Commercial Space Travel
The activity of traveling to space for recreational purposes is called space tourism. It involves paying customers rather than trained astronauts, and has only been successfully offered by the Russian Space Agency. However, private companies have proposed various forms of commercial space travel, with Orion Span, Virgin Galactic, Space X, Blue Origin, and The Boeing Company among the most promising contenders.
The Dawn of Space Tourism
The world’s first space tourist, American businessman Dennis Tito, flew into space aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket, arriving at the International Space Station in 2001. Several other tourists followed in Tito’s footsteps, including South African businessman Mark Shuttleworth, American businessman Greg Olsen, telecommunications entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari, and software architect Charles Simonyi. These trips marked the beginning of a lucrative 21st century industry.
The Current State of Space Tourism
Today, several private companies are planning to build suborbital vehicles and orbital cities within the next two decades. Virgin Galactic, for example, has already successfully launched one of its spacecraft and is targeting suborbital space tourism. The company hopes to offer regular space flights in the near future and has an extensive waiting list of potential passengers.
Space X, owned by Elon Musk, is aiming to provide commercial space travel in the near future and seems to be the most ambitious. Unlike Virgin Galactic, Space X’s goals include return trips around the moon and even commercial trips to Mars. The company has achieved significant space flight accomplishments, but is still far from true tourism.
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Blue Origin, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is another company trying to build a commercial suborbital vehicle. Although the company does not yet have an active waiting list, it has conducted some preliminary test flights and aims to be able to take small groups to and from space in the coming years.
Orion Span, an aerospace company based in California, is focused on orbital spaceflight. In 2018, it announced its flagship concept, the Aurora Space Station, which it hopes will provide one of the most popular and exciting opportunities for space tourism. Once operational, it will combine elements of a space station with more traditional hotel accommodations, offering paying customers a 12-day stay in space.
Orion Span’s Aurora Space Station is one of the most promising and exciting proposals for space tourism nowadays. The company claims to already have a seven-month waiting list, with trips to the space hotel starting at around $9.5 million per person.
