Space Tourism: The Final Frontier

Since the dawn of humanity, we have looked into the heavens and wondered what was out there. In the past several decades, we have begun to find out. On Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik 1, man’s first artificial satellite into space, kicking off the Space Age and introducing the concept that space was a frontier that could be conquered.

The ensuing Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union brought about a new era of exploration, and the public sphere envisioned a future where even civilians could discover the heavens. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Joanna Russ’s Picnic on Paradise are cultural artifacts that reflect the dreams of that generation. Many technological theorists believed space tourism would be commonplace by the 21^st century. Even Pan Am had a “First Moon Flights Club,” where people could get their name on a waiting list for future trips to the moon.

Several civilians have been able to go into space during the Space Age, but it wasn’t until the 1990s that orbital space tourism became viable for the public, at least to the super rich. Dennis Tito became the first space tourist in history when he stayed at the International Space Station for a week in 2001. The trip was a collaboration between MirCorp, a commercial space company that had previously executed privately funded space missions, and Space Adventures, the space tourism venture which is the only company to have sent paying passengers into space. Charles Simonyi of Microsoft Office and Guy Laliberté of Cirque du Soleil are among their seven clients. Future orbital ventures include Boeing’s CST-100 and SpaceX’s Dragon owned by Elon Musk of Tesla Motors fame.

For the rest of us suborbital space flight is becoming a promising option for the space tourism industry. Unlike orbital spaceflight, suborbital tourists will hit a peak altitude between 100-160 kilometers, experiencing around five minutes of weightlessness and seeing the curvature of the earth. A suborbital space vacation hasn’t taken place yet, but Michael Melvill became the first commercial astronaut as a test pilot for SpaceShipOne. The subsequent SpaceShipTwo was developed by The Spaceship Company, which is owned by Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. The company recently experienced a loss when their VSS Enterprise suffered a catastrophic in-flight breakup over the Mojave Desert, resulting in the tragic death of co-pilot Michael Alsbury. The Enterprise tragedy has put the space tourism industry in perspective, illuminating the risks and just how much further science has to go before space travel can be available to all.