Space Tourism
Space Tourism is usually defined as a flight for which the space traveler foots the bill. Although this industry has until now been one exclusive to a handful of billionaire entrepreneurs, things are about to change.
Recent developments put sub-orbital Space Tourism on track to begin in 2012. The front runner in this emerging industry is Richard Branson’s spaceline, Virgin Galactic, which will commence its flights from Spaceport America -- the world’s first purpose-built public spaceport.
Virgin currently has an initial fleet of five space ships under construction, with its first ship, The VSS Enterprise, already in atmospheric testing. Virgin predicts that they will carry 50,000 commercial space travelers in their first decade of operation. And they have recently announced plans for orbital flights.
The upcoming flights are just the tip of the iceberg of an entire commercial space industry that has been relentlessly preparing the ground for space exploration for at least two decades.
Over the next ten years, this consortium of high-profile billionaire entrepreneurs, space experts and visionaries has every intention to take tens of thousands of private citizens into space, first in sub-orbital flights and then to commercial space stations and later to the Moon and Mars.
Bigelow Aerospace, founded by Budget Suites' Robert Bigelow, has already placed two test space hotels in orbit and has announced plans to make the first rentable space stations operational in 2014. The Bigelow space station factory outside Las Vegas has also been tasked with building two new space stations each year. Hence, there will be multiple space hotels in orbit by the end of the current decade.
NASA has also contributed to the private space industry by shifting its focus to missions that will take scientists beyond low Earth orbit, to destinations such as the surface of the Moon, near-earth asteroids, and Mars. This NASA change in philosophy and approach will help foster a sustainable human space exploration enterprise through the strengthening of partnerships with the private space industry.
This shift has already prompted NASA to begin contracting with private companies to outsource the transportation of cargo and astronauts to the orbiting International Space Station (ISS). Within the current decade, these commercial space travel companies are expected to completely take over Earth-to-orbit transportation for NASA, universities, countries without space programs and the general public.
By the middle of the decade, the private space industry expects to deploy its first commercial un-manned lander to the Moon, sending back data that they can sell to NASA, scientists or other commercial companies. A $30 million prize has been announced by Google for the first team to create technology capable of such a landing. At least 29 teams around the world are currently competing for the prize.
But there are even bigger plans in the works: the creation of commercial settlements on the Moon and eventually Mars. Although this initiative is in its early stages, practical work in the area is expected to be underway by the next decade. And all this begins next year, with the birth of Space Tourism.
The private space industry, represented by the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, estimates that there will be more than 100,000 commercial space travelers over the next decade, based on the fact that at least a half-dozen other companies are building fleets of viable commercial space ships for both sub-orbital and orbital flight.
The majority of these companies are steered by such high-profile entrepreneurs as Pay-Pal co-founder Elon Musk, who heads Space X, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, whose rocket company Blue Origin is based at his private spaceport in Texas.
It is perhaps a measure of the seriousness of such pioneers that most of them disdain the term Space Tourist and prefer designations like Private Space Explorer, Private Space Researcher or even just Space Traveler. NASA and the Russian Space Agency refer to them as Space Flight Participants. For the present, Space Tourism seems to be the popular term.
Just like all new technologies, commercial space travel will be initially viable only for wealthy enthusiasts and early adopters. Nevertheless, the current breed of visionary space entrepreneurs is intent on nothing less than creating a multi-planet, space-faring civilization. In order to accomplish this, the commercial space industry has set plans in motion to reduce the cost of sub-orbital travel from the opening price of $200,000 to the price of a mid-sized car within the decade. Part of the reason for such efforts is that these space enthusiasts know that the best way to convince society of the value of space travel is to get people from all walks of life into space.
The impact of such an accomplishment will be felt throughout the world. Astronauts have reported since the beginning of the American Space Program that the experience of space travel is uniquely positive, perspective-altering, mind-changing and even life-altering.
This experience is widely known in the space community as the Overview Effect, named after the book of the same name by writer and space philosopher Frank White.
White interviewed dozens of astronauts and found characteristic shifts in perception and perspective concerning the Earth, space and even their own lives, changes that were lasting and often created life changes.
Hundreds of astronaut statements attest to the emotional and intellectual impact of seeing firsthand the reality of space and of the Earth’s true nature and position in space. According to Dr. Charles Berry, the astronauts’ long-time personal physician and surgeon, not one of the astronauts…"came back unchanged. Sometimes I think they don’t see what happened to them."
And significantly, the kinds of altered perspective experienced by the space traveler are exactly the kinds of changes in world view and paradigm sought by many advocates of "world-changing" solutions to current global challenges in the environment, politics, resources, energy and other areas.
At the very heart of space travel, therefore, is the need for more citizens and leaders to think and perceive from a planetary perspective. This is the very essence of the effect of space travel, the sudden realization of the reality of our world as existing within a powerful but fragile ecosystem spread across the surface of a small planet in an infinite space, shielded only by a "paper-thin" atmosphere. The realization is that we are "all in this together" and that "there is no lifeboat".
This "Overview Effect" then, is one of the strongest, most positive and potentially the most influential reason for wanting to become a space traveler. Curiously, while NewSpace and Space Tourism leaders often allude to such space-inspired changes, and often describe them in detail to prospective space travelers or in national conferences within the space community, The Overview Effect is seldom mentioned in public. For this reason, there is little public awareness of it.
With the beginning of space tourism, everything will change. Our species will have embarked on a new kind of journey into the cosmos. We will experience an overload of information. As more and more of us venture into space, the idea of national boundaries will gradually fade. A more planetary approach will be adopted. Global changes in perception are imminent. It may still be decades before we are able to bring lasting peace to the world, but one things is clear: Nothing will be the same.