Experience microgravity
on a commercial parabolic flight.
In April of 2001, Dennis Tito
became the first traveler to pay for a trip to space
with money out of his own pocket. He decided to do it
and then just did it. That's what tourism is all about.
Since then four other "personal spaceflight participants"
have traveled to the ISS. The trips were arranged by
the company Space
Adventures, which has also set up the trip
for Richard Garriott in the fall of 2008.
In October of 2004, Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne
won the X
PRIZE and thereby started a new race to develop
the first vehicle that will provide suborbital
space rides to paying customers. Suborbital generally
refers to an up-and-down ( i.e. mostly vertical)
flight that reaches an altitude of around 100km or more
but does not go into orbit around the earth.
Market
Studies by NASA and
many other organizations have shown that there are sizable
markets for space tourism, both suborbital and orbital,
and that the markets will grow rapidly as the cost of
sending a person into space drops from current levels.
Adventure tourism, such as trips to Antarctica or Mount
Everest, has long been a profitable business. This can
involve packages with prices as high as $100k range
and even higher.
Though you commonly hear talk of "space
joyrides for the rich", the development of
space tourism will follow the normal course of development
seen for most all consumer technologies and services.
Tourism itself began as something only done by the
very rich. Passenger flights on airlines were initially
very expensive. VCRs, DVDs, PCs, etc. all started
out as very expensive "toys". Eventually
competition and economies of scale (i.e. mass production)
take over and prices drop to the level the middle
class can handle.
Before orbital rides are widely available, suborbital
flights will be the most common way to ride
into space. There are several companies currently planning
suborbital space vehicles for tourism and other applications.
The typical plan is to got to around 100km where one
can see the horizon out to 1000km or so and clearly
see the curvature of the earth and the starry blackness
of space.
The billionaire Richard Branson in September 2004 announced
a contract with Burt Rutan that gave him funding to
design and build a passenger vehicle referred to as
SpaceShipTwo (SS2). SS2 will safely and routinely
fly above 100km for a cost of about $200k per seat.
The SS2 will carry 6 passengers and 2 pilots.
The current goal of Virgin
Galactic is to begin commercial flights in
2010. As of the summer of 2008, over 250 people have
paid deposits or full ticket price. Another 600 people
have signed up to buy tickets after flights begin.
You can also train for spaceflight by experiencing
microgravity in Russian plane flying parabolic
trajectories. The company ZERO-G
in October 2004 began offering such rides in the US
for $3000 per person. The first 20 flights were already
sold out before they began regular service. As of 2008,
ZERO-G offers flights out of Las Vegas and
If you can't pay for an orbital trip, perhaps you can
win a ride.
There are now several contests in which the winner will
go into space.
There have been announcements of several "Survivor"
type reality format TV
programs in which a group of contestants
will struggle through several weeks of cosmonaut training
and the winner going to the International Space Station.
However, so far none of these programs have reached
the production stage.
When orbital flights become lower in price, there are
companies designing space
hotels where you can enjoy microgravity sports
and great views of earth. The company Bigelow
Aerospace will begin launching prototypes
in 2005 of its inflatable space habitat and will launch
a full scaled version that can be manned by 2010.
Orbital
Tourism: Three tourists so far have
ridden Soyuz spacecraft to the International
Space Station for one week stays and more
are waiting to go at a ticket price in the
$20M range. Bigelow
Aerospace is building a new generation
of space habitats based on light-weight,
high-volume inflatable designs. They are
intended to serve as both scientific stations
and space tourist destinations within the
next decade.
Suborbital
tourism: At least three companies
are expected to begin selling rides in the
2007-2008 time frame on spaceships that will
fly the X PRIZE style trajectory to 100 km
or higher. This will provide around 5 minutes
of weightlessness, a view of the curvature
of the earth and a dark star-filled sky. Ticket
prices will be in the $100k to $200k range.
Weightlessness
on aircraft flying parabolic trajectories.
Weightless periods last 25 - 30 seconds. Tickets
in the US are currently $3750.
Spaceflight
Training programs: Prepare for suborbital
and orbital spaceflights via training programs that
use centrifuges and other systems to simulate a
mission to space.
Dennis Tito became earth's first
space tourist. His ride to the space station was arranged
by Space Adventures, described below. Space Adventures
and several other companies are also offering reservations
on future sub-orbital flights and also on MIGs and aircraft
flying parabolic trajectories to provide periods of
microgravity.
Virgin
Galactic
Richard Branson has contracted with Burt Rutan's Scaled
Composites company to develop a new vehicle based
on the SpaceShipOne technology. It will carry at least
five people to more than 100km latitude. The goal is
to begin test flights in 2008 and passenger operations
in 2009. The initial ticket price will be in the $200k
range.
The above SS2 Video shows a high resolution simulation
of a SpaceShipTwo tourist flight starting from the New
Mexico spaceport. See also the article - An
experience that sells itself - The Space Review - July.9.07
- which details what a flight on the SpaceShipTwo would
be like.
As of January 2008, the company has collected around
$30 Million in deposits for flights.
Space
Adventures, Inc.
Space Adventures is a full service space tourism agency.
It offers everything from Space Shuttle launch tours
to Soyuz flights to the Space Station. The company helped
arrange Dennis Tito's flight to the ISS as well as the
subsequent private visitors to the ISS. See below
for information on the "spaceflight participants"
who have gone to the ISS with the help of Space Adventures.
SA has several former astronauts on its advisory board,
including Buzz Aldrin. SA will arrange for you to take
a MIG ride to 25km in altitude or experience micro-gravity
in a Russian plane flying parabolic trajectories.
It also offers reservations on sub-orbital flights
when they become available in a few years. The pricing
is around $100k. Space Adventures has said in the past
that about 100 people have either placed deposits of
a few thousand dollars or paid the full amount.
In August of 2005, the company announced that it had
arranged with the Russian space agency for a system
to fly two passengers around the Moon for $100M a seat.
More info here:
In February 2006 the company announced a collaboration
with Russian and US companies to offer suborbital spaceflights
on a new vehicle called the Explorer that will
be built in Russia. Spaceports from which the vehicle
will fly were announced in the UAE and in Singapore.
Incredible
Adventures
Incredible Adventures offers several space related experiences
in addition to safaris and stock car racing. Like Space
Adventures, they will eventually offer suborbital rices
but in the meantime, they offer Mig-25 flights to 27 kms
in altitude and Zero-gravity parabolic flights in Russia.
Also, at Star City in Moscow you can undergo Cosmonaut
training. An added option is training in the Hydrolab
water tank that simulates EVAs.
RocketShip
Tours/XCOR
Aerospace XCOR Aerospace
is developing the Lynx
Mark I rocketship for flights to 60km. The vehicle
holds a pilot and one passgner and test flights should
begin in 2010 and the first paying passenger flights
should happen by 2011. The Lynx Mark II will go to 100
km. The company RocketShip
Tours will be responsible for marketing and ticket
package sales for the vehicle.
The price for a 5-day package that includes training,
medical exam, hotel, and the flight is $95,000.
Russian
Space Adventure Services
US firms like Space Adventures and Incredible Adventures
mentioned above have long offered access to Russian space-based
services like parabolic flights and rides on high altitude
MIG jets. Now there are are several Russian firms who
offer such services directly
RusAdventures
is a Russian adventure travel company that offers
a number of space related packages such as:
SpaceWander
Virtual Space Trip! - this adventure and space
tourism travel site also offers a cool interactive
multimedia trip from earth to Mars.
Wildwings
is a UK based travel company that offers various adventure
tours, such as trips to Anarctic. It is now developing
a space
tours package. WildWings is the UK Sales Agents
for Space Adventures Inc. (see above) and is taking
deposits on suborbital flights.
WhereInTheWorld
- Final Frontier - this adventure tourist company
will reserve you on a sub-orbital flight, Space Camp,
Shuttle launch and more.
Worldview
Spaceflight, a British space tourism firm - parabolic
flight opportunities and plans eventually to offer
suborbital spaceflights
Anousheh
Ansari became the fourth person to pay for a
flight to the ISS.
Also referred to as space tourists, citizen
explorers, and public spaceflight participants,
I like to use astourists and astournauts
for space travelers who pay for a trip to space with
their own money rather than with government funds.
We include here miscellaneous articles about individual
astounauts and civilian astronauts / cosmonauts who
are either publicly announced candidates for orbital
flights or have actually gone to orbit. (I don't include
the couple of politicians who flew on the shuttle since
they were government employees and didn't use their
own or private money.)
Note that in this section the focus is on orbital spaceflight,
particularly trips to the Moon. Suborbital
spaceflight is discussed below.
See the above News
headlines and the tourism
news archive for links to many older articles
about the ISS visitors and other space tourism related
topics.
The theme of his trip will be based on the
issues related to water resources on earth:
During his 12-day stay at the ISS, Mr. Laliberté
will share information about water issues
in the world through a singular poetic approach.
The messages he transmits will raise awareness
for ONE DROP Foundation initiatives that promote
Water for all, all for water.
Traveled to the ISS in October 2008. He planned
a wide range of activities in education, commercial
microgravity experiments and in other areas. He
is a well known computer game developer (see bio
at Wikipedia) and is the son of former NASA
astronaut Owen
Garriott. He has also been a long time board
member of Space Adventures.
"To be frank this price tag is the
majority of my wealth, to be honest," Garriott
said Wednesday at a NASA briefing in Houston.
"The reason why it's worth that to me is that
this is the goal I've been working toward for
a significant portion of my adult life."
Dennis
Tito
Flew to the International Space Station April 28 -
May. 6,2001 - first person to pay his own way into
space. The payment is often reported as $20M but
has been rumored to be as low as $12M.
Helen Sharman
Flew to Mir May 18-26, 1991 - a chemist who won a
competition sponsored by several UK companies to send
a British citizen to Mir. She carried out some experiments
(one of the candidate requirements was a scientific
background) during her week long stay but she was
basically a guest there for the fun of it.
The company sponsoring the project failed to raise
the promised funding but the Soviet government decided
to continue with the project for the public relations
benefits.
Toyohiro Akiyama
Flew to Mir Dec.2-10,1990 - some have called him the
first space tourist when he spent a week on
Mir during December of 1990. But he did not pay
his own way as Tito did and he had to compete
with other candidates. So calling him a tourist is
not really correct in the true spirit of the word.
(Are all the journalists who attend launches at Cape
Canaveral also tourists?)
Akiyama was certainly the first journalist to fly
in space. The Tokyo Broadcasting Service (TBS) in
1989 wanted to celebrate its 40th anniversary and
decided that sending one of its reporters into space
would be suitably spectacular. Akiyama came out on
top from the 163 candidates. TBS paid $12 million
($4 million of which was covered by sponsorships)
for the trip.
Akiyama was sick the first 3 days but was fine for
the rest of the week long stay. (A chain smoker, going
cold turkey for a week must have added extra pressure
on his system!) He took many pictures of Mir and of
earth and carried out a couple of scientific experiments.
He also sent live broadcasts each day to Japan.
- Japan scoops super powers by Philip Corneille
- BIS Spaceflight Magazine - Vol.43 March.2001
Mark
Shuttleworth
This South Africa millionaire flew to the ISS in 2002.
Made his fortune after founding and selling an Internet
based company. His flight payment was more like $14M
rather than the often quoted $20M.
Serguey Polonsky
This Russian businessman came very close to flying
to the ISS but the Russian Space agency would
not agree to the price he was willing to pay.
Lori Garver
The former head of the National
Space Society nearly had a flight to the ISS
arranged via the sponsorship of several corporations.
But the Astro Mom's mission fell through when
it conflicted with Lance Bass's efforts to go.
Leszek Czarnecki
This buinessman was said to have lost interest
when he was apalled by the intense publicity when
rumours of his mission began to surface.
James
Cameron
It is well known that the director of the movie
Titanic has been trying to arrange a trip
to the Space Station. However, he wants to carry
out an extensive
film project that includes a spacewalk for
himself. This involves far more training and use
of the station facilities and crew time than the
other space tourists. While he would pay for the
trip, this will be more of joint NASA/Cameron
documentary production than a space tourist trip
and will take a long time to arrange if ever.
Lance
Bass
The former member of the NSync group got the most
attention in the general press, especially the
part aimed towards young people, of any of the
orbital space tourist candidates. Unfortunately,
Bass's flight fell through when his complicated
sponsorship arrangement never got off the ground.
Basstronautical
- fan site for Lance Bass's effort to go to
the ISS
With the cost to orbit expected to remain extremely
high for many years, the next best option is to take
a brief trip into space on a suborbital resuable rocket
vehicle.
Now that Burt Rutan's
SpaceShipOne has won the $10 million X
Prize contest, the race is on to become the first
company to provide routine flights to altitudes above
100km for space thrill seekers.
Though such rides would be relatively short, 15-30
minutes for the rocket powered segment and the unpowered
ascent and reentry, riders would nevertheless enjoy
one of the most amazing and thrilling experiences of
their lives.
They would experience a few minutes of weightlessness,
look down on a clear view of the curvature of the earth,
and see bright stars in a black canopy above. One would
also get the accelerating thrill of riding a rocket
.
The question obviously arises as to how many people
would pay for such a ride, especially if the cost is
$100k to $200k. Surveys, in fact, shows considerable
interest among a sample of wealthy people. For more
info, see the Space
Tourism Markets section.
Places to buy tickets/place deposits for future suborbital
spaceflights:
The following table shows a list of suborbital space
tourism companies that say they have full funding to
build and fly their suborbital space tourism vehicles
by 2008 and who issue regular progress reports on development
of their vehicles:
Space
Adventures offers a sub-orbital package
in the $100,000 range. Over 100 people have placed
deposits for the trips whenever a suitable vehicle
becomes available.
Explorer
vehicle program - spaceports in UAE and Singapore
RLV
Countdown - links to various companies
trying to develop high altitude sub-orbital vehicles.
RLV
Table - status and comparison of several
sub-orbital vehicle projects.
Bob
Truax offered back in the late 1970s a detailed
design for a high-altitude (80km) sub-orbital
rocket that was simple and cheap enough for a
private company to build. (Gary Hudson's Osiris
and Phoenix were much larger vehicles and intended
for orbit.)
Suborbital
spaceflight contests
After the success of the SpaceShipOne
and the subsequent promise by Virgin
Galactic and other companies to create a space tourism
industry, companies around the world began to sponsor
promotional contests in which a suborbital spaceflight
was the grand prize. Here are some of the current and
completed contests and promotional programs.
Virgin
Blue Airlines in Australia in which new
frequent flyer points will be matched by entries
in a drawing to win 25 Million points. This
many points can be redeemed for four major
prizes including a ride on SpaceShipTwo.
Fly
Ben to Space
Ben Plater wants to become "the first ever 'internet
astronaut'" by attracting enough sponsors
to support a ride for him on the Virgin
Galactic SpaceShipTwo. The expectation is that
his effort will attract lots of attention and simultaneously
bring publicity to his sponsors. See his
blog for updates on his progress.
Quirk
Books and Space
Adventures sponsored a sweepstakes that
will give away a ticket on a commercial space
flight as the grand prize. The contest is
part of the promotion for Eric Anderson's
new book called The Space Tourist's Handbook,
which will be released in November.
Spaceride.no
The contest was completed and the prize awarded.
Space
Games
The following types of programs are not one-time sweepsakes
but will be permanent concerns that repeatedly reward
winners of their online skill games with spaceflights
and other space related prizes:
Voyage2Space.com
- UK based pay
to play competition, i.e. a raffle, for a ride on
a SpaceShip Two.
Galaxy32.com
"Find the 10 Planets, and win a Holiday in Space".
A treasure hunt game in which the grand prize is a
trip to space on a suborbital rocket ship. This game
is free to play with no registration.
eSpaceTickets.com
was founded by by Tony Webb and has been developing
various games and promotions since 2000 with the
goal of offering the general public a chance to
win a space tourism related prize. He also intends
for part of the pay-off from such projects to
go to companies developing space transport systems
Golf
Sponsorships - hold hole-in-one tournaments
in which the winner gets to ride on a Zero-G aircraft
There are insurance companies that sell
so-called "hole-in-one policies" that pay
off if someone hits a hole-in-one at such
a tournament. The companies know the odds
for hitting hole-in-ones so they calculate
the premiums such that over many such tournaments
they come out ahead. The purse for the X Prize,
in fact, was funded via a "hole-in-one" policy
in which the insurance company essentially
bet against any team winning the competition
before the deadline.
eSpaceTickets.com
now offers a package of resources that make
it easy for an organizations to hold such
tournaments with a space prize theme.
More Contests, Games, &
Promotions
Some of these programs have folded or become inactive
but are still interesting from an historical perspective
in regards to how space tourism developed during this
period.
eSpaceLotto - an earlier project of Tony
Webb that ended after the Columbia accident. The eSpaceTickets.com
program became the focus of his space tourism efforts.
Space
Tour's Long Distance Services Tour2Space
offers this space tourism sweepstakes ("no purchase
necessary"). Purchase of products from their
affiliate advertisers allows you to enter the contest.
Trans
Lunar Orbital Vacation Raffle - Trans
Lunar Research is a non-profit organisation aiming
to "set up the first manned Lunar Station on
the surface of the Moon." They hope to bootstrap
their efforts with a raffle that will fund their work.
Dole's Win a Trip to Outer
Space Contest - This contest was won by a retired
man who decided to take $50k in cash instead of waiting
for the trip to space.
This contest offered the winner a $98,000 trip on
Space Adventure's space cruiser (formerly the Zegrahm
Space Voyage program) that would fly a suborbital
flight sometime in this decade).
Orbital
TV Space Games There have been several announcements over the
past few years for TV contests in which the winner would
go to Mir or, after Mir died, to the International Space
Station.
These usually followed some sort of Survivor
style reality show competition format in which several
contestants would compete for the seat on a Soyuz.
So far, these programs have not made it to the screen
and seem to be defunct. Some are said to still be in
development but no hard info is available.
SpaceCadets
- "reality" show in which the participants
were tricked into believing they had received real
training and had actually gone into orbit. (They fell
for some silly explanation as to why they were not
weightless.)
Destination Space (originally
Destination Mir)
This project actually involved the producers of the
original Survivor TV program. They signed a
contract with MirCorp
for a group of contestants to go through Cosmonaut
training. The candidate that came out on top would
have gone on a week long trip to the Mir space station.
The project changed names to Destination Space
after Mir deorbited and the destination moved to
the ISS.
According to articles at MSNBC, the project is
still in development. However, the website has now
disappeared.
Space Commander / Brainpool
/ Space tv
The German Brainpool
AG group announced this contest that would send
a winner each year to the International Space Station.
They reportedly wanted to reserve 7 slots on Russian
Soyuz rockets; one for each year of the program.
However, the web page no longer responds and nothing
turns up in a search at Brainpool so probably the
project has either died or returned to a longer
term development stage.
Ancient Astronaut /
Sky Games - Image World Media
MirCorp signed a deal in 2001 with Image World
Media to reserve a seat on each of two Soyuz flights
in 2003. The Asia based company wanted to use the
seats to fly the winners of survivor games shows to
the ISS.
TV 2 - Den store mission (The Big Mission) - a Danish
TV contest that was to award contestants the opportunity
to ride on a sub-orbital flight when they become available.
Otherwise, they could take a monetary prize. Don't
know if any prizes were ever awarded.
* Space Adventures has reported numbers in this
range for those who are in training for Soyuz flights or expressing
strong interest in a flight.
** Number of people who have signed a contract
to pay the full $200k cost of a suborbital flight with Virgin
Galactic. (Ref.)
Over 30,000 people have indicated on the company’s web site
that they would be willing to pay a $20k deposit for flights..
*** Space Adventures says that over 200 people have either
paid $10K deposits for a future suborbital spaceflight or
the the full amount when such rides become available for $100k
per ticket. (ref.)
