This New Tourism Trend Is Out Of This World!
Traveling is about expanding one’s horizons. What happens when we expand the horizon of tourism itself?
The travel and tourism industry is looking beyond the seven seas!
If you’re bored of visiting the same old places on vacation, there’s good news for you. Tourism will no longer be restricted to our pale blue dot!
Okay, perhaps I’m being too optimistic — but who said that’s a bad thing?
The current iteration of stellar tourism refers to tourism that is based on stargazing experiences, such as visiting dark sites or observatories. Soon, stellar tourism will take on a new meaning — traveling to outer space as a tourist!
Imagine waking up to a view of Saturn’s majestic rings, or gazing out into space from the pitch-black lunar surface. The tourism industry is about to launch itself into the stratosphere (pun intended!) and it will happen sooner than you think.
But first, let’s understand the current stage of space tourism.
Today, outer space is defined as the region lying 100 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. The boundary is commonly called the Kármán line, named after physicist Theodore von Kármán.
Considering the vastness of the observable universe, 100 kilometers (62 miles) may seem insignificant. Or perhaps, distance is the wrong unit to assess the concept of space tourism.
Think of this: in 2001, American aerospace engineer and financial analyst Dennis Tito paid USD 20 million(!) for a seat on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to become the first space tourist.
To simplify: USD 200,000 per kilometer!
That’s how much it costs to travel into outer space, a mere 100 kilometers above the Earth’s surface! You can imagine how much a trip to the Moon might cost, given that it’s 3844 times the distance between Earth and the Kármán Line.
The foray into space, especially by people who are not trained astronauts, has been few and far between.
In the 22 years since Tito, only a handful of people have repeated the act. Most recently, Justin Sun, the founder and CEO of the blockchain platform Tron, paid USD 28 million for a seat on Blue Origin’s first crewed spaceflight.
This has set the ball rolling for space tourism. So what can we expect next?
One Ticket To Outer Space, Please!
There’s very little chance that you missed Jeff Bezo’s Blue Origin testing the New Shepard launch vehicle. Here’s an image to help you recall better (the design does have a certain noteworthy characteristic):
To date, Blue Origin has completed three spaceflights with a 6-member crew. Although the trip lasts a mere 11 minutes, the launch vehicle breaches the 100 kilometer boundary and the flight can technically be considered a “spaceflight”.
The 11-minute journey allows the crew to experience micro-gravity and view the curvature of the planet. This is the most likely future of stellar tourism experiences.
Wait, did you imagine lunch on Moon and dinner on Mars?
While Blue Origin has never publicized the price to fly on the New Shepard, Virgin Galactic, the world’s first commercial spaceline company, is known to charge its customers a whopping USD 450,000 per head for 4 to 5 minutes of weightlessness.
Yes, the costs are extravagant. Unless you founded a Fortune 500 business and drive around in Rolls-Royce, you are not the target audience for stellar tourism.
However, it is a start!
Humans have looked up at the sky and dreamed of flying for centuries. The airplane was but a successful stepping-stone in our desire to explore faraway places. It has given rise to the popular phrase:
“We are the middle children of history. Born too late to explore earth, born too early to explore space.”
Stellar tourism is challenging the assumption that we’re too early.
We’ve already explored space from an academic standpoint, and now we want to open it up for the masses.
Perhaps the term “space” makes it sound grander than it is; early space tourists will barely breach the Earth’s atmosphere. However, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes innovation happening in the space tourism sector which makes me quite hopeful.
- Blue Origin has developed a method of extracting oxygen from lunar regolith, or moon dust. With enough heat, breathable oxygen can be separated from the regolith, allowing tourists to explore the Moon not confined to the launch vehicle, but in space suits. (Oh, what we wouldn’t give to leave our footprints on the Moon!)
- Moreover, the lunar regolith is rich in silicon, which could be used to generate electricity, similar to a silicon semiconductor in solar cells. When integrated with a battery pack, it could help power space exploration vehicles or space suits.
- Axiom Space, an American space infrastructure developer, is building a space hotel aimed for a 2025 launch. The Axiom Station will be modular in design, allowing its developers to add new modules and rooms with time.
It was 54 years ago that man first stepped on another celestial body — the Moon. It was the most feasible stepping stone; the closest object in space. However, we’ve already explored and studied faraway celestial bodies. (Remember when JAXA (the Japanese equivalent of NASA) brought back samples from an asteroid that’s over twice the distance between the Earth and the Sun?)
Space exploration has grown by bounds and leaps in the past few decades —the James Webb Space Telescope, for instance — and its learning has created parallel industries. Given our propensity for discovering and exploring the vastness of the cosmos, space tourism is inevitable.
However, space tourism has certain challenges:
- The price of the spaceflight tickets will filter out 99% of tourists and cosmic adventure-seekers.
- Most launch vehicles have a capacity to carry 4–6 people. If your space squad has more than 6 members, you may not be able to #WeightlessOnMoon social media trend together after all!
- The space economy (mineral mining, for instance) and space exploration projects (space observatories/telescopes) will take precedence over space tourism. It could take decades for space tourism to establish itself as an independent industry.
- Current “space tours” are extremely short, as majority of the trip is spent in gaining altitude. Most space tourists won’t see the value in paying millions for a few seconds of weightlessness.
Not to mention the technological, logistical and financial challenges that space tourism will face at the outset.
So, the question remains…
Should You Start Saving Up For A Space Vacation?
Considering the current state of space tourism, we may be decades away from making it commercially viable for the common man. The most significant challenge to the commercialization of this trend is the cost involved, for the business as well as the tourist.
To make space tourism affordable to the masses, spaceflight providers such as Blue Origin’s New Shephard are experimenting with reusable suborbital launch vehicles. These vehicles will to reach the edge of space to jettison the actual space vehicle, and land back on Earth for the next trip.
This will reduce costs by allowing the same launch vehicle to be used multiple times. SpaceX has already shown us glimpses of this technology with the Falcon 9.
Although it is hard to predict the future scope of stellar tourism experiences, spaceline companies will push to make it a reality. And one day, a generation of people may have the option to spend a vacation either in Europe or on Europa!
Sure, space tourism is not a fiscally viable activity for everyone and will have a lasting effect on the Earth’s atmosphere. However, it is as inevitable as the invention of airplanes and automobiles. The desire to explore the unknown is, in part, what separates humans for other species.
With the global village growing smaller, we will certainly look at space as the next frontier.
With a view like this, I wonder, will space tourism be a life-changing travel experience, or the start of our journey towards becoming an inter-planetary civilization?
