You are watching Trends!
Every Thursday we take a peek at the future to see what's ahead of us!
Welcome to ALUX.com!
The place where future billionaires come to get inspired!
Hello Aluxers, and welcome back for another exciting video.
50 years ago Neil Armstrong became the first man to step on the moon and ever since then a trip to outer space has always been on everyone’s wishlist.
For today’s video, you don’t need to be an astronaut, you just need to be willing to travel to space
because we’re exploring how commercial space travel will soon become a reality, and what that could mean for how we spend our money & free time.
What if you could book your trip to outer space just like anywhere here on Earth?
What if you and your loved ones could lounge around hotels in outer space?
What if you could enjoy the best view of Earth while traveling in a space flight capsule?
What if it were more affordable to book a flight up to the edge of space, just to experience a few minutes of weightlessness?
Space tourism offers many such exciting propositions... but before we understand what they are, let’s get down to the basics.
Not really sure what space tourism is all about?
Well - Space Tourism refers to the idea of traveling to space for leisure and is expected to become a $3 billion market by 2030.
In the early 2000s, the Russian Space Agency was the only company that provided orbital space tourism for enthusiasts around the world,
but today with the advancement in technology, many private enterprises are coming up with their own propositions of space tourism.
Right now even if the space tourism industry is at a nascent stage, experts claim that its growth will be the same as the early days of the commercial airline industry.
One of the top players in this industry- Virgin Galactic has already gone public on NYSE becoming the first publicly traded space tourism company.
Virgin Galactic’s CEO George Whitesides believes that in the near future many people will be willing to participate in space tourism
and with a handful of private companies offering this opportunity, the space tourism industry will soon become capacity constrained.
So let’s take a look at these top players who are nearing their first spaceflight with human passengers.
At present, there are 5 top players in the space tourism industry who are willing to start commercial operations in 2020.
Apart from commercial aircraft manufacturers like Boeing and Virgin Galactic, Jeff Bezos Blue Origin, Elon Musk’s SpaceX
and a startup aerospace company named Orion Span are leading the charge.
Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic plans to start a commercial space flight that will orbit on the edge of the space at an altitude as high as 50 miles.
The 90 minute flight will carry 6 passengers onboard who will experience several minutes of weightlessness
and enjoy incredible views of earth before they land back on ground.
The company has opened the world's first commercial spaceport in New Mexico
and has started bookings for its first suborbital space flight, as of now more than 700 individuals have secured their seat by paying a deposit of $250,000.
The closest competitor of Virgin Galactic is Blue origin which aims to sell tickets for its commercial space flight this year.
Blue Origin has developed a reusable Shepard launch rocket that has been launched several times in testing.
The rocket is designed to carry 6 passengers at a time who will be free to float within the rocket’s capsule for several minutes
before they land on earth via parachute.
The tickets for the ride will be priced similar to Virgin Galactic’s space flight.
Now if you wish to travel to space and also enjoy a stay there, the California based aerospace company Orion Span
has proposed to build a space station at an altitude of 200 miles called Aurora space station that will serve as a space hotel.
The hotel will provide tourists 12 days of stay in a single trip and one trip is expected to cost around $9.5 million per head.
The structure will orbit the earth once every 90 minutes, providing space tourists an incredible view of 16 sunrises and sunsets every 24 hours.
The company claims to have a 7 month long waiting list and charges $80,000 in deposit to secure a seat.
Boeing on the other hand has partnered with NASA as a part of a commercial crew development program.
Under this program, the company is designing a space capsule called the ‘Boeing CST-100 Starliner’
that provides an opportunity to sell seats to space tourists in the event of future space missions.
The agency is aiming to launch the un-crewed Atlas V rocket - carrying the Starline - for a flight test in December,
and once successful, the test data will be used to certify Boeing’s crew transportation system.
While NASA, currently, pays millions of dollars for Russia's Soyuz Rockets to put its astronauts into space,
but after the success of the commercial crew transportation system, it would be possible to launch astronauts in a more cost-effective way.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is the most ambitious of the lot, as its goal is to launch a commercial round trip to the moon by 2023... following a round trip to Mars.
SpaceX has developed a successful reusable rocket launch system, but the company has not yet declared a pricing strategy for its commercial trips.
The company is also working on developing suborbital space flights that will exponentially reduce time spent on long haul trips,
and dramatically change point-to-point travel anywhere on Earth.
For example, if SpaceX’s suborbital flight becomes a reality, traveling from New York to Tokyo will incredibly, only take 37 minutes.
And Aluxers ad travel-lovers, we’re sure you’re excited to hear about this exciting new opportunity… but while we wait for it to become a reality,
we know you’ll want to stay safely connected while traveling here on Earth; that's why we recommend using a VPN.
It's a super easy to use piece of software that protects your data online,
so that the government or other companies can't spy on you, and you can enjoy the internet you know and love.
We partnered with the great folks at NordVPN to bring you an amazing offer.
If you go to alux.com/vpn and sign up using the code ALUX, you will get Get 70% off NordVPN!
Only $3.49/mo, plus you get an additional month FREE to see if you find it valuable. Protect yourself today on the internet by going to alux.com/vpn
Looking at the hefty deposit figures we mentioned before, it’s clear that space tourism right now is only accessible for the rich.
Launching a rocket or a space flight demands massive amounts of resources and fuel, increasing the costs involved for a single space trip.
Even if the number of individuals willing to participate in space tourism has hit all-time high,
the development of a low-cost passenger launch vehicle is still a distant dream.
But right now, the bigger challenge for space tourism companies is to ensure passenger safety - instead of focusing on cost reduction.
When it comes to taking human passengers safely to space and back, there’s hardly any room for error.
Several test flights will need to be launched before the first space tourists take off.
In 2014, Virgin Galactic’s spacecraft crashed during a test flight, killing one of the pilots and leaving the other seriously injured.
Such incidences not only threaten the existence of privately owned space companies but also leads one to question the amount of risk involved in these ventures.
Other than the challenges faced by private companies, there are also several challenges that individuals participating in space trips will face.
Travelers will have to undergo prolonged fitness training and pass all the fitness tests before the actual trip.
Space tourists will also have to bear any health-related side effects of space travel,
like loss of bone density and the slowing down of the cardiovascular system, making their trip far more challenging than any they have previously taken on Earth.
Space tourism can be considered the ultimate form of out-of-home luxury...
but unlike any other form of luxurious experience, it also demands a lot of endurance, making it more of a luxurious adventure, rather than just a leisure trip.
With all this said, promoters of space tourism believe that a trip to space will completely change the way we look at our planet, and the atmosphere surrounding it…
making us more aware to preserve it.
But, isn’t it kind of ironic that we have to be so far removed, in order to gain that kind of perspective and feel the urge to live more responsibly?
Having such a large international audience, it’ll be interesting to see how varied your opinions on this are on this topic…
we would love to know if you wish to travel to outer space and if so
Let us know in the comments.
And, of course, as a thank you for sticking with us until the end, here's the bonus you're waiting for:
Curious to know who was the first space tourist ever?
Well, we have got you covered.
In 2001, American engineer and entrepreneur Dennis Anthony Tito became the first person to fund his own space trip.
He spent nearly eight days in orbit on a visiting mission to the International Space Station splurging a whopping $20 million.
Thank you for spending some time with us Aluxers.
Make sure to subscribe so you never miss another video.
We also handpicked these videos for you to watch next.
As always the conversation continues on social media.
Thanks again and we can't wait to have you back tomorrow.