Current Situation in Space Tourism

Spaceflight, in the use of space technology is to achieve the flight of spacecraft into and through outer space. Spaceflight is used in space exploration as well as in commercial activities like space tourism and satellite telecommunications. Additional non-commercial uses of spaceflight include space observatories, reconnaissance satellites and other Earth observation satellites. Space tourism means the human space travel for recreational purposes. This is a topic, nowadays in the interest for the space enthusiasts.

There are mainly three people who are trying to make this a reality:

1.     1. Billionaire Richard Branson:

        Owner of Virgin Group Company

  Space company owned is Virgin Galactic

2.      2. Billionaire Jeff Bezos:

   Owner of Amazon

   Space company owned is Blue Origin

3.      3. Currently World’s richest man Billionaire Elon Musk:

   Owner of Tesla

   Space company owned is SpaceX

When the concept to make space travel commercial through space tourism was on its peak, a competition began between Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson on being the first person to go in space in their own rocket. Jeff Bezos announced that he would attempt his test flight to space in his own rocket, on 20^th July 2021. Richard Branson, who had initially planned to attempt this a few months later, preponed the plan and attempted it on 11^th July 2021 with two pilots and three crew members on his Unity space craft and the mission was successful leaving Jeff Bezos behind and became the world’s first man to go to space in his own spaceship.

Now speaking about Richard Branson’ spacecraft, so, technically it is not a rocket that would be launched from a launchpad, rather, it is a kind of aeroplane or we could say a space plane (a high altitude airplane). We can describe it, as a big plane, you can call it the mother aircraft on which a small space plane is attached or mounted known as Unity on which our space tourists are seated. From ground both the planes take off at the same time and mother aircraft is the only one propelling or creating the required thrust, carrying the smaller craft with it. When they reach at around 50,000 feet of altitude the Unity space plane detaches form Mother aircraft and then at supersonic speed i.e.; at speeds greater than the speed of sound, it goes towards space propelling itself. The mother aircraft again comes back on the ground and starts its landing protocols, once the Unity detaches at 50,000 feet making the whole craft reusable.

Here, in this case of Unity, space means it gets to the height of 88 Kms above sea level, where the passengers can see the Earth’s curvature and can experience weightlessness. But unfortunately, this plane cannot remain at that altitude for long. The weightlessness can be experienced for only 4 minutes throughout the journey. The plane then starts its descend and lands on a runway like a normal aeroplane. It takes only about an hour to complete this journey and the part from detaching of space plane, reaching the required altitude to landing back takes only 15 minutes, so we can say that it is not a very long journey.

All the pictures and videos that we saw from Richard Branson’s and Jeff Bezos’s attempt are because they had live streamed their whole test flight on internet. Another interesting thing is, amongst the six crew members on board with Richard Branson, one was an Indian born woman, Sirisha Bandla. The crew on Blue Origin’s flight consisted of billionaire Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, 82-year-old Wally Funk as pilot, and 18-year-old Dutchman Oliver Daemen.

This incident/event was historic, even though Richard Branson was not the first private civilian to go to space. Dennis Tito, an American entrepreneur had paid 20 million dollars to be able to sit with astronauts in the rocket to fly to international space station and stay there for 8 days becoming the world’s first space tourist, but here, he was going with astronauts in an actual rocket not made by him or his company, different from Richard Branson’s case where he went on his own private space plane. But because of this controversy of a plane instead of rocket, many people think Richard Branson did not actually go to space.

Jeff Bezos’s space company, mocked this on twitter saying that there will be an asterisk (*) next to Richard Branson’s name because he went up to the height of 88 Kms only, whereas globally, most scientists believe that space actually begins at the height of 100 Kms. This 100 Kms line is known as Karman line. Internationally, the space research organisations in European countries, believes that this 100 Kms line is the official boundary between atmosphere and space but USA government and NASA believes that, the boundary starts at the height of 80 Kms. So, in defence of Richard Branson, it can be said that he went to space according to USA’s standards but not according to international standards. So, when Jeff Bezos attempted his test flight he crossed this line of 100 Kms.           

Difference, here is critical, when Jeff Bezos attempted it, he went in an actual rocket with huge windows for better view unlike the small aeroplane like ones on Unity, it had an escape system which was missing in Unity and its environmental impact was much lesser than unity.

Jeff Bezos' space trip lasted about 10 minutes where the New Shepard capsule reached an altitude of 66.5 miles (107 km) to reach the Kármán line and head back to Earth. There were four-member crew on board and were able to experience weightlessness and witness the curve of the Earth from space. Blue Origin's New Shepard is a small, suborbital rocket that takes off vertically from a launch pad, giving a shorter yet higher-speed experience. New Shepard's suborbital fights hit about three times the speed of sound, roughly 2,300 miles per hour, and fly directly upward until the rocket expends most of its fuel. The crew capsule then separates from the rocket at the top of the trajectory and briefly continue upward before the capsule almost hovers at the top of its flight path, giving the passengers a few minutes of weightlessness. It works sort of like an extended version of the weightlessness you experience when you reach the peak of a roller coaster hill, just before gravity brings your cart, or, in Jeff Bezos' case, your space capsule, screaming back down toward the ground. The New Shepard capsule then deploys a large plume of parachutes to slow its descent to less than 20 miles per hour before it hits the ground, and Jeff Bezos and his fellow passengers were further cushioned by shock-absorbent seats.

The rocket, flying separately after having detached from the human-carrying capsule, will then re-ignite its engines and use its on-board computers to execute a pinpoint, upright landing. The booster landing looks similar to what SpaceX does with its Falcon 9 rockets, though those rockets are far more powerful than New Shepard and these are more prone to exploding on impact. But still, this makes the entire rocket reusable.

Now talking about the cost, the ticket price, the price of one ticket of the Virgin Galactic’s flight will be 250,000 dollars or 2-2.5 crore rupees. Still, regardless of this high cost, 600 people have already reserved tickets for next year like Justin Bieber, actor Leonardo De Caprio, etc. Company is expecting full commercial service by 2022 and they say eventually the price will be lowered when more people will start using it, may be as low as 40,000 dollars i.e.; 30-35 lakh rupees. So definitely today and in some near future a common man cannot afford it. May be after 20 years of commercial service it could be lowered even further.

The price of Jeff Bezos’s flight ticket is still unknown but one ticket was auctioned in June that sold for 28 million dollars, same is with Elon Musk’s case, the price is still unknown and one ticket was auctioned that was sold for 55 million dollars, but these are a bit different as these are proper rockets. Its also possible that Elon Musk’s flight could take us to International space station to visit and travel. All of these ticket prices include training and accommodation costs.

Like I said earlier, not much training is required but that was in comparison to astronauts, we still need to do some basic training like how to behave in zero gravity or what we should do in case of some emergency, etc.

Now shifting the focus towards the risk factor involved, it is also a thing to be considered as this is a new concept and a new thing, as it is not been tried a lot, even Richard Branson acknowledges this. He had this dream of commercial space travel in his mind long back in 2004 and thought that this would be possible by 2007 but after a lot of problems, like one of his test flights crashed in 2014 in which some crew members died, now finally after 17 years of hard work, it is ready to be used in 2021.

The risk factor also includes other problems than just crashing i.e.; when astronauts are sent, they have to go through severe tests and training whereas when tourists will travel, they will not go through any health or fitness check up and we do not have much idea about the impact of space travel on human body, so we cannot tell what problem tourists may face because of zero gravity, G-forces, space radiation, etc. Though the Federal Aviation Administration of USA have said that the radiation you might experience at that height will be insignificant and is not a cause for worry. But still looking at all the risk factors involved, the company will get a form signed by you i.e.; a liability waiver form, saying if anything happens to you during the course of the journey it is not going to be their responsibility everything is your own responsibility.

Now let us get to environmental impact of these programs. All the three billionaires are criticised on this point by a lot of people, saying, space tourism will be something that only the rich can afford, only top 0.1% of people, but the environmental impact of this will be so large that it is very disproportionate. Other people will not get the opportunity to do this but the environmental impact on the Earth will have to be borne by others as well.

Talking about Virgin Galactic’s environmental impact, the CO₂ emissions in a normal aeroplane flight per passenger per mile is at 0.2 Kg, but in the space flight it is at 12 Kg, a difference of 60 times, apart from this, Nitrous Oxide will also be released in our atmosphere leading to ozone depletion. The second problem is that when these rockets/ space planes takes off from land, enormous heat is generated leading to the formation of ozone near the surface of Earth, increasing its quantity at ground level. Ozone near the surface is useless and very much harmful for every living creature on Earth. So, this flight leads to Ozone depletion in atmosphere and increase in its levels near the surface which is against the natural law.

In the case of blue origin, even though it uses clean fuel (Hydrogen and Oxygen) which does not emit any harmful gases, it just gives out water, still when it takes off from ground it generates a lot of heat leading to the formation of Ozone on the surface.

So, here I have tried to discuss all the major points related to the concept of space tourism. A few things that should be considered before any decision related to space tourism is taken by us as a customer and the companies as service providers. Sooner or later this is going to be a thing and as years will pass it will be more affordable and more and more people will go in space for recreational purposes, at that time we will have to considered all the points related and these billionaires/ service providers themselves will have to solve these problems and come up with the best possible solutions to not only earn money but also to save guard our mother nature, as even if we look towards space as our future destination and as humanity’s only chance for long term survival, Earth is the only place where we will be living for the coming foreseeable future, feel connected and feel truly at home.

THANK YOU.  

By Varad Jaurkar