Myths and Facts About Space Tourism
The recent media hype makes it seem that space tourism is a fast-developing industry. But why hasn’t a single tourist been to space in the last decade?
The Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft was all set. An explosive sound followed the preliminary ignition command, and the rocket launched, leaving clouds of dust and a burning smell. Guy Laliberte did not see it. He was inside the spacecraft, buckled in a lodgement along with pilot Maksim Surayev and astronaut Jeffrey Williams. They were pushed back in their seats, experience feeling the g-force and acceleration immediately after lift-off. The vibration, as usual, was intense. In eight and a half minutes the rocket was in space.
“This is it. We’re there!” Laliberte screamed.
The Last Space Tourist …So Far
A Canadian billionaire, Cirque du Soleil co-founder and acrobat Guy Laliberte paid $35 million to spend almost eleven days in outer space in 2009: two days in orbit, “in an environment the size of a trunk of a Volkswagen,” and more than eight days on the International Space Station (ISS). The trip worth every penny, Laliberte said.
As he described his experience: “that moment they light the fuse under your ass, it’s a sense of total freedom, because I knew then nobody could get me out and no phone call could modify what I was doing there.”
A Canadian billionaire, Cirque du Soleil co-founder and acrobat Guy Laliberte paid $35 million to spend almost eleven days in outer space. Picture credit: Roscosmos
During his stay on the ISS, he took a lot of pictures, shared food with astronauts and cosmonauts, did reporting for a TV program and a documentary, hosted a two-hour live event with stars from across the world and, obviously, enjoyed the view. He did not sleep much — he wanted to enjoy his time.
Laliberte refers to the landing as “30 minutes of pure adrenaline”. The plasma sparked around the window heating the rocket: the outside temperature exceeded 1,500 degrees Celsius. “There’s no soft landing. Basically, you’re going through a car crash,” he told Forbes. Still, Laliberte wants to go to space again.
Why Did Space Tourism Stop?
In 2000s, Space Adventures, the sole operator that actually managed to send clients to space, launched wealthy travelers actively by collaborating on launches with Roscosmos, the Russian space agency. Starting in 2005, Space Adventures was sending at least one tourist each year — Guy Laliberte was the second guest on the ISS in 2009. Yet in the last decade, there has not been a single space tourist, although the demand is still high.
The main reason for that is NASA. The administration pays Roscosmos around $70 million for a one-way ticket to space. By comparison, Laliberte, who paid half that for the entire trip, seems a lucky man.
In 2011, NASA cancelled its shuttle program: it was too dangerous and too expensive. Since then, the agency has had no other option for sending American astronauts to space but Roscosmos. In addition, the station crews were expanded leaving literally no place for customers sent to space by Space Adventures — or any other operator, for that matter.
At first, Roscosmos was going to resume tourism in late 2015. In 2017, the agency’s head Igor Komarov said that “space tourism is possible, actually, it’s being discussed, but [it will not resume] earlier than 2019–2020”. But NASA has reserved three seats on the Russian spacecraft for missions to the ISS scheduled for 2019, leaving no spaces available to tourists.
Does Space Tourism Even Exist?
NASA has been dreaming of sending astronauts from American soil again for a long time. The current plan relies on private companies: SpaceX and Boeing are supposed to develop their commercial flights programs and become NASA’s space taxis, freeing seats for tourists on Roscosmos flights. Unfortunately, both companies have already missed multiple deadlines for producing a spacecraft certified as safe to transport astronauts and are expected to miss the November 2019 deadline as well.
Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, two private companies that are most likely to send travelers to space in the nearest future, have been promising to begin commercial flights for years. In 2008, Virgin Galactic’s founder Sir Richard Branson predicted that commercial flights will begin in 2009. In 2012, the date was pushed to 2013, and in 2018 to 2019.
“It’s always the same number, but it never gets any closer,” says professor Howard McCurdy, space expert.
Notably, for now, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are only aiming for suborbital flights, sending tourists to the lower boundary of space, the 100-kilometer line, and letting them experience several minutes of weightlessness before bringing them back.
Virgin Galactic’s founder Sir Richard Branson predicted that commercial flights will begin in 2009. In 2012, the date was pushed to 2013, and in 2018 to 2019. Picture credit: Virgin Galactic
Although a suborbital flight might not provide an experience fundamentally different from a zero-gravity flight on a plane, also known as the “vomit comet” and currently available for $5,000 each, 700 people have already bought Virgin Galactic tickets for $250,000 each. And there is no confirmed flight date yet.
“Space flight is enormously difficult, a lesson we presumably learned with the space shuttle experience,” McCurdy told Asgardia Space News. Media and advertising might create an impression that cosmic tourism is around the corner. The hard truth is that it is not there yet.
Is Space Tourism Safe?
According to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules, an operator must inform each space tourist about known risks in writing. A list of known hazards includes but not limited to explosions, fires, toxic vapors and debris. An operator must also inform its customers that there are unknown hazards and risks. Both known and unknown risks “could result in a serious injury, death, disability, or total or partial loss of physical and mental function.”
An operator is required to train each space traveler on how to respond in emergency situations and how to avoid jeopardizing the safety of the flight crew or the public. An operator is not obligated to provide space tourists with insurance, according to the FAA, and travelers are expected to purchase their own insurance.
Five percent of rocket launches end in failures — and Virgin Galactic’s 2014 test flight crash that killed a pilot and seriously injured another has proven that the US government was right to not certify any space vehicle as safe for carrying people, something that SpaceX has been aiming for since 2006.
According to NASA’s data, the probability of the loss of crew is one in 50 for a Russian Soyuz and one in 65 for American space shuttles. “It does not seem feasible with current technology to be able to increase the reliability of spaceflight by an order of magnitude without a new breakthrough in technology,” NASA experts concluded. However, NASA mandated a 1 in 270 requirement for commercial spacecrafts to certify them as safe.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle is a rocket with a passenger capsule attached at the tip. Picture credit: Blue Origin
“Look at the role that turbulence played in the loss of the Virgin Galactic spacecraft. Pilot error created the turbulence, which in turn tore the spacecraft into pieces,” McCurdy told Asgardia Space News. “The turbulence and acoustical shocks that spacecraft endure literally shake them apart. That is just one of the risks that make space flight as risky as climbing Mt. Everest.”
“The dangers limit the number of people willing to undergo such risks for the ticket price, which in turn makes fundraising hard for the people in the space tourism business,” McCurdy continued. “Our tolerance for risk in space flight remains relatively low — certainly not as high as the actual probabilities. The main hope is 1,000 consecutive successful flights, a fraction of the number of airline flights that traverse the United States every day.”
Why Should We Go?
Nonetheless humanity does need space tourism. “Just like in the early days of aviation with barnstorming, these initial activities will help build the infrastructure and the foundation that can lead to future innovations that, frankly, we cannot imagine right now,” said NASA advisory council member Michael Gold.
Astronaut Sandra Magnus, who spent 157 days in space, agrees, although she has a different perspective: “I’m sure you’ve heard us (astronauts) talk about how our perspective changed when we saw the planet. People who are going to do suborbital tourism are going to have this experience and they’re going to have this perspective change. When the Apollo astronauts took a picture of the Earth from space, it created the environmental movement. Are we going to take our planet seriously when all of this becomes more of a popular culture conversation?”
Evgenia Sokolovskaya
