Wendy Whitman Cobb, US Air Force School for Advanced Aerospace Studies

For most people, getting to the stars is nothing more than a dream. Dennis Tito achieved this lifelong goal on April 28, 2001 – but he wasn’t your typical astronaut. Tito, a rich businessman, paid $ 20 million for a seat on a Russian Soyuz Spaceship as the first tourist to visit the International Space Station. Just seven people followed suit in the 20 years since then, but that number will double in the next 12 months alone.

NASA has been around for a long time reluctant to host space touristsHence, Russia – which looked for sources of money after the Cold War of the 1990s and 2000s – was the only option for those looking for such extreme adventure. However, it seems that the rise of private space companies will make it easier for ordinary people to experience space.

From my point of view as a space policy analystI see the beginning of an era in which more people can experience space. With companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin hoping to create a future for humanity in space, space tourism is a way to show the public both the safety and reliability of space travel.

Dennis Tito, to the left of two Russian astronauts, was the first private person to ever go into space – and he spent more than a week on the International Space Station.
NASA / WikimediaCommons

The development of space tourism

Flights to space like Dennis Tito’s are expensive for a reason. A rocket has to burn a lot of expensive fuel to get high and fast enough into earth orbit.

Another cheaper option is a suborbital launch, where the rocket is high enough to reach the edge of space and come right back down. While passengers experience weightlessness and incredible views on a suborbital journey, these takeoffs are more accessible.

The difficulty and cost of both options has meant that traditionally only nation-states have been able to explore space. This began to change in the 1990s when a number of entrepreneurs entered the space arena. Three companies run by billionaire CEOs have become the main players: Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX. While no one has brought paying retail customers into space, everyone expects to do so in the near future.

British billionaire Richard Branson built his brand not only on business but also on his love of adventure. In pursuing space tourism, Branson has brought both of them to fruition. He founded Virgo Galactic after the purchase SpaceShipOne – a company that won it Ansari X Award by building the first reusable spaceship. Since then, Virgin Galactic has tried to design, build, and fly a larger one SpaceShipTwo that can carry up to six passengers in a suborbital flight.

The spaceship VSS Unity is one of the ships Virgin Galactic plans to use for space tours.
AP Photo / Matt Hartman

That was more difficult than expected. While Branson forecast opening of the store For tourists in 2009, Virgin Galactic cleared a few significant hurdles – including the death of a pilot in a crash in 2014. After the accident, the engineers found significant problems in the design of the vehicle that required changes.

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, heads of SpaceX and Blue Origin respectively, began their own ventures in the early 2000s.

Musk, Afraid that a disaster some species could make the earth uninhabitable, frustrated with the lack of progress in turning humanity into a multi-planetary species. He founded SpaceX in 2002 with the goal of initially developing reusable launch technologies to reduce the cost of accessing space. Since then, SpaceX has found success with its Falcon 9 Missile and Dragon Spacecraft. SpaceX’s ultimate goal is human settlement on Mars – sending paying customers into space is an intermediate step. Musk hopes to show that space travel is easily possible and that tourism could provide a source of income for the development of the larger, Mars-oriented spacecraft system.

Bezos, inspired by the vision of physicist Gerard O’Neillhumanity and industry do not want to expand to Mars, but to space itself. Blue originThe company, founded in 2004, has also slowly and quietly developed reusable missiles. It is New Shepard The rocket, which was first successfully flown in 2015, will eventually offer tourists a suborbital journey to the edge of space, similar to Virgin Galactic’s. For Bezos, These starts represent The drive to make space travel routine, reliable, and accessible to humans is a first step towards enabling further space exploration.

A large silver rocket that stands upright on a launch pad.

SpaceX has already started selling tickets to the public and plans in the future to use its Starship rocket, the prototype of which can be seen here, to send people to Mars.
Jared Krahn / WikimediaCommons, CC BY-SA

Outlook for the future

Now SpaceX is the only option for someone who wants to go into space and orbit the earth. Two tourist starts are currently planned. The first is already planned for September 2021, funded by billionaire businessman Jared Isaacman. The other trip planned for 2022 is is organized by Axiom Space. These trips will be expensive, at $ 55 million for a flight and a stay on the International Space Station. The high cost has led some to warn of this Space tourism – and private access to space in a broader sense – could increase inequality between rich and poor.

Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic’s suborbital trips are far more affordable in both cases Price between $ 200,000 and $ 250,000. Blue Origin appears to be the closest thing to allowing paying customers on board. Saying after a recent launch These crewed missions would be “soon”. Virgin Galactic continues to test SpaceShipTwo, but no specific tourist flight schedule has been announced.

While these prices are high, keep in mind that Dennis Tito’s $ 20 million ticket in 2001 could soon pay for 100 flights on Blue Origin. However, the experience of viewing Earth from space could prove invaluable to a whole new generation of space explorers.

[Over 104,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world. Sign up today.]The conversation

Wendy Whitman Cobb, Professor of Strategy and Security Studies, US Air Force School for Advanced Aerospace Studies

This article is republished by The conversation under a Creative Commons license. read this original article.