Space tourism

Space tourism is the recent phenomenon of space travel by individuals for the purpose of personal pleasure. As of 2006, space tourism is only affordable to wealthy individuals and corporations, with the Russian space program providing transport. Some are beginning to favour the term "personal spaceflight" instead, as in the case of the Personal Spaceflight Federation.

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 exclusivist 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 and Wisconsin, as well as Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.

Early dreams

After initial successes in space, many people saw intensive space exploration as inevitable. In the minds of many people, such exploration was symbolised 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 A Space Odyssey (novel); Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator; Joanna Russ’ 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 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.

Passengers on government spacecraft

If a space tourist is one who cannot rightly be called a professional astronaut, then the first space tourist was United States Senator Jake Garn (R-Utah) who flew as a mission specialist aboard space shuttle Discovery on STS-51-D from April 12th to April 19th 1985. He was the first member of Congress to fly in space and earned his ride as chairman of the Senate Appropriations committee, which oversees all NASA funding.

The second space tourist and member of Congress was US Representative Bill Nelson (D-Florida), who served as a payload specialist on space shuttle Columbia during STS-61-C from January 12th through January 18th, 1986. At the time of his flight, he was chairman of the House Space Science and Applications Subcommittee.

Real space tourism

With the realities of the post-Perestroika economy in Russia, the space industry was especially starved for cash. It was decided to allow Toyohiro Akiyama, a reporter for Japanese television company Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS), to fly in 1990 to Mir with the eighth crew and return a week later with the seventh crew, for a price of $28m. Akiyama gave a daily TV-broadcast from orbit and also performed scientific experiments for Russian and Japanese companies. However the cost of the flight was paid by his company, which makes Akiyama a sort of business traveller rather than a tourist.

While it is 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 now 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.

On the 28^th of April 2001, Dennis Tito became the first "fee-paying" space tourist when he visited the 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. Other individuals interested in making the trip include boy band singer Lance Bass and AstroMom Lori Garver who had to cancel a planned flight due to funding problems.

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, Greg Olsen and the future missions of Daisuke Enomoto and Charles Simonyi. Each participant paid $20 million (USD) for their 10-day visit to the ISS.

NASA Public Relations has used the term Spaceflight participant to designate space tourists. Tito, Shuttleworth and Olsen have been designated as such during their respective space flights.

List of flown spaceflight participants

(all flights were with a Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS, and a return again with a Soyuz spacecraft)

Dennis Tito: April 28 - May 6, 2001
Mark Shuttleworth: April 25 - May 5, 2002
Gregory Olsen: October 1 - October 11, 2005

Future spaceflight participants

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

Daisuke Enomoto (Japan) - Internet entrepreneur, currently expected to fly on Soyuz TMA-9 in September, 2006.
Charles Simonyi (U.S./Hungary)
Anousheh Ansari (U.S./Iran) - Telecoms entrepreneur, and multi-millon co-contributor to the Ansari X-Prize.

Commercial space flights

The more affordable suborbital space tourism is viewed as a money-making proposition by several companies, including Space Adventures, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, Armadillo Aerospace, XCOR Aerospace, Rocketplane Limited, and others. Most are proposing vehicles that make suborbital flights peaking at an altitude of 100-160 kilometres. 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 in the range of $100,000-$200,000 per passenger, with costs dropping over time to $20,000 or less.

In December of 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. ^*

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. They expect to be operational by 2008, according to their best case scenario. Space Adventures Ltd. have also announced that they are working on circumlunar missions, also possibly in 2008 or 2009 (see DSE-Alpha).

More information about the future of Space Tourism can be found at www.robert-goehlich.de 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

American motel tycoon Robert Bigelow has acquired the designs for inflatable space habitats from the Transhab program abandoned by NASA. His company, Bigelow Aerospace is 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).

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, Virgin's Richard Branson has expressed his hope for the construction of a space hotel within his lifetime. 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; British Airways has expressed interest in the venture.

Hoax

The UK reality show Space Cadets purported to have fooled its participants into thinking that they were Britains first space toursts, Using a decomissioned military base, Russian actors and a fake space craft fixed to a hydraulically moving platform.

References

Space Tourism Society (^*)
Space Future Journal (^*)
X PRIZE Foundation (^*)
Space Adventures (^*)
Zero Gravity Corporation (^*)

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