Commercial Space Tourism: Is it Viable?

1) The advent of space tourism began in the late 1990's-early 2000's with a deal struck between a Russian company called MirCorp and an American company called Space Adventures Ltd. (Seedhouse 2014). Thanks to that deal (and 20 million dollars later) the first space tourist was Dennis Tito in 2001 who flew on a Russian Soyuz TM-32 rocket and was aboard the ISS (International Space Station) for seven days. There have been a few other wealthy people who have forked over the big bucks over the years in order to achieve space travel for their own personal enjoyment, but the real idea that space travel could be a future commercial venture began in 2004. Up until this point space travel and the "space tourist" was someone who paid big bucks to fly a government or country-owned space shuttle, but when Richard Branson announced his idea for Virgin Galactic and later funded SpaceShipOne (which went on to win the Ansari X prize) commercial space travel began to look like a viable future. SpaceShipOne became the first nongovernmental organization to launch a manned spacecraft into space and back. Since then, companies like Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, and XCOR have all enrolled candidates and booked customers on their first official suborbital space flights. Notice how I haven't stated that they've completed these flights yet, as you can see (and imagine) the concept and demand of taking passengers to space is easy enough, but the execution has proven to be difficult for each of these commercial space travel companies. XCOR has continued to have delays with it's first test launch of the Lynx spacecraft, Virgin Galactic had a fatal crash losing one of the two test pilots in 2014 (guardian,com), and SpaceX has had continual landing issues with it's Falcon 9 spacecraft. Amidst all of this bad or negative news is some good news, and that is that these companies have started and are testing their craft's for space flight, something I would have never foreseen 3 years ago.

2) In 2004 following the success of SpaceShuttleOne the CSLAA (Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act) was established which is a brief amendment explaining the need for safety through all practices of space flight and how permits are needed if someone would like to begin conducting space flight (faa.gov). I think the CSLAA needs to be more restrictive but isn't able to because an official flight hasn't been conducted yet. Like we always say and here, "aviation regulations are written in blood" and I don't agree that this needs to be the case for commercial space travel, but I think it is hard to create regulations that restrict more if they don't have a foundation of flight experiences to regulate.

3) I think space tourism has potential to be a viable tourism option in my future, but I do not see it as something you (or a family) can consistently do. Like I don't see sub-orbital travel as an annual vacation families go on and seeing as how most prices range from $100,000-$20,000,000 it isn't an option 70% of the world can even afford. I think as technology continues to advance and our exploration of the universe continues to expand space tourism will become a high demand of more than just the multi-millionaires of the world. I don't see it as a form of transportation however, I just don't think it will be something we use as travel due to the high cost and stress put on the spacecraft frame and on the passengers/pilots. I mean if people experience jet lag could you imagine how bad space lag would be? Not to forget the sporadic G forces a space pilot would have to endure taking off and entering orbit on multiple trips in one day.

4) According to Goehlich (2013), space pilots would require an FAA pilot certificate with an instrument rating and the FAA class I medical is still considered viable. Recommended qualifications are pilots who have operated flight at high speeds and in pressure suits (pretty much jet fighter pilots). Virgin Galactic has began hiring pilots from its sister airline but these pilots must have 3000 flight hours and experience in multiple aircraft in the fleet (2013).

Works Cited

 Seedhouse, E. (2014, October 31). Space Toursim. Retrieved March 14, 2016, from http://www.britannica.com/

Gajanan, M. (2015, July 28). Virgin Galactic crash: Co-pilot unlocked braking system too early, inquiry finds. Retrieved March 14, 2016, from https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/28/virgin-galactic-spaceshiptwo-crash-cause

 

 Goehlich, R. A., Anderson, J. K., Harrold, N. N., Bemis, J. A., Nettleingham, M. T., Cobin, J. M., . . . Ilchena, N. Y. (2013). Pilots for space tourism. Space Policy, 29(2), 144-153. Retrieved March 14, 2016. 

United States., Congress. (2004, December 23). Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004. Retrieved March 14, 2016, from https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/media/PL108-492.pdf