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'Space tourism' is the recent phenomenon of individuals paying for space travel, primarily for personal satisfaction.
As of 2007, space tourism opportunities are limited and expensive, with only the Russian Space Agency providing transport. The price for a flight brokered by Space Adventures to the International Space Station aboard a Soyuz spacecraft is now $30 million. Flights are fully booked until 2009.
Among the primary attractions of space tourism are the uniqueness of the experience, the thrill and awe of looking at Earth from space (described by astronauts as extremely intense and mind-boggling), the experience's notion as an exclusive status symbol, and various advantages of weightlessness.
The space tourism industry is being targeted by spaceports in numerous locations, including California, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Florida, Virginia, Alaska, Esrange in Sweden and Wisconsin, as well as Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. Some use the term "personal spaceflight" as in the case of the Personal Spaceflight Federation.

Contents

Early dreams

Precedents

Private space tourism

List of flown space tourists

Future space tourists

Commercial space flights

Legality

Virgin Galactic

Other companies

Commercial space stations and space hotels

Opinions of commercial space tourism

Objection to "Space Tourist" terminology

See also

References

External links

Early dreams

After initial successes in space, many people saw intensive space exploration as inevitable. In the minds of many people, such exploration was symbolized by wide public access to space, mostly in the form of space tourism. Those aspirations are best remembered in science fiction works (and one children's book), such as Arthur C. Clarke's ''A Fall of Moondust'' and also '', Roald Dahl's ''Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator'', Joanna Russ's 1968 novel ''Picnic on Paradise'', and Larry Niven's Known Space stories. Lucian in 2 A.D. in his book ''True History'' examines the idea of a crew of men whose ship travels to the Moon during a storm. Jules Verne also took up the theme of lunar visits in his books, ''From the Earth to the Moon'' and ''Around the Moon''. Robert A. Heinlein’s short story ''The Menace from Earth'', published in 1957, was one of the first to incorporate elements of a developed space tourism industry within its framework. During the 1960s and 1970s, it was common belief that space hotels would be launched by 2000. Many futurologists around the middle of the 20th century speculated that the average family of the early 21st century would be able to enjoy a holiday on the Moon.
The end of the space race, however, signified by the Moon landing, decreased the importance of space exploration and led to decreased importance of manned space flight.^[1]

Precedents

The Soviet space program was aggressive in broadening the pool of cosmonauts from the very beginning. Many Westerners believed that Valentina Tereshkova was less qualified than other cosmonauts of the era and as such was a kind of space tourist. The Soviet Intercosmos program also included cosmonauts selected from Warsaw Pact members and later from allies of the USSR and non-aligned countries. Most of these cosmonauts received full training for their missions and were treated as equals, but especially after the Mir program began, were generally given shorter flights than Soviet cosmonauts. The European Space Agency took advantage of the program as well.
The U.S. Space Shuttle program included payload specialist positions which were usually filled by representatives of companies or institutions managing a specific payload on that mission. These payload specialists did not receive the same training as professional NASA astronauts and were not employed by NASA, so they were essentially private astronauts. NASA was also eager to prove its capability to Congressional sponsors, and Senator Jake Garn and (then-Representative, now Senator) Bill Nelson were both given opportunities to fly on board a shuttle. As the Shuttle program expanded, the Teacher in Space program was developed as a way to expand publicity and educational opportunities for NASA. Christa McAuliffe would have been the first Teacher in Space, but she was killed in the Challenger disaster and the program was canceled. During the same period a Journalist in Space program was frequently discussed, with individuals such as Walter Cronkite and Miles O'Brien considered front-runners, but no formal program was ever developed. Eventually, McAuliffe's backup in the Teacher in Space Program, Barbara Morgan, would train and fly as a full-fledged NASA astronaut. She launched aboard STS-118 as a payload specialist and spoke to many students as an educator during the trip.
With the realities of the post-Perestroika economy in Russia, its space industry was especially starved for cash. The Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) offered to pay for one of its reporters to fly on a mission. For $28 million, Toyohiro Akiyama, was flown in 1990 to Mir with the eighth crew and returned a week later with the seventh crew. Akiyama gave a daily TV-broadcast from orbit and also performed scientific experiments for Russian and Japanese companies. However, since the cost of the flight was paid by his employer, Akiyama could be considered a business traveler rather than a tourist.
In 1991, British chemist Helen Sharman was selected from a pool of public applicants to be the first Briton in space.^[2] As the United Kingdom had no space program, the arrangement was by a consortium of private companies who contracted with the Russian space program. Sharman was also in a sense a private space traveler, but she was a working cosmonaut with a full training regimen.

Private space tourism

While it is sometimes jokingly argued that John Glenn was essentially a tourist on his 1998 shuttle flight (STS-95), space tourism did not resume for another three years. MirCorp, a private venture by then in charge of the space station, began seeking potential space tourists to visit Mir in order to offset some of its maintenance costs. Dennis Tito, an American businessman and former JPL scientist, became their first candidate. When the decision to dismantle Mir was made, Tito opted to book a trip to the International Space Station through U.S.-based Space Adventures, Ltd., which remains the only company to have sent paying passengers to space.^[3][4][5]
On April 28, 2001, Dennis Tito became the first "fee-paying" space tourist when he visited the International Space Station (ISS) for seven days. He was followed in 2002 by South African computer millionaire Mark Shuttleworth. The third was Gregory Olsen in 2005, who is trained as a scientist and whose company produces specialist high-sensitivity cameras. Olsen planned to use his time on the ISS to conduct a number of experiments, in part to test his company's products. Olsen had planned an earlier flight, but had to cancel for health reasons.
After the Columbia disaster, space tourism on the Russian Soyuz program was temporarily put on hold, because Soyuz vehicles became the only available transport to the ISS.
In conjunction with the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation and Rocket and Space Corporation Energia, Space Adventures facilitated the flights for the world's first private space explorers: Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Gregory Olsen, Anousheh Ansari and Charles Simonyi. The first three participants paid in excess of $20 million (USD) each for their 10-day visit to the ISS.
In 2010 space tourism to the ISS could become much more common as NASA hopes to rely on COTS (commercial orbital transportation systems) to send both astronauts and cargo to the ISS. Furthermore it is quite likely other vehicles will be ready by then.
NASA Public Affairs has used the term ''Spaceflight Participant'' to designate space tourists. Tito, Shuttleworth, Olsen, Ansari, and Simonyi were designated as such during their respective space flights.^[6] lists Christa McAuliffe as a "Space Flight Participant" (although she did not pay a fee), apparently due to her non-technical duties aboard the STS-51-L flight.
==The X Prize==
On October 4, 2004, the SpaceShipOne, designed by Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites and funded by Virgin Galactic, won the $10,000,000 X Prize, which was designed to be won by the first private company who could reach and surpass an altitude of 62 miles (beyond the Karman line, the arbitarily defined boundary of space).^[7] The first flight was flown by Michael Melvill on June 21, 2004 to a height of 62 miles, making him the first commercial astronaut.^[8] The prize-winning flight was flown by Brian Binnie, which reached a height of 69.6 miles, breaking the X-15 record.^[9]

List of flown space tourists

All five tourists flew to and from the International Space Station on Soyuz spacecraft:^[10]
#Dennis Tito (American): April 28 - May 6, 2001
#Mark Shuttleworth (South African / British): April 25 - May 5, 2002
#Gregory Olsen (American): October 1 - October 11, 2005
#Anousheh Ansari (Iranian / American): September 18 - September 29, 2006
#Charles Simonyi (Hungarian / American): April 7 - April 21,2007
Although Michael Melvill became the first commercial astronaut on June 21, 2004, he was a test pilot and not an actual paying space tourist.

Future space tourists

The following people have been named as future commercial passengers on Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS.

★ Daisuke Enomoto (Japan) - Internet entrepreneur, was expected to fly on Soyuz TMA-9 in September 2006, grounded for medical reasons, and was replaced by Ansari.

★ Santhosh George Kulangara, a business man from Kerala-India, could soon become the country’s first space tourist. He got ticket for a two-hour space flight organized by Global space tour operator Virgin Galactic, a venture of Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic. Mr. Santhosh George would fly on board the Virgin Galactic's Space Ship by mid 2008.^{[11][12][13][14]}

Commercial space flights

More affordable suborbital space tourism is viewed as a money-making proposition by several other companies, including Space Adventures, Virgin Galactic, Starchaser, Blue Origin, Armadillo Aerospace, XCOR Aerospace, Rocketplane Limited, the European "Project Enterprise",^[15] and others. Most are proposing vehicles that make suborbital flights peaking at an altitude of 100-160 kilometres.^[16][17] Passengers would experience three to six minutes of weightlessness, a view of a twinkle-free starfield, and a vista of the curved Earth below. Projected costs are expected to be about $200,000 per passenger.^{[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]}

Legality

In December 2005, the U.S. Government released a set of proposed rules for space tourism.
Under current US law, any company proposing to launch paying passengers from American soil on a suborbital rocket must receive a license from the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation (FAA/AST). The licensing process focuses on public safety and safety of property, and the details can be found in the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 14, Chapter III.^[32] This is in accordance with the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act passed by Congress in 2004.^[33]

Virgin Galactic

Main articles: Virgin Galactic


Virgin Galactic, one of the leading potential space tourism groups, is planning to have passenger service on its first spaceship, the VSS Enterprise (Scaled Composites SpaceShipTwo), with the inaugural launch in 2008 and main flights beginning in 2009. The price is initially set at $200,000. Headed by Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group, Virgin Galactic will be the first private space tourism company to regularly send civilians into space, by training them for 3 days before their launch. The SpaceShipTwo spaceship was built as a result of the Ansari X Prize (which was won by SpaceShipOne); both SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo were designed by Burt Rutan. Launches will first occur at the Mojave Spaceport in California, and will then be moved to the permanent spaceport in Upham, New Mexico, near Truth or Consequences. The spaceships used will go 360,000 feet (109.73 km, or 68.18 miles) high; this goes beyond the height of 100 km, which is the internationally defined boundary between Earth and space. Space flights will last 2.5 hours, carry 6 passengers, and reach a speed of Mach 3. SpaceShipTwo will not require a space shuttle-like heat shield for atmospheric reentry as it will not experience the extreme aerodynamic heating experienced during reentry at orbital velocities (approximately Mach 22.5 at a typical shuttle altitude of 300 km, or 185 miles).^[34] The glider will employ a "feathering" technique to manage drag during the unpowered descent and landing. SpaceShipTwo will use a single hybrid rocket motor to launch from mid-air after detaching from a mother ship at 50,000 feet, instead of NASA's Space Shuttle's ground-based launch.
An explosion at the Scaled Composites factory at the Mojave Spaceport on July 26, 2007 killed three engineers and seriously injured three others. They were testing components for SpaceShipTwo, and as of July 2007 the impact on the program is not known.^[35]

Other companies

★ EADS Astrium, a subsidiary of European aerospace giant EADS, announced its space tourism project on June 13, 2007.^[36]

★ Bigelow Aerospace is a Las Vegas, Nevada, space technology startup company that is pioneering work on expandable space station modules.

★ Constellation Services International (CSI) is working on a project to send manned spacecraft on commercial circumlunar missions. Their offer would include a week-long stay at the ISS, as well as a week-long trip around the Moon.

★ Space Adventures Ltd. have also announced that they are working on circumlunar missions to the moon, with the price per passenger being $100,000,000.^[37] They are currently developing spaceports at the United Arab Emirates (Ras al-Khaimah) and in Singapore.

★ Orbital space tourist flights are also being planned by Excalibur Almaz, using modernized ''TKS'' space capsules.
More information about the future of Space Tourism can be found at Space Tourism Lecture, which is a free online Space Tourism Lecture handout collection. Since 2003 Dr. Robert A. Goehlich teaches the world's first and only Space Tourism class at Keio University, Yokohama, Japan.

Commercial space stations and space hotels

American motel tycoon Robert Bigelow has acquired the designs for inflatable space habitats from the Transhab program abandoned by NASA. His company, Bigelow Aerospace already launched the first inflatable habitat module named Genesis I in 12 July 2006. The second test module, Genesis II was launched 28 June 2007. It is also currently planning to launch a prototype space station module by late 2008, and plans to officially launch the first commercial space station by 2010 (tagged ''Nautilus'') which will have 330 cubic meters (almost as big as the ISS's 425 cubic meters of usable volume).^[38]
Bigelow Aerospace is currently offering the America's Space Prize, a $50 million prize to the first US company to create a reusable spacecraft capable of carrying passengers to a Nautilus space station.
Other companies have also expressed interest in constructing "space hotels".
For example, Excalibur Almaz plans to modernize and launch its Soviet-era Almaz space stations, which will feature the largest windows ever on spacecraft. Virgin's Richard Branson has expressed his
hope for the construction of a space hotel within his lifetime. He expects that beginning a space tourism program will cost $100 million. Hilton International announced the Space Islands Project, a plan to connect together used Space Shuttle fuel tanks, each the diameter of a Boeing 747 aircraft. Hilton to back space hotel A separate organization, Space Island Group^[39] announced their distinct Space Island Project (note the singular "Island"), and plans on having 20,000 people on their "space island" by 2020, with the number of people doubling for each decade.^[40] British Airways has expressed interest in the venture. If and when Space Hotels develop, it would initially cost a passenger $60,000, with prices lowering over time.^[41]
Fashion designer Eri Matsui has designed clothing, including a wedding gown, intended to look best in weightless environments.

Opinions of commercial space tourism

A recent web-based survey suggested that over 70% of those surveyed wanted less than or equal to 2 weeks in space; in addition, 88% wanted to spacewalk (only 74% of these would do it for a 50% premium), and 21% wanted a hotel or space station.^[42]

Objection to "Space Tourist" terminology

Dennis Tito, Gregory Olsen and Anousheh Ansari have all expressed their disapproval of the term, "space tourist", on the basis that all three carried out scientific experiments as part of their journey. Tito has asked to be known as an "independent researcher" while Ansari prefers the term, "private space explorer".^[43]

See also

★ Armadillo Aerospace

★ Bigelow Aerospace

★ Blue Origin

★ Commercial Astronaut

★ List of private spaceflight companies

★ Space Adventures

★ Space colonization

★ Space Tourism Society

★ Virgin Galactic

References

1. Space: the forgotten frontier?, , , , ,
2. 1991: Sharman becomes first Briton in space], , , , ,
3.
Int'l space station ticket price climbs
4. International Space Station Welcomes American Tourist
5. Regulators OK Oklahoma spaceport - Suborbital test flights could begin in 2007, setting stage for tourists
6. Payload Specialist Astronauts
7. SpaceShipOne Captures X-PrizeOctober 4, 2004
8. SpaceShipOne pilot bio: Michael W. Melvill May 2005
9. www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/041004_spaceshipone_x-prize_flight_2.html
10. How Space Tourism Works, , , , ,
11. Zero gravity training for country's first space tourist 2007-08-06]
12. India's first space tourist leaves for zero gravity flight August 08, 2007
13. Santosh George Kulangara: First Indian Space Tourist? 19 Mar 2007
14. Santosh George to become first Indian space tourist 2007-03-16
15. TALIS Institute
16. Scotland 2040: Spaceships head for Moon with lunar golfers and crater ramblers aboard, , , , ,
17. Space Tourism: Personal Spaceflight for you ..., , , , , 2007
18. British tycoon wants to fly you to space: Virgin Galactic plans to sell 0,000 rides, , , , ,
19. Space Tourism Society The Space Tourism Society (STS) is a California 501(c)3 nonprofit organization whose mission is to encourage as many people to travel into Earth orbit as soon as possible for the space experience. STS aims to provide the vision and voice for the evolution of humanity off-world in a humane, fun, and beautiful direction. STS was created to inspire people to build real products for future use in space.
20. Space Future Journal
21. X PRIZE Foundation
22. Space Adventures
23. Zero Gravity Corporation
24. An interview with Michael Gold about Bigelow Aerospace
25. The Last Frontier Of Tourism (article by Stefan Tiron, published by monochrom)
26. Article on Civilians in Space
27. Charles in Space Charles Simonyi's blog and video blog about his trip to the ISS
28. Space tourism: Space.com
29. Space hotels
30. Virgin Galactic - Virgin Galactic
31. The New Space Race Chad Vander Veen, January 2007, Government Technology
32. Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, , , , ,
33. Congress Passes Space Tourism Bill, , , , ,
34. Flight to Orbit, , , , ,
35. Query into tragic test begins : But finding the cause of the deadly blast may take up to six months, officials say>
36. Europe joins space tourism race, ''Times online'', June 10, 2007
37. 0 Million Moon Trip: Space Tourism's Hot Ticket?, , , , ,
38. A Room with a View of Mars, Please, , , , ,
39. The Space Island Group's Mission
40. http://www.spaceislandgroup.com/sig-vision.html, , , , ,
41. Space Future - Prospects of Space Tourism], , , , ,
42. http://www.space.com/news/061003_tourism_survey.html, , , , ,
43. www.anoushehansari.com

External links

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