For many of us, the five-year-old kid within resurfaced with exuberance and joy on July 11, when Virgin Galactic made its first fully crewed flight that carried passengers besides the pilots. The company’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane had a special passenger on board: its billionaire founder Richard Branson.
Also carrying three Virgin Galactic employees and two pilots, the winged plane reached an altitude of 53.5 miles after it detached from its mothership called WhiteKnightTwo. The crew experienced up to three Gs of force, a result of extreme acceleration upon detachment, and was suspended in weightlessness for a few minutes at the top of the flight path.
Just like that, a landmark moment for the commercial space industry was created.
A billionaire got his wish come true and bragging rights about having the "world's first commercial spaceline". The rest of us? We suddenly got ourselves closer to that childhood fantasy of being an astronaut going to see the stars.
Nine days later, we got a repeat, another stamp of approval on the immediacy of space tourism. Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin followed suit with a suborbital flight of its own, taking one of the world's richest people and three others to space and back. The event marked the first-ever crewed mission for the company’s New Shepard suborbital space tourism rocket, which consists of a crew capsule launched by a rocket booster.
The crew of four got up to more than 65 miles above the surface of the Earth - 351,210 feet, to be precise. They too floated around the capsule for about three minutes at the peak of the flight, soaking up the magnificent view of our planet and its surroundings.
After 16 launches, the flight represents the first-ever crewed mission for Blue Origin's New Shepard, which the company sees as the cornerstone of its plans to send wealthy thrill-seekers to space in the months and years to come.
Exciting stuff, no doubt, and great news for commercial suborbital travel.
What’s even better is the fact that the two competing billionaires did it in similar, yet different ways. In other words - there is more than one path to the edge of space.
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo was attached to a mothership, then separated from it and fired its rocket engines for a vertical swoop. On the other hand, Blue Origin’s New Shepherd has a NASA-like capsule attached to a rocket that is used for liftoff.
For the return part of the journey, Unity’s pilots flew the craft back to Virgin Galactic’s spaceport in New Mexico, aptly named Spaceport America. New Shepard operated autonomously and landed with the help of three parachutes near its Texas launch site.
How we got here and what’s next
The story of space tourism actually started 20 years before, when Dennis Tito, an American entrepreneur, became the first space tourist to fund his own trip into space. He spent almost eight days in orbit during a visiting mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
In 2004, Branson founded Virgin Galactic with the goal of providing suborbital flights to space tourists and scientists. The company spent the better part of the two decades developing the SpaceShipTwo, suffering a massive setback in 2014 when the craft’s first iteration experienced a catastrophic in-flight breakup during a test flight, subsequently crashing and killing one pilot while badly injuring the other.
The second SpaceShipTwo was unveiled in February 2016, and underwent significant modifications to prepare for commercial service, ultimately carrying Branson and the rest of the crew to space.
As for Blue Origin, it was founded in 2020 by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, stemming from the classic interest of a child in spaceflight. Unlike Virgin Galactic, the company focuses on rocket-powered vertical takeoff and vertical landing (VTVL) vehicles for suborbital and orbital flights.
After two series of test flight vehicles, the first developmental test flight of the New Shepard happened in April 2015. In January 2021, the first test flight of the New Shepard 4 (the fourth propulsion module built) was successfully performed, reaching a maximum altitude of almost 66.5 miles. The most recent version of the vehicle was used for the crewed launch in July.
Today, both companies can boast about having their foot in the door when it comes to suborbital space tourism.
Before they stepped in the spotlight, Elon Musk’s SpaceX venture received a lion’s share of attention due to its numerous successful launches of cargo payloads and astronauts to the ISS. While SpaceX is yet to send its first all-civilian crew into orbit this month, it undoubtedly has a head start.
In light of Tito’s trip, NASA changed its tune on space tourism and opened the doors of the ISS to tourists. Thanks to it, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 spacecraft constitute the first commercial launch system verified for transporting humans to the station as they’ve already delivered three groups of NASA astronauts to the orbital lab.
Musk’s company also has a couple of deals with space tourism companies.
The deal with Axiom Space aims to fly four passengers to the ISS to live and work in space for eight days. There will be four flights, set to take place between early next year through 2023. Space Adventures, which has already facilitated a number of trips for wealthy private astronauts over the course of the past couple of decades, plans to fly four tourists for five days through Earth's orbit by 2022.
Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are not without plans of their own.
The former plans to perform commercial rocket flights in the late summer of 2022. So far, more than 600 people have reserved tickets, which are now selling for $450,000 per seat. The company plans to introduce two new spacecraft that are easier to maintain and have ready for daily flights - all in an effort to reach its target of offering 400 flights per year from every spaceport (there are plans to build a second spaceport in Italy).
In 2022, Blue Origin plans to test its reusable (up to 25 times) New Glenn rocket which will be able to take cargo and astronauts into orbit. Beyond suborbital and orbital vehicles, the company has star-scraping plans in store, such as return to manned lunar flights with a lunar lander vehicle. This is all part of Blue Origin’s lunar landing system envisioned to ferry people and cargo to the Moon via both manned and unmanned landers. With nearly $100 million already committed by aspiring space tourists, demand won’t be an issue.
It’s worth noting that SpaceX's Starship, which is currently in test mode, intends to land two NASA astronauts on the moon in 2024. Meanwhile, Axiom Space is working on adding a commercial module to the ISS, while also considering building a fully private station of its own.
For space enthusiasts, traveling beyond Earth’s sky is a profound experience, perhaps best exemplified by Richard Branson, here's what he had to say when we asked him about how his space flight went:
"I swore I'd never say ‘wow’ in space but now - WOW! Quite incredible." - Sir Richard Branson
Still, there is a long way to go to reach the reality most of us dream of.
This is a vastly uncharted territory that even now is encountering hiccups that could turn into a big deal. Even though Virgin Galactic is heavily marketing its space tourism business, it’s still a “mere” experimental flight-test program for the time being. The same largely goes for Blue Origin and SpaceX.
Also, riding rockets is a dangerous undertaking. Several short- and long-term challenges remain to be solved, most notably eliminating fatalities. This is a commercial business where the bottom line depends on making frequent and safe human space flights. In addition, a trip to suborbital space is significantly different from orbital space, which requires far more preparation, training, and energy to remain in space.
Yet, none of this seems to matter when it comes to our desire to see the stars up close and personal, as evidenced by massive demands for very expensive tickets to the show.
Space tourism is slowly connecting us to space in a deeply personal way, one that is almost palpable. As technology advances and rockets become more sophisticated, the volume of space tourists will rise. In turn, it’s reasonable to assume the cost of travel will drop, as will the price of a ticket.
When that happens, we’ll feel much closer to space than we are at the moment.
With the space tourism industry making big leaps, that seems ever so nearer. In literal shooting for the stars, the needle has finally started to move toward a future where millions will perhaps not only be visiting space but living and working there.
Authors:
Dr Jeremy Nunn
Mr Christopher Beach
