Space Tourism - The Birth of a New Industry

On the 31st of October, 2014, the crash of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo during a testing session has raised questions concerning the future of space tourism - its safety, sustainability, and how government should regulate it. In this first blog post, I will start out discussing the business of space tourism. 

“Forget climbing Everest, trekking to the South Pole or canoeing up the Amazon: How about taking a trip to the far side of the moon?” (McKinley, 2012) That is how Jesse McKinley of The New York Times describes the next phase of adventurous “extreme-tourism." Entrepreneurialism has given birth to a brand new industry – space tourism. 

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo during a
successful test flight earlier this year
Credit: Virgin.com

Space Tourism, as the name already demonstrates, is a branch of tourism which attempts to take customers on a recreational voyage into space, the outer reaches of the atmosphere - into the mesosphere (roughly 50 km above earth's surface) and above. Tourists will be able to experience weightlessness in “zero-gravity” and to enjoy breathtaking, scenic views of our home planet – earth – from space. It is also considered “the ultimate get-away-from-it-all” (McKinley, 2012) – making it seem that humans have conquered all of earth’s corners, and that we have simply ran out of places to go. Suborbital tourism, as space tourism is also referred to, is an industry that has been rapidly growing in recent years. Complete commercialization is clearly going to happen within the next few years; however, hiccups, as demonstrated by Virgin Galactic's disastrous crash, seem to be inevitable. Commercial space transportation, according to a definition by the Federal Aviation Administration, is carried out “using orbital and suborbital vehicles owned and operated by private companies or organizations for profit, procured through a competitive bidding process” (FAA, 2010). This commercial space transportation and tourism business has been initialized by entrepreneurs with enormous amounts of capital and a dream. Entrepreneurs, such as Elon Musk and Richard Branson, took this industry to the next level, from an industry that has “a plan” to an “industry moving toward fruition” (McKinley, 2012). Resources and technology that had been solely available to the NASA (for reasons of high cost) have been decreasing in price and increasing in its availability, making it easier and more feasible for entrepreneurs to enter into this innovative commercial space industry. In the coming years, affordability of a trip into space for the average person will potentially become reality. Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, XCOR, and Space Adventures are leading the industry of space tourism in their own differentiated ways - but all with one common, primary goal: black digits on the bottom line - profit.

by Peter Steenhuis

Sources:

Federal Aviation Administration. (Sept. 2010). The Economic Impact of Commercial Space Transportation on the U.S. Economy in 2009. Federal Aviation Administration. http://www.faa.gov/news/updates/media/Economic%20Impact%20Study%20September%202010_20101026_PS.pdf. Web.

McKinley, Jesse. (7 Sept. 2012). Space Tourism Is Here! Wealthy Adventurers Wanted. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/travel/space-tourism-is-here-wealthy-adventurers-wanted.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. Web.