The Not-So Far Future of Personal Space Trips
If you want to take a trip to space, you might want to hop on the reservation train. (Warning: it will cost half a million dollars — at the minimum).
I know what you’re thinking. Space travel? We barely sent rovers to Mars. Sure, humans aren’t going to Mars anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean space travel is an irrelevant conversation in tourism. See, going far enough through Earth’s atmosphere is space travel, and you could imagine the view of Earth from afar. We all have (likely) seen lots of pictures of our planet from space, but nothing beats the experience of seeing it with your own eyes. And with the space industry getting more commercialized, the days of being in space may be sooner than you think.
Before we get into that, let’s review our missions on the Moon. NASA’s Apollo 17 mission was the last time humans were on the Moon. That was 50 years ago. From the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, a golden era of space travel emerged from the Space Race between the US and the USSR. After the USSR launched Sputnik (the first artificial satellite), the US responded by creating NASA. The space agency’s initial years were a dream, with a continuous stream of funding peaking at $35 billion in 1965 (that’s considering inflation, of course). In total, NASA had six human missions to the Moon. While the Soviet Union had plans to send a cosmonaut to the Moon, it never happened. (Isn’t it interesting that even the name for sending a human to space is different? Cosmonauts for Russia; astronauts for everyone else). One takeaway from the Space Race is the influence of politics as it relates to science, particularly space science. Once the government chopped its funding, NASA couldn’t keep with their initial plans for space exploration, which even speculated a human Mars mission in the ’80s. America and the Soviet Union took their shot of Moon-landing adrenaline and moved on to other pressing matters. It was never about exploring space than claiming it. Hence the short-lived buzz after Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin placed the US flag on the Moon.
Fast forward to the present, and you may have heard of NASA’s Artemis mission. After a long drought, humans will soon be back on the moon with the Artemis missions’ goal of kickstarting space exploration beyond our rocky friend in the sky. As a person of color, I am excited about NASA’s goal to send the first woman and person of color to the Moon. The Space Race was amid the civil rights movement, so the only priority at the time was sending a man — a white man at that — to space. From some 350 NASA astronauts that went to space, only 15 were Black and 65 were women. If we, as a human race, are exploring the greater universe, we must be representative of the populations here on Earth.
Note that, so far, only government agencies were mentioned flying to space, but that is not always the case. Take companies like Blue Origin, Space X, and Virgin Galactic, who have already started rolling out space tours (the latter of which is pending until spring 2023). You don’t have to wait another century to break through the atmosphere — only your life savings. And that’s nothing compared to the cost of being in orbit, which may be possible in the next few years through the Axiom commercial space station. If you want all the digits, the tickets can range from $450 thousand to $25 million.
Notice that the two current barriers that prohibit one from venturing beyond our planet are skillset and money. Being an astronaut is no easy task. NASA keeps its class highly selective at an acceptance rate of only .08% as of last year. It’s safe to say that is not an option for everyone who wants to go to space. Wealth is one leeway around the system. As with many things in life, high capital means high access. The top 1 percent can comfortably look at the commercial space tickets while almost everyone else can only dream of saving a seat. Take it at a tiered level. Many people have ridden in a car, fewer in a plane, and not even a thousand in a spaceship. It may not seem like a problem now having commercialized space flight as a first-class experience but think of the future. If wealthy people can be among the first to soar into space, what does that reveal about explorations beyond the Moon?
Deep breaths folks. We have time before that debacle truly kicks in. Meanwhile, let’s appreciate the moment of being part of the pioneering age. There are lots of “firsts” we haven’t gotten to yet in space, so let’s take it one mission at a time.
