station to make regular commercial flights a reality.

Since there is a big price tag and you haven’t heard of people taking space vacations, that means better technological advances are still needed to keep the cost down and keep people safe. SpaceX is an aerospace manufacturing and space transport services company. They teamed up with a space tourism company to organize a trip into Earth orbit. Sometime in 2021, four paying customers can board SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. The trip will consist of orbiting the Earth for five days, reaching an altitude twice the orbit of the International Space Station. Examples such as SpaceX and other companies have made efforts, but have not promised anything concrete. Hints of these projects appeared as early as the early 2000s, and this led to some doubts.

Pros

-Job creation. Commercial space tourism has the potential to boost the economy by creating jobs and encouraging investment.

-Advances in research. Spending more time in space could help solve some of the most baffling mysteries about the universe.

-Opportunity to experience space. “At Space Perspective, we want to enable more people than ever before to go to space to gaze into the unknown and imagine what could be, and to look down at Earth and gain a new perspective on home,” Poynter says.

Cons

-It’s expensive. Many people point out that the hefty price tag is one major downside to today’s space travel. At hundreds of thousands of dollars per ticket, only the wealthiest travelers can afford a seat on a future spaceflight.

-It may be bad for the environment. Scientists also worry that space travel could damage the planet and contribute to climate change. One study found that the carbon released by 1,000 private suborbital flights per year would increase the temperature over the poles by 1 degree Celsius and reduce polar sea ice levels by 5% each year.

THREE SPACE TOURISM COMPANIES

-SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, made news when it carried two NASA astronauts to the ISS in 2020, as it was the first crewed mission to launch in the United States in nearly 10 years. SpaceX currently charters private orbital flights to the International Space Station in its Dragon spacecraft. It costs tens of millions of dollars for a seat on a flight.

-Blue Origin, founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, is the only space tourism company operating commercial suborbital flights. Blue Origin charged $28 million for a ticket on its first flight with Jeff Bezos, but it does not advertise its current ticket prices.

-Virgin Galactic is planning to start commercial operations next year. Reservations for Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic flights start at $450,000.

Space X

The company SPACEX was founded by Elon Reeve Musk in 2002. He was born on June 28, 1971 in a South African family. In his childhood only, he started dreaming of inventions and developed interest in computers. At the age of 12 he sold his first software: a game he created called Blaster. He did his graduation in the field of Physics and Economics from Pennsylvania and later in 1992 he moved to Stanford University in California to complete his PhD in energy physics. He became an American entrepreneur and businessman who founded (PayPal) and Tesla Motors in 1999 and 2003 respectively. The headquarters of SPACEX is in Los Angeles

Elon Musk was passionate about the ability to send people further than they have ever gone before. In 2001, when he sold his company PayPal to EBAY he earned millions of dollars which could turn his idea into reality. Thus, he tried to create something exciting that could lead human beings to reach MARS. At that time, NASA was not having that much of a budgetR and even people were not aware of what was happening in space. He had an idea called ‘MARS OASIS’ to generate the interest of the public in outer-space. His idea was to send a small greenhouse containing seeds to that surface of the MARS which is suitable for growing and giving life to new plants.

In order to reach the MARS, a much larger budget was required and without the rocket technology it was not possible. Therefore, in 2001, his team consulted the USA and traveled to Russia but the products or technology were too expensive. Although, he tried to negotiate the price but he returned empty-handed. He did some basic calculations and found that the raw material required for manufacturing a rocket was merely 3% of the sales price of the rocket and 85% of the entire rocket was made in the house only. An idea of creating a cost-efficient rocket in the house eventually led to the creation of SPACEX in the year 2002.

It was time to implement the plans into action, so they created the first rocket which was named ‘FALCON’. However, the company knew that they also had to develop engines to supply power to the rockets so they started working on it. The next step was to test the rockets before launching into space so they purchased land in Texas which was used in World War 2 to test explosions. Earlier there were only 3 employees to make rockets but now the company is filled with nearly 6000 employees.

Blue Origin 

Blue Origin Enterprises, L.P. is an American aerospace manufacturer, defense contractor, launch service provider and space technologies[6] company headquartered in Kent, Washington, United States. The company makes rocket engines for United Launch Alliance (ULA) and manufactures their own rockets, spacecraft, satellites,and heavy-lift launch vehicles. The company is the second provider of lunar lander services for NASA’s Artemis program and was awarded a $3.4 billion contract.[8] The company has four rocket engines in production including the BE-3U, BE-3PM, BE-4 and the BE-7.

The organization was awarded the Robert J. Collier Trophy in 2016 for demonstrating rocket booster reusability with their New Shepard Rocket Program.The award is administered by the U.S. National Aeronautic Association (NAA) and is presented to those who have made “the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America, with respect to improving the performance, efficiency, and safety of air or space vehicles, the value of which has been thoroughly demonstrated by actual use during the preceding year.

Blue Origin was founded with a vision of millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth. Blue Origin envisions a time when people can tap into the limitless resources of space and enable the movement of damaging industries into space to preserve Earth, humanity’s blue origin.

Blue Origin is working today to create that future by developing reusable launch vehicles and in-space systems that are safe, low cost, and serve the needs of all civil, commercial, and defense customers. Blue Origin’s efforts include flying astronauts to space on New Shepard, producing reusable liquid rocket engines, developing an orbital launch vehicle with New Glenn, building next-generation space habitats, and returning to the surface of the Moon. These endeavors will add new chapters to the history of spaceflight and move all of humanity closer to that founding vision.

For suborbital flights, Blue Origin typically charges around $200,000 – $300,000 per person. This cost includes a one-hour flight and a three-hour preparation program. For those looking to go into orbit, Blue Origin’s orbital launch services range from $50 million to $100 million per person.

Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. is an American spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson and the Virgin Group conglomerate which retains an 11.9% stake through Virgin Investments Limited. It is headquartered in California, and operates from New Mexico.

Overall, Virgin Galactic is a highly popular organization because it is such a new concept. They do not have very many competitors, yet. This allows them to capture the market and manage things that no other organization has been able to accomplish or offer to their customers. Due to this, it makes the organization unique, helping to achieve high customer satisfaction because of the uniqueness of the service being delivered. The whole process that they have undertaken is all very new, so like anything new, there is always room to improve and tweak things.

Virgin Galactic is the world’s first commercial spaceline, and our purpose is to connect people across the globe to the love, wonder and awe created by space travel. They believe that spaceflight has the unique ability to shift our perspectives, our technology, and even our trajectory as a species. As the spaceline for Earth, they aim to transform access to space for the benefit of humankind; to reveal the wonder of space to more people than ever before. Join us, and help pioneer this exciting new space age for humanity.

Virgin Galactic launched its first space tourism flight for paying customers on August 10. It marks a new era in space tourism for the company, with monthly flights expected to follow. Space tourism is a growing industry for the rich. Seats on a Virgin Galactic flight cost $450,000 each.

From takeoff to touchdown, the entire mission lasts approximately 2.5 hours, with the pinnacle being a few minutes of weightlessness and a view of Earth’s curvature. Passengers aboard Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo will spend around 90 minutes ascending attached to the carrier aircraft.

This article is a part of the class 
“751309 Macro Economic 2”
supervised by Asst. Prof. Napon Hongsakulvasu
Faculty of Economics, Chiang Mai University

 

This article was written by 
WENJIE DAO 651615520