Despite attracting significant attention in recent times, space tourism remains a challenging industry to access, with only a select group of wealthy individuals able to afford tickets.
Private companies are offering various opportunities for space travel, from short flights to suborbital space to extended vacations on the International Space Station (ISS). However, the emergence of space tourism has sparked a heated debate: Does this activity bring humanity closer to the stars, or does it merely provide entertainment for the wealthy without offering any real value?
Inside Virgin Galactic’s Spaceship with a view of Earth outside the window. (Photo: Virgin Galactic).
Benefits
Some individuals, often referred to as space tourists, seek to purchase tickets to fly to the ISS or Russia’s Mir space station. However, after the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011, NASA canceled any further opportunities. This landscape changed with the advent of private space companies led by billionaires, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.
Among the three companies mentioned, only Virgin Galactic aims to promote long-term space tourism, offering short suborbital flights to just above the Kármán line, the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. Paying passengers can have a similar experience with Blue Origin, but this company focuses more on orbital industries. With SpaceX, tourists can stay in orbit for several days, but must navigate numerous government contracts to secure a spot.
Proponents of space tourism cite various benefits of the industry. For instance, space tourists actively conduct and participate in experiments, such as testing the effects of microgravity on human health, crop development, and material properties. This is indeed valuable scientific data needed to propel humanity toward the stars.
Furthermore, with hundreds of millions of dollars invested in this new industry, companies are developing new equipment, techniques, and technologies to sell tickets for space travel. The inclusion of high-profile individuals like William Shatner in space tourism has garnered significant media attention, increasing interest from the public, stimulating discussions, and boosting funding.
Drawbacks
Critics of space tourism argue that this industry primarily serves a particularly wealthy demographic. This could dilute public interest in space exploration. Rather than opening up possibilities for everyone, it may alienate those who are uninterested due to its inaccessibility. With ticket prices soaring into the hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of dollars, it is challenging for most people to see the value of space tourism as an industry.
Although some space tourists conduct experiments during their journeys, these experiments are not revolutionary and do not include anything that astronauts on the ISS could not perform. Therefore, space tourism does not significantly advance human spaceflight in any meaningful way. While a few companies are developing specialized technology for space tourism, this technology is unlikely to be applicable to other space-related activities.
Only 60 tourists have ever traveled to space, with the vast majority only flying on short suborbital flights lasting just a few minutes in a microgravity environment. Only a handful of launches each year are related to space tourism, and this number is unlikely to change significantly in the coming years. It is more likely that this will remain an industry catering only to a small group of extremely wealthy individuals and not a primary driver of innovation or expansion.
