Space Travel and Tourism
Space tourism, usually known as recreational space travel, refers to travel on established government-owned vehicles such as the Russian Soyuz and the International Space Station (ISS), as well as vehicles operated by private businesses. Since the voyage of the world’s first space tourist, American businessman Dennis Tito, on April 28, 2001, space tourism has grown in popularity as more suborbital and orbital tourism options become available.
Orbital space tourism
Space tourism began in the late 1990s with a deal between Russian company MirCorp and American company Space Adventures Ltd. Tito became the first paying passenger for MirCorp’s aging space station, Mir. However, the mission was deorbited before Tito could make his trip, and the mission was diverted to the International Space Station (ISS). Tito paid $20 million for his Soyuz TM-32 flight, spending seven days on board the ISS and becoming the world’s first space tourist. The term “spaceflight participant” has been used to distinguish commercial space travellers from career astronauts since Tito’s flight. Orbital space tourism continued to grow, with South African computer millionaire Mark
Shuttleworth and American businessman Gregory Olsen visiting the ISS in 2002 and 2005 respectively. Iranian- born American entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari became the fourth spaceflight participant and the first female fee-paying space traveller in September 2006. American spaceflight corporation SpaceX has allowed its Crew Dragon spacecraft to be chartered for orbital flights.
Suborbital Space Tourism
The orbital space tourism industry gained significant media attention following Tito’s flight, but other companies were also working to make it profitable by developing suborbital vehicles for passengers. They were competing for the Ansari X Prize, a $10 million reward offered by the X Prize Foundation to the first nongovernmental organization to launch a reusable crewed spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. SpaceShipOne, funded by Virgin Galactic and designed by American engineer Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites, won the X Prize in 2004, marking a new era of commercial crewed spaceflight and space tourism.
In 2004,the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act (CSLAA) provided guidelines for regulating the safety of commercial human spaceflight in the United States under the auspices of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The CSLAA requires space tourism operators to inform participants in writing about the risks of launch and re-entry, as well as the safety record of the launch vehicle. Spaceflight participants must provide informed consent to participate in launch and re-entry.
Blue Origin, a privately funded aerospace company, developed its New Shepard spacecraft in Texas, which took off and landed vertically, unlike SpaceShipTwo’s mother- ship deployment. The first flight of New Shepard took place on July 20, 2021, with a crew of Bezos, his brother Mark, Wally Funk and Oliver Daemen. As the space tourism industry evolves, the ranks of spaceflight participants will grow, leading to lunar excursions and trips to Mars and beyond.
Facts to remember:
Space tourism is space travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes
There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital and lunar space tourism.
To date, orbital space tourism has been performed only by the Russian Aviation and Space Agency- ROSCOSMOS
Several private spaceflight companies are now working towards developing suborbital space tourism vehicles to take paying customers to space
No international space law has defined space tourists
Existing space treaties such as Outer Space Treaty, Rescue Agreement etc. are only applicable to astronauts, envoys of mankind, or personnel of a spacecraft
To send a vehicle to space, it is compulsory for the national and international space law to authorize it according to Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty. However, there is lack of clarity on authorization of space travel with tourists aboard
According to the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (world governing body for aeronautic and astronautic records), space starts at an altitude of 100 km (62 miles) above the surface of the earth
This is the Karman line where atmospheric lift no longer supports a flying object and the object would need to reach orbital velocity or risk falling back to Earth
Space travel is referred to as any flight operation that takes one or more passengers beyond the altitude of 100 km and thus into space
The main difference between orbital and suborbital flight is the speed at which a vehicle is traveling
An orbital spacecraft must achieve orbital velocity i.e., the speed that an object must maintain to remain in orbit around a planet.
To orbit 125 miles (200 kilometres) above Earth for instance, a spacecraft must travel at a screaming 17,400 mph (28,000 km/h)
Suborbital flight, in contrast, requires much lower speeds and doesn’t have the power to achieve orbit. Instead, it will fly up to a certain height that depends on its speed, and then come back down once its engines are shut off
At the top of their flight arc in a suborbital flight, when the object is falling back toward Earth, passengers achieve a few minutes of weightlessness under zero gravity.