space tourism

space tourism, recreational space travel, either on established government-owned vehicles such as the Russian Soyuz and the International Space Station (ISS) or on vehicles fielded by private companies. Since the flight of the world’s first space tourist, American businessman Dennis Tito, on April 28, 2001, space tourism has gained new prominence as more suborbital and orbital tourism opportunities have become available.

Orbital space tourism

The advent of space tourism occurred at the end of the 1990s with a deal between the Russian company MirCorp and the American company Space Adventures Ltd. MirCorp was a private venture in charge of the space station Mir. To generate income for maintenance of the aging space station, MirCorp decided to sell a trip to Mir, and Tito became its first paying passenger. However, before Tito could make his trip, the decision was made to deorbit Mir, and—after the intervention of Space Adventures Ltd.—the mission was diverted to the ISS. Tito, who paid $20 million for his flight on the Russian spacecraft Soyuz TM-32, spent seven days on board the ISS and is considered the world’s first space tourist. However, given the arduous training required for his mission, Tito objected to the use of the word tourist, and since his flight the term spaceflight participant has been more often used to distinguish commercial space travelers from career astronauts.

Orbital space tourism continued to grow following Tito’s mission, with flights to the ISS by South African computer millionaire Mark Shuttleworth in 2002 and American businessman Gregory Olsen in 2005. These travelers were followed by Iranian-born American entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari, who became the fourth spaceflight participant and the first female fee-paying space traveler when she visited the ISS in September 2006. The following year American billionaire Charles Simonyi joined the ranks of spaceflight participants when he shared a ride with two cosmonauts on board Soyuz TMA-10 for a 10-day stay on the ISS, and Simonyi made a second flight in 2009. The sixth spaceflight participant, American video game developer Richard Garriott, was launched in October 2008. In making his flight, Garriott became the first second-generation American in space, since his father, Owen Garriott, was a former astronaut. (Cosmonauts Aleksandr Volkov and his son Sergey were the first father-and-son space travelers. Sergey Volkov was on the ISS when Garriott arrived.) No spaceflight participants have flown to the ISS since Canadian entrepreneur Guy Laliberté in 2009, but in 2021 Space Adventures has scheduled to fly to the ISS two passengers, Japanese entrepreneur Maezawa Yusaku and Hirano Yozo, who will document Maezawa’s experiences. Since 2007 Space Adventures has offered a spaceflight around the Moon on a Soyuz spacecraft for a fee of $100 million.

The American spaceflight corporation SpaceX has allowed its Crew Dragon spacecraft to be chartered for orbital flights. The first such mission, Inspiration4, carried four private citizens—Americans Jared Isaacman, Sian Proctor, Hayley Arceneaux, and Chris Sembroski—to Earth orbit for three days in September 2021. Isaacman plans to charter three more flights, two on Dragon and the third on SpaceX’s Starship; the first, Polaris Dawn, is scheduled to launch in August 2024. The American spaceflight company Axiom Space has also chartered Dragon spacecraft to take one astronaut and three tourists to the ISS; Axiom’s first mission was in April 2022.

Suborbital space tourism

Although the orbital space tourism industry garnered much media attention following Tito’s flight, other companies were also hard at work trying to make space tourism a profitable proposition by developing suborbital vehicles designed to take passengers to an altitude of 100 km (62 miles). In addition to the goal of making space tourism commercially viable, the companies were competing for the Ansari X Prize, a $10 million reward offered by the X Prize Foundation to the first nongovernmental organization to launch a reusable crewed spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. (A portion of the prize money was donated by Anousheh Ansari and her brother-in-law, Iranian-born American entrepreneur Amir Ansari.) On October 4, 2004, SpaceShipOne, funded by Virgin Galactic and designed by American engineer Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites, won the X Prize and, in doing so, ushered in a new era of commercial crewed spaceflight and space tourism.

In 2004 the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act (CSLAA) provided guidelines for regulating the safety of commercial human spaceflight in the United States under the auspices of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Under the CSLAA, FAA representatives will attend every launch, evaluate every landing, and work alongside the space tourism operators; however, the FAA will not be permitted to impose any safety regulations until 2023 unless there is a serious incident. The guidelines require space tourism operators to inform spaceflight participants in writing about the risks of launch and reentry and about the safety record of the launch vehicle. The CSLAA guidelines also require spaceflight participants to provide informed consent to participate in launch and reentry.

At this early stage in the development of the suborbital space tourism industry, it is difficult for the FAA to control how companies design their vehicles or to assess the safety of launching spaceflight participants into space. Despite safety concerns and a crash during a 2014 test flight that cost the life of copilot Michael Alsbury, British entrepreneur Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic sold hundreds of seats at $300,000 each for its suborbital space tourism flights. Carrying Virgin Galactic’s spaceflight participants into space is SpaceShipTwo, dubbed VSS Unity, which is launched from a permanent spaceport near Upham, New Mexico. Unity made its first fully crewed flight on July 11, 2021, with pilots David Mackay and Michael Masucci and four passengers, Branson and Virgin Galactic employees Sirisha Bandla, Beth Moses, and Colin Bennett.

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Virgin Galactic is not alone in its interest in space tourism, an industry that may prove to be especially lucrative in the 21st century. In Texas, Blue Origin, a privately funded aerospace company set up by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, developed its New Shepard spacecraft (named for American astronaut Alan Shepard). With its bullet-shaped fuselage, New Shepard takes off and lands vertically, in contrast to the mother-ship deployment of SpaceShipTwo. New Shepard made its first flight on July 20, 2021, with a crew of Bezos; his brother Mark; American pilot Wally Funk, the then-oldest person in space at the age of 82; and Dutch student Oliver Daemen, the youngest person in space at the age of 18. New Shepard’s second flight, on October 13, 2021, attracted extensive attention for having actor William Shatner, at age 90 the oldest person in space, as a crew member.

As the space tourism industry evolves, the ranks of spaceflight participants will grow, and suborbital and orbital flights will inevitably give way to lunar excursions and trips to Mars and beyond, by which time space tourism will be operating as a full-fledged industry capable of truly opening the frontier of space.