How SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and others compete in the growing space tourism market
This is it: 2021 will not only be the year of Mars, with the red planet taken by storm by
probes and robots like Perseverance. In fact, many say that 2021 will be above all the year
zero of "mass space tourism", with at least one private company ready in the coming months to
launch a substantial number of travelers. The commercial space race, among technical
failures, startups that are born and die in a month, economic problems and marketing strategies
is in fact getting to the heart of the matter and the race, always talking about
space tourism from "low orbit", seems to be restricted to only three competitors.
Let's try to find out who they are, what projects they are carrying out and above all in what time
frame they are planning to fulfill their promises. Not before, however, to have given a quick
review to history and remembered the pioneers of the first "tourist" flights.
Just 60 years ago, on April 12, 1961, Jurij Gagarin entered history forever as the first
human ever to fly into space. Since then, the privilege has only touched 567 other people:
502 men and 65 women. And, for the past 20 years, only 7 so-called tourists.
Space tourists, as they are commonly called, are private citizens who are not professional
astronauts and perform space flights at their own expense relying on specialized companies.
Since 2001, the American commercial company Space Adventures has provided orbital space flights to
seven tourists of different nationalities, who in their missions, lasting up to a couple of weeks,
have reached the International Space Station aboard Russian Soyuz capsules, carrying out
activities of public relations and communication, scientific research and entertainment.
The first to reach the Space Station as a tourist was 60-year-old Dennis Tito. Engineer,
former Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist and American businessman. It was April 2001.
Exactly one year later it was the turn of South African Mark Shuttleworth, an entrepreneur in the
software industry best known for his Ubuntu, the foundation that ensures the development
of the Linux operating system. During his stay on board the ISS, Shuttleworth also conducted
experiments for medical and biological research. In October 2005 it was the American engineer
Greg Olsen, born in 1945 and co-founder of Sensors Unlimited, a company in the optoelectronic sector,
to set foot on the Station, while in October 2006 it was the first time a woman:
the forty-year-old American entrepreneur of Iranian origin Anousheh Ansari, co-founder
of the company Telecom Technologies. In April 2007 it was Charles Simonyi,
an American of Hungarian origin and software developer for Microsoft, who went up to the ISS.
He liked it so much that in March 2009 he wanted to repeat the experience. This made him the "space
tourist" with more hours of mission in space. The sixth "tourist" was the son of art Richard
Garriott in October 2008. Born in 1961, an American video game developer and entrepreneur,
Garriott was in fact the only son of an astronaut to fly in space. His father,
Owen Garriot, participated in the Skylab 3 mission in 1973 and flew in 1983 on the shuttle Columbia.
The seventh and last of this group of lucky ones was in September 2009
the 50-year-old Guy Laliberté, Canadian entrepreneur in the entertainment industry,
founder in 1984 of the famous Cirque du Soleil. The cost of their round-trip ticket?
Cost estimates for each flight, which have not been officially released, range from
$20 million for Dennis Tito's in 2001 to $40 million for Guy Laliberté's mission in 2011.
Now, however, prices are set to drop, provided you fly "low": the parabolic suborbital trajectories
of Virgin Galactic from New Mexico promise to bring you without too much shock at over
three thousand kilometers per hour up to 110 km in height, to make you float a few minutes
weightless admiring the blue-blue Earth. A wonderful "touch and go" for 250 thousand dollars.
Things change if you want to stay overnight on the Space Station.
In this regard, the American Axiom, which has entered into an agreement with NASA and SpaceX,
has officially announced the mission Ax-1, which for the first time will bring on the ISS a crew
composed exclusively of "private": four people willing to spend $ 55 million each to spend
about a week on the Station, which will be reached on board a CrewDragon of SpaceX by Elon Musk.
The mission of Axiom, which is also planning to build an orbital hotel, includes not only cosmic
diversions, but also scientific experiments. Liftoff is scheduled for January 2022,
but crew preparation will begin these days. But these are still high-end prices,
which have little to do with the "mass" space tourism we were talking about at the beginning.
To find something within the reach of a wider range of enthusiasts will have to
turn to Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX. Ok, let's try to see what they have to offer?
Virgin Galactic is an American space company of the Virgin Group, founded in 2004 by Richard
Branson, a British entrepreneur whose fortune according to Forbes magazine
amounts to about $ 4.3 billion. The company's main proposal is a
space flight lasting about two hours aboard the "spaceplane" SpaceShipTwo.
At the moment neither the date of the first tourist flight into space nor the final price
of the single ticket, which has so far only had a suggested price (250,000 dollars), are known.
On the contrary, the program of the tour is rigidly established: the SpaceShipTwo with
its passengers, hooked up to the belly of the WhiteKnightTwo support plane, will be brought
up to an altitude of about 17,000 meters, then the rocket plane will detach and its engine will push
it up to an altitude of at least 110 kilometers. At that point, with propulsion switched off,
SpaceShipTwo will gradually lose altitude and finally, like a glider, return to Earth.
The highlight of the journey will be the moment when passengers can see the Earth
on one side and the blackness of space on the other. In the final phase of the upward
parabola and the first moments of the return to Earth, the rich tourists will also have the
opportunity to experience weightlessness, like real astronauts: only during this short time,
more or less 6 minutes in all, they will be able to leave their seats, look through
the portholes and take pictures and selfies... On balance, that's $ 40,000 per minute when you
consider the suggested price of $ 250,000 and the 6 minutes or so of actual space flight. The entire
excursion should instead take about 3 hours and, to be fair, the ticket price also pays
for three days of preparations, the suit and everything else needed for the trip.
At this point, however, the question arises: are we sure that this is a "trip into space"?
In fact, it is not easy to define from which height onwards we can speak of
"space flight"... According to the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (a certifying board
for aeronautical and astronautical records) space begins above the so-called Kármán Line, ideally
placed at an altitude of 100 km, while for NASA it is sufficient to exceed an altitude of 80 km.
And so the question can be answered in the affirmative... Even if only for a few minutes,
SpaceShipTwo will fly into space! As of today, however, Virgin Galactic's
first flight doesn't seem to be around the corner yet. At the end of February,
the company in fact announced that the next flight test of SpaceShipTwo must be postponed at least
until May, to deal with some technical problems that had emerged in the last attempt in December.
On that occasion, engine ignition was not completed, possibly due to
electromagnetic interference, forcing the aircraft to safely return to the ground.
However, the Virgin Galactic project does not stop here,
but rather pursues another ambitious goal: to organize trips to the International
Space Station. NASA has in fact made an agreement with Richard Branson's company,
which will be responsible for identifying candidates (private citizens but also researchers)
interested in purchasing private missions to the space station, and to organize the trip.
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Blue Origin is instead the space company led by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.
The company is among the competitors commissioned by NASA, along with Space X and Dynetics,
to produce the lunar lander that will be used as part of the Artemis 3 program. The
rocket engine that will carry the lander into orbit completed its fourth test in December,
and Bezos has already delivered a prototype to NASA, gaining a major advantage for April's
"elimination," which will select only two of the three companies to continue the race.
However, Blue Origin is also committed to developing commercial spaceflight,
which in Bezos' plans will take place aboard New Shepard, a suborbital launcher with
vertical takeoff and landing dedicated to Alan Shepard, the first American to go into space.
On January 14, New Shepard successfully took off from the launch base in West Texas. The mission,
the fourteenth of the series, allowed to test some important innovations concerning the capsule that
will allow future astronaut tourists to live a few minutes of weightlessness in space. Eight minutes
after take-off, the New Shepard launcher, boosted by a single engine powered by liquid hydrogen and
oxygen, landed in the designated area not far from the launch pad and two minutes later the capsule,
supported by parachutes, landed gently in the Texas desert, thus successfully completing
the entire mission. New Shepard, at its first use, followed a suborbital launch trajectory reaching a
maximum altitude of 105 km. The test marked a fundamental step to finally make concrete
the project to fly astronaut tourists. The capsule in fact has been updated with a series of elements
to make it safer and more comfortable experience that passengers can live. The capsule can carry
up to six astronauts and is characterized by large windows to ensure an optimal view
of the Earth's curvature and, thanks to the large space available, about 15 cubic meters,
will allow future passengers to experience microgravity for a few minutes. It is not
yet known how much it will cost to fly aboard Blue Origin, but we can imagine that the price
will not deviate much from $ 200,000 per person. Blue Origin plans to perform another unmanned
test by March, and then by next April the first launch with paying passengers on board. Will it
succeed? In our opinion, no, but never say never. Despite the fact that it has passed many tests
without too many problems, the first launch with crew will be essential to have a more precise idea
of what the timing is to conclude the testing phase, and then enter the market with force.
Certainly, the solidity and reliability of the owner are an important asset for the company,
especially now that Bezos has renounced the role of CEO of Amazon,
citing as a reason the desire to devote himself more to the space company.
Another issue is SpaceX. We could only close with the company led by Elon Musk,
the unpredictable CEO of Tesla. SpaceX, unlike Virgin and Blue Origin,
has never positioned itself as a company purely devoted to mass space tourism. And even elite
tourism is considered by Musk a starting point rather than a point of arrival ... In practice, we
all know, the real purpose of Musk in space is to get to Mars and implant a self-sufficient colony.
All the rest of his entrepreneurial activity (Tesla, Starlink satellite constellation,
elite tourism...) is therefore for Musk only a means to raise as much
money as possible to support his dream. SpaceX does not want to build a business
on this model of space travel, since it would be accessible to a very small segment of the
population and the costs to be incurred would still be important. Being the first to bring
tourists into space, however, will bring a gigantic return of image, and therefore a
consolidation of the figure of SpaceX in the space market, which could also have feedback
regarding the relationship with NASA, for example for projects such as those of the lunar lander.
To conclude... To date the closest compromise to a space tourism "for all" is therefore that of Blue
Origin and Virgin Galactic, but their projects must still be refined and pass the testing phase.
Apart from the ostentatious optimism of the official statements,
maybe only in a year we will be able to see the first tourists aboard SpaceShipTwo or
New Shepard. But the technological development is advancing fast
and with the first successes the sponsors will multiply, favoring perhaps a lowering
of the prices, to make in the years to come a tourist trip in space a more concrete dream.