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Final destination: space or beyond
Dennis Tito described it as the “Ultimate adventure”. His gravity-breaking destination to space cost him millions but he was exuberant and delighted with his experience. Many of us would only wish we had $20 million to jet off to space and see the splendour of the cosmos.
But one can’t help wonder if it is really that simple, inspite of enough money. Will space tourism really become an everyday scenario in the near future, with people queuing up for a seat to the stars? Experts are of the opinion that some important issues need to be considered first in order to make space tourism affordable routine affair.
Smooth flight
For any passenger, on a space excursion, to have stable and smooth experience during flight, the crew cabin is provided with four extendable fin plates, which are similar to the Russian launch systems. The Canadian Arrow predicts that tourists will feel no more than 4.5g at acceleration.
Once the separation from the booster has been completed, the pilot will ensure that each passenger has a great view outside the window. This 54 feet long and three persons sub-orbital rocket is a promising contender for the X-Prize competition. It is nearly six stories tall and has joined the line of other contenders for the competition. The X-Prize is a $10 million prize for the rocket experts throughout the world for the team or company that comes up with the design for the first private spaceship which carries 3 people to a suborbital destination at an altitude of 62 miles or 100 kilometers and back on 2 consecutive flights within 2 weeks. The teams must be privately financed. The reward is more like a promissory note than actual cash. Peter Diamandis, chairman, president and co-founder of the X-Prize is trying to raise the full prize money. Diamandis explained, “we need and environment that allows and rewards risk in innovation. The X-Prize is about allowing people to think out of the box, pursue crazy ideas and have a little bit of risk taking”.
To make space tourism a reality in the near future, experts have to achieve a certain amount of confidence and demand. “The biggest issue for spaceplanes and space tourism is safety. There is an existing billion-dollar market out here for suborbital space tourism, in the range of about $100,000 per ticket,” said Jim Benson head of SpaceDev in Poway, California. The company is working on the innovative engines, which use a combination of liquid, and solid propellants, which can be used for commercial as well as space flights.
Fanciful travel
With the idea of jetting off to space catching on, the general public will need to be educated on the pros and cons of space travel. Companies will want to sell tickets but at the same time, the public will have to be put in the right frame of mind to undertake to journey. Geoffrey Crouch, professor of tourism marketing at the School of tourism and Hospitality at La Troube University in Australia, remarked that space holds a unique fascination for humans. “The idea of being able to look down on the surface of the Earth from space, with it’s thin atmosphere sustaining life, and floating in a black void with trillions upon trillions of stars and galaxies far beyond, is an imagined experience that generates passion and excitement in everyone,” said Crouch. But being realistic and putting the beautiful view aside, if space travel and tourism were available to the public, how many could and would participate? He asked. The fact is, would people really want to actually undertake the bold experience and line up for the flight in sizeable numbers to make it feasible. Older and less healthy people would not be too willing or even allowed to take the actual roller coaster ride. Harvey Wichman, professor of psychology at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, is optimistic. “Does everybody want to go into space and do it right now? The answer is no. Older people, for instance, are not nearly as eager as the younger public. But there are lots of people willing to go and would pay a fair amount for the experience,” said Wichman. He admitted that it would take time to establish the market, “but if I was an entrepreneur right now, after Dennis Tito’s flight, I’d be saying to myself, if he paid 20 million bucks, how many are out there that would pay half that? How many would be willing to pay a million dollars? And how many would pay $10,000”.
Risky business
After the loss of Columbia with its crew of 7 people, space travel has become a riskier business. Harvey Wichman is of the view that, ‘we will recover from this with a little bit of time. Exploration is written in the human heart. That’s what space tourism is all about. We don’t want to hear just stories about other people travelling in space. We too want to do it…. and we will”. He did point out that a breakthrough space vehicle is needed though to make it a viable industry. “We use techniques for taking it up that were designed out of the old ballistic missile era. We use techniques for bringing it down that have come from the Apollo era. I’m not saying that all of that shouldn’t have been done. It has worked and it still works… most of the time”. But now there is a need to come up with a newer machine. All the more after the Columbia tragedy. “Obviously, we are saddened by the what happened with the shuttle. It does reiterate that it’s a dangerous business,” says Derek Webber, Futron’s program manager for the NASA ASCENTstudy. But like all such accidents, people again jump back into action. “We all jump on a plane the next day because there’s an evident level or expected risk for certain kind of ventures. You just move on. You try to improve what caused the problem and move on. And I think that is what will happen here,” stated Webber. Still experts do admit that space tourism will take time to “lift off”. According to William Gaubatz, President of SpaceAvailable, LLC, based in California; “space tourism is not going to happen the day after tomorrow. There’s just too much infrastructure development that has to be put into place”. Gaubatz is a former McDonnell Douglas employee and also a professional rocketeer. About the impact of the Columbia loss, he states that “it shows our need to emphasize to the public the human side of space. It’s more than all the great technology that’s there. It is, in the end, all about human beings much more than just human doings”.
Still with all the skepticism and risks, the work becomes even more challenging and innovative. NASA released its specifics for the Orbital space Plane (OSP) system in February. This system might use multiple vehicles will also provide rescue services and emergency evacuations for at least four crewmembers from the International Space Station. The other feature is that no less than four passengers will be transported to and from the ISS by the year 2012, maybe even sooner. Additionally, crewmembers will not have to wear space suits but if the situation requires it, then they would be worn. “The Orbital Space Plane system will give us the flexibility needed to safely and efficiently get crew to and from orbit and to provide crew rescue and logistical support to the International Space Station,” explains Frederick Gregory, NASA’s Deputy Administrator.
Space tourism
But as pointed out by Diamandis, the lines will have to be longer and the flights more frequent for the space tourism industry to achieve the boost it needs. “We are able to travel safely on airliners today, because of the millions of airplane flights during the past 100 years that have given us the experience, confidence and engineering heritage required to achieve outstanding safety levels.” He further claims, “the X-Prize remains committed to commercial efforts to open the space frontier and support out teams in their efforts to build and fly vehicles and fulfill their dreams”.
And dreams they are, for all of us space enthusiasts, whether we will ever be able to realize them or not. If in reality, as experts predict that by the year 2020, space tourists will be seen on the waiting list of passengers eager to be allotted their seats for a jaunt into orbit, more and more humans will indeed experience the ‘ultimate adventure”.
The writer
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