cost of space tourism

Space Tourism: How Much Does it Cost & Who's Offering It?

Last Updated: December 17, 2022

Many of us dream of going to space and over 600 people have traveled to space as astronauts in government-funded agencies such as NASA, the European Space Agency, and Roscosmos. But how much does spaceflight cost in today and how is that expected to change in the coming years? 

With new advancements in spaceflight technology, the costs of space travel are decreasing, making the dream of spaceflight a little closer for us all.

Evolution of Spaceflight Costs and Technologies

During the space race, the cost of sending something into space averaged between $6,000 to over $25,000 per kg of weight not adjusted for inflation and NASA spent $28 billion to land astronauts on the moon, about $288 billion in today’s dollars.

In recent decades, it has averaged around $10,000 per kg though certain missions have been higher due to other factors including the destination, the size of the rocket, the amount of fuel needed, and the cost of fuel. 

After the retirement of the space shuttle program, NASA paid Russia to transport astronauts to the ISS at about $80 million per seat on the Soyuz rocket. NASA’s biggest and newest rocket, the SLS (Space Launch System) which is currently being utilized for the new moon missions including Artemis and Orion, currently costs about $2-4 billion per launch.

But recent years and the addition of private space companies have drastically changed the game. NASA allowed private space companies to develop equipment for missions, including a 2006 partnership with SpaceX under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program to provide resupply for crew and cargo demonstration contracts to the International Space Station (ISS). 

This partnership has continued to flourish over the years with SpaceX successfully launching two NASA astronauts in May 2020 on a Crew Dragon Spacecraft, making SpaceX the first private company to send astronauts to the ISS and the first crewed orbital launch from American soil in 9 years.

With the revolutionary technology of reusable boosters from SpaceX, the cost has plummeted, achieving less than $1,600 per kg with the Falcon Heavy (still totaling more than $100 million per launch) and even a projected cost of under a thousand for their next generation model Star Ship.

 These recent innovations are even making SLS the more expensive, less efficient option if SpaceX’s projections continue to progress as expected within margins of error. We shall see how NASA plans to adapt goals in light of this.

The Falcon Heavy is a cost-effective option for launching payloads into space.

The rise of private space companies

With private space companies, the opportunity for civilians to book a trip to space similar to booking a flight came closer to reality. Dennis Tito was the first private citizen to pay for a trip to space with a trip to the ISS from April 28th to May 6th, 2001 for $20 million dollars. Tito purchased his experience through Space Adventures Inc. which was founded in 1998 and offers a variety of different space experiences. They even acquired Zero Gravity Corporation, NASA’s provider of Reduced Gravity Training (not in space) for its astronauts, in 2008. They offer similar experiences for private individuals starting at about $8,200 as of this publishing (December 2022).

Space Adventures sent seven other space tourists to the ISS through 2009, but due to a number of factors, Space Adventures had to put their ISS offerings on hold until 2021 when they were able to purchase two Soyuz seats due to NASA moving their contract to SpaceX. Space Adventures sent two people to the ISS via the Roscosmos Soyuz rocket in December 2021 and is working on expanding its offerings.

In addition to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, there are a number of other private space companies getting into the commercial spaceflight/ space tourism market, most notably Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origins.

Flight Providers & Rates

What are the current rates for commercial spaceflight tickets? What commercial spaceflight trips have already happened? All prices are per person/ per seat.

SpaceX has had the most experience in sending humans to space thanks to its partnership with NASA and Musk has made it clear that he wants to make space travel an option for the public. To date, SpaceX has offered two commercial spaceflight options and has one big one planned for the future:

• SpaceX completed a Multi-Day Orbital Voyage, the first of their new plan to offer private astronaut experiences through their NASA partnership.  
• Estimated $55 million for a 3-day stay inside a modified SpaceX Dragon capsule orbiting the Earth at 357 miles (574 km) with three crewmates, sponsored by billionaire Jared Isaacman to raise money for St Jude’s Children’s Hospital
• Partnership between SpaceX and Houston-based Axiom Space Inc.
• $55 million for a 10-day trip to ISS at 408 km with a weeklong (8-day) stay in the orbital lab. 
• Expected to continue in 2023
• Axiom plans to build a stand-alone space station to replace the ISS with the first module expected to launch in 2024.
• Steve Aoki: American DJ and record producer
• Everyday Astronaut Tim Dodd: American science communicator, content creator, photographer, and musician
• Yemi A.D.: Czech choreographer, art director and performer
• Rhiannon Adam: Irish photographer
• Karim Iliya: British photographer and filmmaker
• Brendan Hall: American filmmaker and photographer
• Dev Joshi: Indian television actor
• Choi Seung-hyun (stage name: T.O.P.): South Korean rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and actor
• Cost is unknown, likely a minimum of $500 million

2. Blue Origin

Blue Origin: currently offers a 100km 12-minute ride to the Karman Line, the recognized boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space; pricing is still unclear and dependent on a variety of factors 

• On July 2021, Jeff and Mark Bezos went into space on the New Shepard rocket with Oliver Daemen (who won the trip through an auction bid of around 28 million) and honored guest Wally Funk (a member of Mercury 13, the private program in which women trained to be astronauts but ultimately never went to space)
• Blue Origin has completed 6 commercial space flights as of this publishing. Some “honorable guests” have been invited free of charge, such as Funk and actor William Shatner (Captain Kirk from the original Star Trek). Some have been sponsored or have received special deals due to their nonprofit status.
• $28 million winning auction bid for the first flight ( $19 million was donated)
• $1 million for a board member of a nonprofit
• About $1.25 for a Dude Perfect comedy group crew member, hosted by MoonDAO in August 2022

3. Virgin Galactic Subortbital Joy Ride

Virgin Galactic Subortbital Joy Ride: $450,000 for a 90-minute ride to suborbital space 50km above sea level 

• In July 2021, founder Richard Branson flew to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere with two pilots and three other Virgin Galactic employees as the first test of commercial spaceflight for the company
• Each VSS Unity SpaceShipTwo carries up to four passengers
• Expected flights are currently anticipated to begin in 2023 
• Includes training accommodations and amenities; launches from New Mexico

4. Roscosmos/ Space Adventures Customized ISS Trip

Roscosmos/ Space Adventures Customized ISS Trip: $50-60million for a 12-day trip to the ISS at 408 km

• In October 2021 an actress and director shot scenes for the first movie filmed in space
• December 2021 Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and Yozo Hirano for two days (same billionaire planning to go to the moon with SpaceX)
• With the current situation between Russia and Ukraine, this option is effectively nonexistent currently

5. Space Perspective

Space Perspective: a six-hour balloon ride to space/ the stratosphere on their “Spaceship Neptune” at $125,000

• Rides are currently scheduled to begin by the end of 2024. 
• A pressurized capsule will be slowly lifted by a football-field-sized hydrogen-filled balloon 19 miles (30 km) into the stratosphere, about 3 times the altitude of commercial planes. 
• The passenger cabin features a bar, bathroom, and windows for sightseeing and is expected to carry 8 passengers and 1 pilot per trip.

6. Aurora Space Station (no longer in development)

Aurora Space Station was supposed to be the world’s first luxury space hotel, offering a 12-day stay for $9.5 million allowing them to free float, observe space and earth, practice hydroponics and play in a hologram deck, but they shut down operations and refunded all deposits in March 2021. They received a lot of media attention and therefore are noted here due to that notoriety.

Conclusion: the current cost of flying to space

Currently, it is only available to those who can spend an average of $250,000 to $500,000 for suborbital trips (about a fifteen-minute ride to the edge of space and back) or flights to actual orbit at more than $50 million per seat (though typically a longer trip than 15 minutes).

It could be free/ discounted if you can find a sponsor, often for nonprofit/ charity purposes, or if you are someone of notoriety that can help spread the company’s mission. 

Waitlists are available for most offerings, with a deposit, with many stretching years into the future, which might end up helping you have a spot at a more reasonable price in the future if you can save up.

Many companies are looking to provide extended stay options on private space stations in the future, similar to how you might book a flight somewhere and stay in a hotel for a few days. Again, for the immediate future, this is estimated to cost tens of millions of dollars. The biggest portion of the cost would be launching them, though it is still estimated that a couple million dollars will be needed to cover the expenses of your stay while you are on the space station, whether that is included in the ticket price or added on top of that.

Many companies are hopeful they can eventually price a trip to space down to $100,000 but that will likely take some time, even with the cost-saving measures of reusable boosters. Many forms of recent technology have evolved exponentially in recent years and with dropping price rates as well. Just as plane travel was originally prohibitively expensive, but has now become fairly reasonable for the average consumer, the hope is that the same will eventually happen with space tourism, but we will have to see how long that takes. 

While the possibility of going to space is still out of reach for many of us, hopefully, the advancements in recent years and those yet to come will help to continually lower the costs of going to space, just as has occurred in many other fields. This author, for one, truly hopes that the interest of the elite who are currently able to participate in these offerings will spur research and development, not just of space tourism but space exploration in general, to help fuel a quicker journey to space access for all

Written by Sarah Hoffschwelle

Sarah Hoffschwelle is a freelance writer who covers a combination of topics including astronomy, general science and STEM, self-development, art, and societal commentary. In the past, Sarah worked in educational nonprofits providing free-choice learning experiences for audiences ages 2-99. As a lifelong space nerd, she loves sharing the universe with others through her words. She currently writes on Medium at  https://medium.com/@sarah-marie  and authors self-help and children’s books.

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Space Tourism: Can A Civilian Go To Space?

2021 has been a busy year for private space tourism: overall, more than 15 civilians took a trip to space during this year. In this article, you will learn more about the space tourism industry, its history, and the companies that are most likely to make you a space tourist.

What is space tourism?

Brief history of space tourism, space tourism companies, orbital and suborbital space flights, how much does it cost for a person to go to space, is space tourism worth it, can i become a space tourist, why is space tourism bad for the environment.

Space tourism is human space travel for recreational or leisure purposes . It’s divided into different types, including orbital, suborbital, and lunar space tourism.

However, there are broader definitions for space tourism. According to the Space Tourism Guide , space tourism is a commercial activity related to space that includes going to space as a tourist, watching a rocket launch, going stargazing, or traveling to a space-focused destination.

The first space tourist was Dennis Tito, an American multimillionaire, who spent nearly eight days onboard the International Space Station in April 2001. This trip cost him $20 million and made Tito the first private citizen who purchased his space ticket. Over the next eight years, six more private citizens followed Tito to the International Space Station to become space tourists.

As space tourism became a real thing, dozens of companies entered this industry hoping to capitalize on renewed public interest in space, including Blue Origin in 2000 and Virgin Galactic in 2004. In the 2000s, space tourists were limited to launches aboard Russian Soyuz aircraft and only could go to the ISS. However, everything changed when the other players started to grow up on the market. There are now a variety of destinations and companies for travels to space.

There are now six major space companies that are arranging or planning to arrange touristic flights to space:

• Virgin Galactic;
• Blue Origin;
• Axiom Space;
• Space Perspective.

While the first two are focused on suborbital flights, Axiom and Boeing are working on orbital missions. SpaceX, in its turn, is prioritizing lunar tourism in the future. For now, Elon Musk’s company has allowed its Crew Dragon spacecraft to be chartered for orbital flights, as it happened with the Inspiration4 3-day mission . Space Perspective is developing a different balloon-based system to carry customers to the stratosphere and is planning to start its commercial flights in 2024.

Orbital and suborbital flights are very different. Taking an orbital flight means staying in orbit; in other words, going around the planet continually at a very high speed to not fall back to the Earth. Such a trip takes several days, even a week or more. A suborbital flight in its turn is more like a space hop — you blast off, make a huge arc, and eventually fall back to the Earth, never making it into orbit. A flight duration, in this case, ranges from 2 to 3 hours.

Here is an example: a spaceflight takes you to an altitude of 100 km above the Earth. To enter into orbit — make an orbital flight — you would have to gain a speed of about 28,000 km per hour (17,400 mph) or more. But to reach the given altitude and fall back to the Earth — make a suborbital flight — you would have to fly at only 6,000 km per hour (3,700 mph). This flight takes less energy, less fuel; therefore, it is less expensive.

• Virgin Galactic: $250,000 for a 2-hour suborbital flight at an altitude of 80 km;
• Blue Origin: approximately $300,000 for 12 minutes suborbital flight at an altitude of 100 km;
• Axiom Space: $55 million for a 10-day orbital flight;
• Space Perspective: $125,000 for a 6-hour flight to the edge of space (32 km above the Earth).

The price depends, but remember that suborbital space flights are always cheaper.

What exactly do you expect from a journey to space? Besides the awesome impressions, here is what you can experience during such a trip:

• Weightlessness . Keep in mind that during a suborbital flight you’ll get only a couple of minutes in weightlessness, but it will be truly fascinating .
• Space sickness . The symptoms include cold sweating, malaise, loss of appetite, nausea, fatigue, and vomiting. Even experienced astronauts are not immune from it!
• G-force . 1G is the acceleration we feel due to the force of gravity; a usual g-force astronauts experience during a rocket launch is around 3gs. To understand how a g-force influences people , watch this video.

For now, the most significant barrier for space tourism is price. But air travel was also once expensive; a one-way ticket cost more than half the price of a new car . Most likely, the price for space travel will reduce overtime as well. For now, you need to be either quite wealthy or win in a competition, as did Sian Proctor, a member of Inspiration4 mission . But before spending thousands of dollars on space travel, here is one more fact you might want to consider.

Rocket launches are harmful to the environment in general. During the burning of rocket fuels, rocket engines release harmful gases and soot particles (also known as black carbon) into the upper atmosphere, resulting in ozone depletion. Think about this: in 2018 black-carbon-producing rockets emitted about the same amount of black carbon as the global aviation industry emits annually.

However, not all space companies use black carbon for fuel. Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket has a liquid hydrogen-fuelled engine: hydrogen doesn’t emit carbon but simply turns into water vapor when burning.

The main reason why space tourism could be harmful to the environment is its potential popularity. With the rising amount of rocket launches the carbon footprint will only increase — Virgin Galactic alone aims to launch 400 of these flights annually. Meanwhile, the soot released by 1,000 space tourism flights could warm Antarctica by nearly 1°C !

Would you want to become a space tourist? Let us know your opinion on social media and share the article with your friends, if you enjoyed it! Also, the Best Mobile App Awards 2021 is going on right now, and we would very much appreciate it if you would vote for our Sky Tonight app . Simply tap "Vote for this app" in the upper part of the screen. No registration is required!

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Space is all yours—for a hefty price

Commercial spaceflight is now officially a thing. But is it a transcendent opportunity for the masses, or just another way for rich people to show off?

• Adam Mann archive page

Private citizens have been buying their way into the heavens for decades. In the 1980s, McDonnell Douglas engineer Charles Walker became the first nongovernment individual to fly in space when his company bought him a seat on three NASA space shuttle missions. In 2001, American entrepreneur Dennis Tito dished out a reported $20 million to fly on a Russian Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station (ISS) and spend eight days floating in microgravity. 

But beyond those few flights, nothing much happened.

At least not until last year. After decades of development and several serious accidents, three companies—SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic—launched their first tourist flights in 2021. William Shatner rode a Blue Origin vehicle to the edge of space in October. Former NFL star and Good Morning America host Michael Strahan took a similar ride in December. Even NASA, which was once hostile to space tourism, has come around and released a pricing policy for private astronaut missions, offering to bring someone to orbit for around $55 million.

Okay, so it’s a new era—but what does it mean? Do these forays represent a future in which even the average person might book a celestial flight and bask in the splendor of Earth from above? Or is this just another way for the ultrawealthy to flash their cash while simultaneously ignoring and exacerbating our existential problems down on the ground? Nearly all those 2021 escapades were the result of efforts by three billionaires: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson. Branson is a mere single-digit billionaire, whereas Bezos and Musk have wealth measured in the hundreds of billions. 

“The greatly undue influence of wealth in this country—to me that’s at the heart of my issues with space tourism as it’s unfolding,” says Linda Billings, a communications researcher who consults for NASA and has written about the societal impacts of spaceflight for more than 30 years. “We are so far away from making this available to your so-called average person.”

Each spot on Virgin’s suborbital spaceplane, the cheapest way to space at the moment, will set somebody back $450,000. A single seat on Blue Origin’s initial suborbital launch sold at auction for $28 million, and the undisclosed price tag of SpaceX’s all-civilian Inspiration4 mission, which spent three days in orbit before splashing down off the coast of Florida, has been estimated at $50 million per passenger. 

Not only are such flights ridiculously far out of financial reach for the average person, says Billings, but they aren’t achieving any real goals—far from ideal given our terrestrial problems of inequality, environmental collapse, and a global pandemic. “We’re not really learning anything,” she says. “There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of thought or conscience in the people engaging in these space tourism missions.”

Laura Forczyk, owner of the space consulting firm Astralytical, thinks it’s misguided to focus strictly on the money aspect. “The narrative [last year] was billionaires in space, but it’s so much more than that,” says Forczyk, who wrote the book Becoming Off-Worldly , published in January, in which she interviewed both government and private astronauts about why they go to space.

Forczyk sees the flights as great opportunities to conduct scientific experiments. All three of the commercial tourist companies have carried research projects in the past, studying things like fluid dynamics, plant genetics, and the human body’s reaction to microgravity. And yes, the rich are the target audience, but the passengers on SpaceX’s Inspiration4 included artist and scientist Sian Proctor and data engineer Chris Sembroski, who won their tickets through contests, as well as St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital ambassador Hayley Arceneaux (the trip helped her raise $200 million in donations for the hospital). Blue Origin gave free trips to aviation pioneer Wally Funk, who as a woman had been barred from becoming an Apollo astronaut, and NASA astronaut Alan Shepard’s daughter Laura.

Forczyk also cites Iranian space tourist Anousheh Ansari, who flew to the ISS in 2006. “She talked about how she grew up in a war zone in Iran, and how [the flight] helped her see the world as interconnected,” Forczyk says. 

Billings thinks the value of such testimonials is pretty low. “All these people are talking to the press about how wonderful the experience was,” she says. “But to listen to someone else tell you about how exciting it was to climb Mt. Everest doesn’t convey the actual experience.”

As with an Everest trek, there’s the risk of death to consider. Historically, spaceflight has had a fatality rate of just under 4%—roughly 266,000 times greater than for commercial airplanes. Virgin suffered two major disasters during testing, killing a total of four employees and injuring four more. “A high-profile accident will come; it’s inevitable,” says Forczyk. But even that, she predicts, won’t end space tourism. People continue to climb Everest, she notes, despite the danger.

Another question is how space tourism might affect the planet. A 90-minute jaunt on Virgin Galactic’s suborbital spaceplane is roughly as polluting as a 10-hour transatlantic flight. Other calculations suggest that a rocket launch can produce 50 to 75 tons of carbon dioxide per passenger, compared with just a few tons per passenger from a commercial airplane.

Experts warn that even Blue Origin’s New Shepard, which burns hydrogen and oxygen and emits water, could affect the climate since its combustion products are injected high into the stratosphere, where their ultimate impact has yet to be understood. 

The Federal Aviation Administration oversees all spaceflight in the US and might strengthen safety and environmental regulations. The agency currently has a moratorium on new regulations until 2023, which was designed to give the nascent industry time to develop before legislators came in with too much red tape. But few lawmakers or citizens are clamoring for more regulation. 

“There are a lot of other things for people to worry about than whether or not only billionaires get to fly in space,” says Marcia Smith, the founder and editor of the news website SpacePolicyOnline.com, which covers space programs around the world.

Nobody has yet fully articulated a compelling reason to spend enormous sums on private spaceflight. It may have incidental value for science and engineering, or offer a small number of people a sense of transcendence. 

But at the moment, it seems we do it mainly because we think it’s cool.

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The Future of Space Tourism Is Now. Well, Not Quite.

From zero-pressure balloon trips to astronaut boot camps, reservations for getting off the planet — or pretending to — are skyrocketing. The prices, however, are still out of this world.

By Debra Kamin

Ilida Alvarez has dreamed of traveling to space since she was a child. But Ms. Alvarez, a legal-mediation firm owner, is afraid of flying, and she isn’t a billionaire — two facts that she was sure, until just a few weeks ago, would keep her fantasy as out of reach as the stars. She was wrong.

Ms. Alvarez, 46, and her husband, Rafael Landestoy, recently booked a flight on a 10-person pressurized capsule that — attached to a massive helium-filled balloon — will gently float to 100,000 feet while passengers sip champagne and recline in ergonomic chairs. The reservation required a $500 deposit; the flight itself will cost $50,000 and last six to 12 hours.

“I feel like it was tailor-made for the chickens like me who don’t want to get on a rocket,” said Ms. Alvarez, whose flight, organized by a company called World View , is scheduled to depart from the Grand Canyon in 2024.

Less than a year after Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson kicked off a commercial space race by blasting into the upper atmosphere within weeks of each other last summer, the global space tourism market is skyrocketing, with dozens of companies now offering reservations for everything from zero-pressure balloon trips to astronaut boot camps and simulated zero-gravity flights. But don’t don your spacesuit just yet. While the financial services company UBS estimates the space travel market will be worth $3 billion by 2030, the Federal Aviation Administration has yet to approve most out-of-this-world trips, and construction has not started on the first space hotel. And while access and options — not to mention launchpads — are burgeoning, space tourism remains astronomically expensive for most.

First, what counts as space travel?

Sixty miles (about 100 kilometers) above our heads lies the Kármán line, the widely accepted aeronautical boundary of the earth’s atmosphere. It’s the boundary used by the Féderátion Aéronautique Internationale, which certifies and controls global astronautical records. But many organizations in the United States, including the F.A.A. and NASA, define everything above 50 miles to be space.

Much of the attention has been focused on a trio of billionaire-led rocket companies: Mr. Bezos’ Blue Origin , whose passengers have included William Shatner; Mr. Branson’s Virgin Galactic , where tickets for a suborbital spaceflight start at $450,000; and Elon Musk’s SpaceX , which in September launched an all-civilian spaceflight, with no trained astronauts on board. Mr. Branson’s inaugural Virgin Galactic flight in 2021 reached about 53 miles, while Blue Origin flies above the 62-mile mark. Both are eclipsed by SpaceX, whose rockets charge far deeper in to the cosmos, reaching more than 120 miles above Earth.

Balloons, like those operated by World View, don’t go nearly as high. But even at their maximum altitude of 18 or 19 miles, operators say they float high enough to show travelers the curvature of the planet, and give them a chance to experience the overview effect — an intense perspective shift that many astronauts say kicks in when you view Earth from above.

Now, how to get there …

Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, which are both licensed for passenger space travel by the F.A.A., are open for ticket sales. (Blue Origin remains mum on pricing.) Both companies currently have hundreds or even thousands of earthlings on their wait lists for a whirl to the edge of space. SpaceX charges tens of millions of dollars for its further-reaching flights and is building a new facility in Texas that is currently under F.A.A. review.

Craig Curran is a major space enthusiast — he’s held a reserved seat on a Virgin Galactic flight since 2011 — and the owner of Deprez Travel in Rochester, N.Y. The travel agency has a special space travel arm, Galactic Experiences by Deprez , through which Mr. Curran sells everything from rocket launch tickets to astronaut training.

Sales in the space tourism space, Mr. Curran acknowledges, “are reasonably difficult to make,” and mostly come from peer-to-peer networking. “You can imagine that people who spend $450,000 to go to space probably operate in circles that are not the same as yours and mine,” he said.

Some of Mr. Curran’s most popular offerings include flights where you can experience the same stomach-dropping feeling of zero gravity that astronauts feel in space, which he arranges for clients via chartered, specialized Boeing 727s that are flown in parabolic arcs to mimic being in space. Operators including Zero G also offer the service; the cost is around $8,200.

You can almost count the number of completed space tourist launches on one hand — Blue Origin has had four; SpaceX, two. Virgin Galactic, meanwhile, on Thursday announced the launch of its commercial passenger service, previously scheduled for late 2022, was delayed until early 2023. Many of those on waiting lists are biding their time before blastoff by signing up for training. Axiom Space, which contracts with SpaceX, currently offers NASA-partnered training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center. Virgin Galactic, which already offers a “customized Future Astronaut Readiness program” at its Spaceport America facility in New Mexico, is also partnering with NASA to build a training program for private astronauts.

Would-be space tourists should not expect the rigor that NASA astronauts face. Training for Virgin Galactic’s three-hour trips is included in the cost of a ticket and lasts a handful of days; it includes pilot briefings and being “fitted for your bespoke Under Armour spacesuit and boots,” according to its website.

Not ready for a rocket? Balloon rides offer a less hair-raising celestial experience.

“We go to space at 12 miles an hour, which means that it’s very smooth and very gentle. You’re not rocketing away from earth,” said Jane Poynter, a co-founder and co-chief executive of Space Perspective , which is readying its own touristic balloon spaceship, Spaceship Neptune. If all goes according to plan, voyages are scheduled to begin departing from Florida in 2024, at a cost of $125,000 per person. That’s a fraction of the price tag for Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, but still more than double the average annual salary of an American worker.

Neither Space Perspective nor World View has the required approval yet from the F.A.A. to operate flights.

Unique implications

Whether a capsule or a rocket is your transport, the travel insurance company battleface launched a civilian space insurance plan in late 2021, a direct response, said chief executive Sasha Gainullin, to an increase in space tourism interest and infrastructure. Benefits include accidental death and permanent disablement in space and are valid for spaceflights on operators like SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, as well as on stratospheric balloon rides. They’ve had many inquiries, Mr. Gainullin said, but no purchases just yet.

“Right now it’s such high-net-worth individuals who are traveling to space, so they probably don’t need insurance,” he said. “But for quote-unquote regular travelers, I think we’ll see some takeups soon.”

And as the industry grows, so perhaps will space travel’s impact on the environment. Not only do rocket launches have immense carbon footprints, even some stratospheric balloon flights have potentially significant implications: World View’s balloons are powered by thousands of cubic meters of helium, which is a limited resource . But Ted Parson, a professor of environmental law at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that space travel’s environmental impact is still dwarfed by civil aviation. And because space travel is ultra-niche, he believes it’s likely to stay that way.

“Despite extensive projections, space tourism is likely to remain a tiny fraction of commercial space exploration,” he said. “It reminds me of tourism on Mt. Everest. It’s the indulgence of very rich people seeking a transcendent, once-in-a-lifetime experience, and the local environmental burden is intense.”

Stay a while?

In the future, space enthusiasts insist, travelers won’t be traveling to space just for the ride. They’ll want to stay a while. Orbital Assembly Corporation, a manufacturing company whose goal is to colonize space, is currently building the world’s first space hotels — two ring-shaped properties that will orbit Earth, called Pioneer Station and Voyager Station. The company, quite optimistically, projects an opening date of 2025 for Pioneer Station, with a capacity of 28 guests. The design for the larger Voyager Station , which they say will open in 2027, promises villas and suites, as well as a gym, restaurant and bar. Both provide the ultimate luxury: simulated gravity. Axiom Space , a space infrastructure company, is currently building the world’s first private space station; plans include Philippe Starck-designed accommodations for travelers to spend the night.

Joshua Bush, chief executive of travel agency Avenue Two Travel , has sold a handful of seats on upcoming Virgin Galactic flights to customers. The market for space travel (and the sky-high prices that come with it), he believes, will evolve much like civilian air travel did.

“In the beginning of the 20th century, only very affluent people could afford to fly,” he said. “Just as we have Spirit and Southwest Airlines today, there will be some sort of equivalent of that in space travel, too. Hopefully within my lifetime.”

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Dante Lauretta, the planetary scientist who led the OSIRIS-REx mission to retrieve a handful of space dust , discusses his next final frontier.

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When Can I Buy a Ticket to Space? A Guide for Non-Billionaires.

We’re at the dawn of a new era for space exploration, with thrill-seeking civilians boldly going where no tourist has gone before. Over 60 years after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space, a handful of companies are planning to take non-astronauts with sufficiently massive bank accounts on a galactic tour: Tesla Founder Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin , and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.

Here’s everything you need to know about the rise of space tourism, from which billionaires are leaving Earth imminently to when the rest of us might be able to join them.

What’s the history of civilian space travel?

The initial effort to send a civilian into space ended in disaster: In 1986, Christa McAuliffe was set to be the first civilian and teacher in space, but she and six crewmates were tragically killed during the explosion of Space Shuttle Challenger.

After that, NASA largely forbade the practice. But Russia’s then-struggling space program stepped up to the plate. On April 28, 2001, Dennis Tito paid a whopping $20 million for a seat on a Russian Soyuz rocket, becoming the first civilian to visit the International Space Station – humanity’s home away from home. According to Space.com , just seven space tourists have followed in his footsteps in the last 20 years, via Russia’s Space Agency. But the year ahead should be a busy one for the nascent industry, with more and more civilians reaching for the stars.

Who’s heading to space next?

The competition between the major players in the billionaire space race heated up when Bezos announced that he would jet off to the brink of space and back on July 20, the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. On July 1 – just hours after Bezos announced that in addition to his brother, he’d be joined on the flight by aviation pioneer Wally Funk – Richard Branson revealed that he would beat the Amazon founder into space by nine days. Branson will blast off on Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity rocketplane on July 11.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is planning what it’s billing as “the world’s first all-civilian space flight” in late 2021. The multiday flight into low Earth orbit, dubbed “Inspiration4” and funded by billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, aims to raise awareness for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and begin “a new era for human spaceflight and exploration.” The crew includes Isaacman, childhood cancer survivor Hayley Arceneaux, plus two others. It’s currently scheduled to launch “no earlier than September 15, 2021,” per the mission’s website.

SpaceX aims to keep the momentum going by partnering with Houston-based Axiom Space to send more everyday people into space using its Crew Dragon spacecraft, this time going to the International Space Station. Axiom’s first private ISS mission is set to launch “no earlier than January 2022.” Its second mission is the focus of the Discovery Channel reality-TV show Who Wants to Be an Astronaut? , in which contestants take on extreme challenges for a chance at a ticket to the ISS. Axiom Space plans to eventually host civilian space station jaunts every six months.

What does this cost?

Unsurprisingly, going to space comes with a hefty price tag. Axiom passengers will pay the low, low price of $55 million for the flight and a stay on the ISS. Meanwhile, Virgin Galactic’s suborbital trips — where passengers can experience weightlessness for several minutes before falling back to Earth — are far more reasonable in cost, at $250,000 . Six hundred people have already made reservations for 90-minute flights on Branson’s SpaceShipTwo, Reuters reports. And while Bezos’s Blue Origin hasn’t announced official prices, an auction for a seat to join him and his brother on his brief sojourn to space in July went for a cool $28 million .

How safe is it?

Hollywood isn’t exaggerating: Going to space is inherently dangerous. Congress agreed in 2004 to largely let the space-tourism industry self-regulate, so there are few laws and restrictions on taking civilians into space.

“One way that the government could have gone was to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to certify the spacecraft, make sure that they’re safe and give them the stamp of approval,’” Mark Sundahl, an expert at space law at Cleveland State University, told Discover magazine . “But they didn’t go that way. Instead, they said ‘We’re going to prove we’re protecting space tourists by just requiring the companies to tell them that they may die, and then it’s up to them to make a decision if they want to take that risk or not.’ That’s the approach that the government took, and it is somewhat controversial.”

What other types of space tourism are in the works?

Strapping in on a rocket and blasting off into space isn’t the only type of travel available for those eager to leave this planet. Human space flight company Space Perspective is planning to fly passengers to the edge of space in a high-tech version of a hot-air balloon, “the size of a football stadium,” lifted by hydrogen. Flights are planned for early 2024, with tickets priced firmly at $125,000 per person.

For another out-of-this-world vacation, check out the company Orbital Assembly Corporation , which plans to open a luxury space hotel in 2027. The hotel, named Voyager Station, looks almost like a Ferris wheel floating in orbit and features a restaurant, gym, and Earth-viewing lounges and bars. A three-and-a-half-day stay is expected to cost up to $5 million, the Washington Post reports.

Are other celebrities planning to explore space?

A slew of stars have already bought their tickets to space with Virgin Galactic, among them Justin Bieber, Ashton Kusher, and Leonardo DiCaprio, according to the New York Daily News . Last year, Actor Tom Cruise and NASA announced their own collaboration to make a movie on the International Space Station.

When can the average person do this?

Once again, the biggest barrier to space is the price tag. But air travel was also once prohibitively expensive, with a one-way ticket across the country costing more than half the price of a new car ; one can expect similar price reductions in space travel. For now, partaking in a sweepstakes or reality show might be the best bet for those with tiny bank accounts and big dreams of taking to the stars.

This post was updated after Branson announced he would head to space on July 11.

• space tourism
• richard branson
• blue origin
• virgin galactic

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Virgin Galactic's first space tourism flight took off this week. Here are the players taking civilians to space.

• Virgin Galactic launched its first space tourism flight for paying customers on August 10.
• It marks a new era in space tourism for the company, with monthly flights expected to follow. 
• Space tourism is a growing industry for the rich. Seats on a Virgin Galactic flight cost $450,000 each.

This week, Virgin Galactic's first space tourism flight successfully launched from New Mexico, taking three passengers who weren't traditional astronauts, to the edge of space and back .

Blasting off to the edge of space has become a more popular — though hardly mainstream — tourism experience. The company intends on operating commercial flights every month, ushering in a new era for space travel. 

Galactic 02's passengers included Keisha Schahaff and Anastatia Mayers, a mother and daughter from the Caribbean who won their seats in a ticket raffle, as well as Jon Goodwin, an 80-year-old former Olympian . 

Virgin Galactic , Richard Branson's commercial space venture, was established in 2004 and completed its first commercial spaceflight in June. On the flight were three passengers from the Italian Air Force and National Research Council. 

Space tourism translates to big business for the company: In its second quarter earnings report, Virgin Galactic attributed an increase in quarterly revenue from $0.4 in 2022 to $2 million this year to "commercial spaceflight and membership fees related to future astronauts." 

Tickets for a seat on a Virgin Galactic rocket can cost $450,000, though some, like Goodwin, bought their tickets over a decade ago for $250,000.

The steep price doesn't seem to be keeping people away. As of the end of last year, about 800 tickets for commercial spaceflights had been reserved, the company said in its 2022 annual report . These tickets will translate to about $207 million in future revenue, per the report.

Virgin Galactic is not the only company in the game. In July 2021, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin sent four people, including Bezos, 62 miles above Earth, marking the first passenger spaceflight completed by the Amazon chairman's company, which was founded in 2000. 

Using a rocket called New Shepard , Blue Origin has completed six human spaceflights since.

There's also SpaceX, Elon Musk 's rocket company, which was founded in 2002 and is making concerted efforts in the commercial spaceflight industry.

In September 2021, SpaceX's Falcon 9  rocket took four civilians close to orbit without any professional astronauts on board. It was the first all-civilian crew to successfully complete a mission and was funded entirely by billionaire Jared Issacman. 

The following year, SpaceX , in conjunction with Axiom Space, launched the first all-private crew to the International Space Station, where they spent more than a week. The four attendees spent $55 million each for the trip.

Of course, most of us mere mortals aren't able to afford the price of entry into outer space. So until it becomes more affordable, here's a look at the options available to space tourists:

Virgin Galactic completed its first space tourism flight, dubbed Galactic 02, with paying customers on August 10. With monthly flights expected to take place moving forward, the company has asserted itself as a major player in the spaceflight industry.

Source: Virgin Galactic

The flight took off at 10:30 a.m. EST and landed at hour later, reaching a an apex point of 55 miles above the Earth. Virgin Galactic's next private spaceflight, Galactic 03, is planned for September.

The flight marked the first mother-daughter duo, Olympian, and majority female crew to go to space. Keisha Schahaff and Anastatia Mayers also become the first Caribbean astronauts.

Virgin Galactic completed its first commercial space flight, Galactic 01, at the end of June. The mission was for research, not tourism, and included three passengers from the Italian Air Force and National Research Council.

Source: Insider

The flight lasted 72 minutes from take off to landing.

Galactic 01's objectives were to measure hypergravity and microgravity effects on the human body.

Walter Villadei, a colonel in the Italian Air Force, was on the flight.

As of now, tickets are going for $450,000 a pop. While cabins can fit four people, Virgin Galactic intends on flying out only three passengers, reserving the final seat for an astronaut trainer.

Sources: Insider , Spacenews

Blue Origin's New Shepard made its ascent towards the edge of space and subsequent return back in August 2022. NS-22 was the company's most recent successful mission, and marked the rocket's 22nd mission to space and sixth human flight.

Source: Blue Origin

The calm before the storm: New Shepard at its launch pad ahead of NS-22 last year. Six crew members were part of the flight and getting ready inside the craft.

During the course of Blue Origin's 11-minute trips, tourists experience zero gravity, which offers a sense of weightlessness. The company requires passengers to take a course in order to prepare.

Mario Ferreira, a businessman and entrepreneur, became the first person from Portugal to travel to space after successfully completing NS-22. Sara Sabry, an engineer and CEO of the nonprofit Deep Space Initiative, pictured on the right, was the first person from Egypt to go to space.

Past Blue Origin passengers include "Star Trek" actor William Shatner, healthcare entrepreneur Glen de Vries, and Bezos' brother Mark.

Blue Origin is notoriously tight-lipped about its ticket pricing, but prior to its first commercial flight in July 2021, a passenger who later had to skip the flight due to "a scheduling conflict" said he'd paid $28 million to secure a seat.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is the only vessel that has sent private civilians to the International Space Station.

SpaceX's commercial space flight is the only one to actually send tourists into orbit, or 363 miles above Earth. In September 2021, a Falcon 9 rocket took four civilians into space for a total cost of around $220 million, paid for in full by billionaire Jared Isaacman.

Source: ABC

Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and SpaceX did not respond to Insider's request for comment.

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Ramin Skibba

2021 Was the Year Space Tourism Opened Up. But for Whom?

In the early years of this century, executives at Virgin Galactic, founded by the irreverent Richard Branson, predicted that commercial flights to space for paying passengers were only a couple of years away. That turned out to be far too ambitious. Disaster struck the company twice in the next decade: In 2007 an explosion during pre-launch tests of SpaceShipTwo’s rocket systems killed three people. Then in 2014, a pilot was killed during a test flight when the space plane crashed in the Mojave desert.

Now, in 2021, everything looks different. On July 11, Branson and three crew members traveled to Spaceport America, Virgin Galactic’s human spaceflight headquarters in southern New Mexico, and clambered aboard VSS Unity , a much upgraded version of SpaceShipTwo. They blasted toward the edge of space , at an altitude of 54 miles above the Earth, allowing the passengers a panoramic view of the world as they excitedly floated in zero gravity for about four minutes of their hour-long journey.

Nine days later, Blue Origin’s founder, Jeff Bezos, and three others made a similar voyage aboard their New Shepard space vehicle, this time reaching an altitude of 63 miles, also staying aloft and weightless for a few minutes. And then in September, Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched the all-civilian Inspiration4 mission aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft. They reached an orbit just above the International Space Station’s, flying for about three days before their capsule safely splashed down off the coast of Florida.

After decades of research, development, trial, error, and hype, the dream of commercial spaceflight had finally gotten off the ground. While private passengers have previously hitched rides on NASA shuttles and Russian Soyuz spacecraft, the three billionaire titans of the industry have made it possible to book a trip to space and back on a private spacecraft. With plenty more flights from these companies (and others) on the horizon, space tourism has surely arrived. In fact, the industry is now launching so many people into space that in January the FAA will end its Commercial Space Astronaut Wings program, which was originally designed to promote the industry. (The agency will continue to recognize space travelers on its website.)

“I honestly think that we are at the dawn of an incredible inflection point in history for human spaceflight. I truly believe that seeing Earth from space is transformative and will ultimately help humanity and the Earth in unknown ways,” says Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic’s chief astronaut instructor, who previously worked for NASA and who flew with Branson in July.

“Until this year, it’s predominantly been government-focused—NASA propelling astronauts to the space station. That's an achievement, but also a turning point where we’re noticing the effects of the democratization of space. You don’t need to be an astronaut to go to space,” says Danielle Bernstein, co-lead of the Aerospace Corporation’s Space Safety Institute.

But this access currently depends on the whims and largesse of a handful of billionaires. Despite some lofty rhetoric, the leaders of the industry still struggle to make the case that their rockets have more to offer than expensive trips for the rich and famous. “There’s a surface attempt to make them appear as commercial science vessels, but they’re much more like yachts or cruises,” says University of Chicago space historian Jordan Bimm.

Charlie Wood

Eric Ravenscraft

Caitlin Kelly

Others question the purpose of space tourism too. “These are technological achievements, there’s no doubt about that,” says Kathryn Denning, an anthropologist and space ethics researcher at York University in Toronto. But, she suggests, “their most significant achievement is the domination of the airwaves and television coverage.”

So far, tickets to the edge of space go for six figures—$200,000 or more—while booking an orbital expedition costs up to eight figures. A $200,000 price tag for a brief spaceflight tops the annual income of about 90 percent of Americans . It’s hard not to take note of that, especially at a time of climate crisis , a pandemic, and growing awareness of inequality. Each seat aboard a suborbital flight is like launching a home while there are more than half a million unhoused Americans, or like launching a family’s lifetime health care costs while tens of millions lack health care, or like launching college tuition when a majority of Americans don’t have access to higher education.

“Every time somebody flies for $250,000, while in that same country children aren’t eating and people are lined up along the borders, I have a hard time getting my head around it, to be honest,” Denning says.

But if the 20th-century aviation industry is any guide, while these flights will begin as luxuries, prices will drop, and access to space will broaden beyond ultra-rich people as the market opens up and technologies and infrastructure improve. “If you rewind to 100 years ago, it wasn’t your everyday person taking advantage of airlines that were just beginning to figure out how to fly routes around the world. But nowadays, for a very reasonable sum, anybody can hop on a plane, and they don’t think twice about it. It’s very safe. That’s probably the vision for space,” Bernstein says.

This also isn’t the first time that a handful of wealthy individuals have played an outsize role in US space activities. “It was actually billionaires like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller who funded the largest astronomical telescopes in the country in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was the Guggenheim family that was the primary source of funding for Robert Goddard, who was the first rocketry pioneer in the US,” says Alex MacDonald, chief economist at NASA.

And on the other hand, MacDonald points out, NASA has supported and invested in the burgeoning private space industry for decades, signing a variety of contracts for equipment and services, including with the once-fledgling SpaceX, which turns 20 next spring. NASA’s currently investing in Blue Origin and two other companies to develop designs for a commercial space station to follow the ISS. It’s part of a long-term plan to support the private sector in low Earth orbit, while reducing costs and freeing up more of the agency’s budget for long-distance exploration.

While the first six decades of spaceflight belonged to highly trained astronauts, now passengers can fly just for the spectacular view, or for fun, or for the challenge. And while the cost of a ticket is high, these early private flights did make room for a handful of people who would have never had the opportunity before. The commander of SpaceX’s Inspiration4 was Jared Isaacman, the billionaire CEO of the payment processing company Shift4Payments, and he funded the tickets that went to the three other travelers. Artist and scientist Sian Proctor won hers in a contest, Chris Sembroski got his ticket from a friend who won a lottery-like competition, and Hayley Arceneaux was offered her spot as an ambassador for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, an organization for which the mission raised $200 million—a charitable purpose that could become a model for some other private flights. Virgin Galactic announced on November 24 that Keisha Schahaff, a health and energy coach in Antigua, won two seats in a sweepstakes that raised $1.7 million for Space for Humanity, a Denver-based nonprofit that works to expand access to space with its Citizen Astronaut Program.

Passengers on other flights seem to have been chosen for their qualities as “goodwill ambassadors” for space travel. That includes pilot Wally Funk , who was one of the all-female Mercury 13 astronaut trainees in the 1960s, but wasn’t selected for a mission because of the sexism of her era, and William Shatner, aka Star Trek ’s Captain Kirk.

What people think of as an astronaut (or as a “spaceflight participant,” to use the FAA’s term ) has always been evolving. Early space exploration involved the military, in the context of the space race and the Cold War, and the first astronauts were mostly test pilots with “the right stuff.” After the successful Apollo program and moon landing, a greater emphasis on science led to sending more scientists. “As we go through those stages, it’s not an erasure of the previous one, but a layering on over them,” Bimm says. “Look at the Inspiration4 crew: While they’re civilians, they tried hard to look both like militarized astronauts, appearing in jets and flight suits , and as scientists, with performative science as part of their mission.” The crew collected their own biomedical data during their flight , but Bimm says it’s not clear how much that data will aid research on effects of low gravity on astronaut health, for example.

One of the most-touted benefits of sending people to space has always been that it’s awe-inspiring to do, generating feelings of optimism, wonder, and international cooperation. The sight of our little planet seen from far away moves many space fliers, as well, in what’s often called the “overview effect.” It’s a rare opportunity to witness how unique the Earth is, to see it without borders and in all of its vulnerability. Virgin Galactic’s Beth Moses calls it an “indescribable and magical experience.” And Shatner, who flew on Blue Origin’s second passenger flight in October, afterward called it a “ profound ” one that he hopes he’ll never recover from.

But some people question whether spaceflight is necessary to learn this existential and cosmological lesson. “I’m sure it’s beautiful to behold,” Denning says. But, she asks, “do you actually have to go to space to have an experience like that? And the answer for many thousands of years has been no. You can have a spiritual oneness with the Earth and a rise in enviro-consciousness without that.”

Similarly, Bimm doubts that space tourism inevitably spurs people to make the world a better place. “I worry that the very wealthy are going to start going to space, claiming they had the overview effect, and come back to Earth and use that claim of a ‘transformative experience’ to do pretty much anything they want,” he says. Bezos’ dubious project to move heavy industry into space, which he touted after his jaunt in July, is a prime example, Bimm says.

He also isn’t sold on the value of taking along passengers with compelling stories, like Shatner, Funk, Proctor, and Arceneaux, who is a cancer survivor and has a prosthetic body part. It almost serves as a deflection technique, Bimm says, since it distracts attention from the wealthy, lower-profile paying customers, as well as from Bezos’ and Musk’s problems on Earth, like complaints about the treatment of workers at Amazon and Tesla .

Fred Scharmen, author of the new book Space Forces , wonders how long these good feelings will last in an era of private flight. “That kind of feeling and vibe that the public agencies are able to tap into almost effortlessly—everybody loves NASA—it’ll be interesting to keep an eye on how long the private actors can invoke or connect to that kind of feeling of goodwill, hope, and overwhelmingly sublime awe that space travel inspires,” he says.

There are already signs that the private passenger space industry is beginning to expand beyond tourism, and it’s shaving down the price of getting there. The first mission of up-and-coming Houston-based company Axiom Space, dubbed Ax-1, will deliver four crew members to the ISS in February for an eight-day stay, where they’ll conduct research experiments involving the health impacts of space. “It is a pathfinder, pioneering mission for this new era of commercial human spaceflight to the ISS and in the future to commercial space stations. The long-term goal is to open up low Earth orbit to become its own marketplace,” says Michael López-Alegría, Ax-1’s commander, Axiom’s vice president of business development, and a former NASA astronaut. He anticipates a market that includes tourism and research as well as advertising and entertainment.

Axiom has also already signed NASA contracts to develop modules to attach to the ISS, which will later detach and become their own station . Other commercial space stations will become destinations as well, for astronauts, tourists, and a variety of businesses. There’s already a market for space wine , space beer , and movies filmed in space , Denning says.

A variety of other ventures will follow. That includes teardrop-shaped space balloons the size of football fields from the company Space Perspective, based at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “Rather than going to space at high g's on a rocket, you’re going to space very gently and comfortably at 12 miles an hour,” says Jane Poynter, the company’s co-CEO. The balloons carry a pressurized capsule and eight passengers aloft, nearly 20 miles above the Earth’s surface. They’re planning their first crewed flight in 2023 and their first commercial one the following year, with tickets going for around $125,000. It’s also a relatively safe way to fly to the edge of space, rather than strapping oneself to a rocket, Poynter points out. (Blue Origin and SpaceX use traditional vertical-launch rockets that are automated, with the crew sitting in a capsule on top, while Virgin makes use of a piloted space plane.)

As the industry matures, ideas for improving it can develop as well. Ariel Ekblaw, founder and director of the MIT Space Exploration Initiative and author of the book Into the Anthropocosmos , believes there should be more transparency in the way space fliers are chosen, because people around the world pay attention to these flights and to their crew. And Bimm argues that companies should be transparent about something else: whether the crew's flight plan is just to hang out and enjoy the spectacular view, rather than gathering scientific data.

Right now, private flights seem to encompass multiple things at once: They’re science missions, ecotourism expeditions, and yacht trips led by famous space barons. “We have yet to see what the hybrid role of these missions are,” says Ekblaw. “We’re at a cusp of a public grand opening of space.”

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Every Space Tourism Vacation You Can Book Right Now, If You’re Rich

Thinking about the an ultimate quarantine experience we got you covered..

Things aren’t going so great on the planet Earth right now, and travel isn’t easy, but if you’ve got a bit of cash, you can really get away. A number of well-capitalized companies have been hacking away at Space Tourism, or commercially flying “regular” people into space, and now it’s on the verge of reality. Thanks to a great deal of financial and human capital put in by organizations ranging from NASA to billionaire-backed startups , we are inches close to turning it into reality.

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Space vacation packages come in a wide variety. For beginners, British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic (SPCE) is offering a 1.5-hour joy ride to the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere. NASA is opening the International Space Station to private citizens. And, for hard-core space explorers, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has promised to fly you to the Moon (for a hefty price) in as soon as 2023.

Below we’ve put together the latest statuses of various space tourism projects in the market.

Virgin Galactic’s 90-Minute Suborbital Ride

Destination: Edge of the Earth’s atmosphere

Price: $250,000 per person

Earliest available time: late 2020

Virgin Galactic’s supersonic spaceplane, VSS Unity, will fly passengers up to 100 kilometers (62 miles) above sea level, which is right above the Kármán Line dividing the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. From there, passengers will get a stunning view of the Earth’s curvature. Then, during the descent, they will experience several minutes of weightlessness like a true astronaut.

VSS Unity has completed two successful human test flights and is in its final stage of testing. Virgin Galactic plans to fly its first paying customer, possibly the company’s founder Richard Branson himself, as soon as this year.

Blue Origin’s Vertical Suborbital Ride

Destination: The edge of the Earth’s atmosphere

Price: $200,000 and $300,000

Earliest available time: unknown

Blue Origin , owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, is developing a suborbital tourism program similar to Virgin Galactic’s but using a vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing (VTVL) rocket-capsule system called New Shepard. The New Shepard spacecraft has successfully flown above the Kármán Line and returned to the ground.

Blue Origin had planned to launch its first human test flight in 2019 and begin selling commercial tickets (reportedly priced between $200,000 and $300,000 ) soon after. Yet, the plan was quietly canceled last year. The company has yet to make public statements about new test and rollout dates.

NASA’s Multi-Day ISS Getaway 

Destination: International Space Station

Price: $35,000 per night

In June 2019, NASA unveiled its grand plan to allow private citizens to fly to the International Space Station under the agency’s Commercial Crew Program . Passengers will fly in either SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft or Boeing’s Starliner  vessel.

The Crew Dragon recently completed its final crewed test and is ready to be deployed for commercial missions. NASA has said it will allow up to two private trips to the ISS a year, each lasting up to 30 days. The total cost of the trip would be around $50 million per person, the agency said.

SpaceX’s ‘Back to the Moon’ Package 

Destination: the Moon

Price: “Not a trivial amount’

Earliest available time: 2023

Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX has the ultimate space vacation offering: a personalized trip to the Moon. The package has one committing customer so far: Japanese fashion mogul Yusaku Maezawa , who signed up for the trip in September 2018 and has put down an undisclosed deposit. Musk has said the full ticket price is “not a trivial amount.”

SpaceX is currently building prototypes for the rocket ( Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) rocket ) and spaceship (Starship) that will fly Maezawa to the Moon. If all tests go according to the plan, a human launch could take place as early as 2023.

• SEE ALSO : 4 Management Lessons From JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s 2023 Shareholder Letter

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Everything You Need to Know About Space Tourism Right Now

Your next travel splurge could be a flight to space

Virgin Galactic vehicle SpaceShipTwo on its first glide flight on October 10, 2010 over Mojave in California. (Virgin Galactic / Getty Images)

While 2020 has been an abysmal year on many counts, there’s one industry that’s thriving: space exploration. Within the first eight months of the year, we’ve seen the successful launches of three Mars missions, promising tests of new rockets, and the return of crewed spaceflight to U.S. soil—aboard a privately built spacecraft, no less! But we’re also getting much closer to the launch of the space tourism industry, meaning your dream of becoming an astronaut could become reality quite soon. We’re still a little ways away from regular flights into space for paying customers, but here are all the developments you need to know about.

The History of Space Tourism

Traveling to space has long been the domain of professional astronauts, not ordinary citizens. But that all changed when American entrepreneur Dennis Tito flew to space in 2001 with space tourism company Space Adventures, who organized the trip with Russian space agency Roscosmos. Tito was the first of only seven true “space tourists,” each of whom traveled to the International Space Station (ISS) via Roscosmos's Soyuz spacecraft for about a weeklong stay—or for two separate weeklong stays, in the case of one space traveler—for a reported cost between $20 million to $35 million per trip (plus months of training). The final space tourism excursion was made by Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté in 2009, after which Roscosmos had to end touristic flights: when NASA retired its space shuttle program in 2011, each seat on its Soyuz spacecraft needed to be reserved for crews heading to the ISS, not tourists. Since then, space tourism has been halted.

Nearly There: Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic

The issue with Space Adventure’s program is that it relies on other operators for transportation, which limits its access to space. But the next wave of private spaceflight companies have been developing their own vehicles to propel clients into weightlessness. The two frontrunners in the space tourism race are Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, both of which are in advanced testing phases—Virgin Galactic has even opened ticket sales already, with more than 600 passengers booked. While both aerospace companies will provide their clients with suborbital trips into space, they’ll do so in entirely different fashions.

Blue Origin

Blue Origin plans to send tourists to space in its New Shepard vehicle, named after the first American in space, Alan Shepard, from its launch site in West Texas. New Shepard, which is an entirely autonomous craft that doesn’t need a human pilot, is similar to Roscosmos’s Soyuz and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon vehicles in that its six passengers will be housed in a capsule and vertically launched into space via a rocket.

After a day of training, passengers will get to experience a launch just as professional astronauts do: they’ll feel the intense G-forces pressing down on them as the rocket shuttles them to an altitude of approximately 62 miles, which is widely accepted as the boundary of space. When the engines cut off, passengers will be weightless, and they’re free to float about the capsule, taking in the views of the planet and of the darkness of space through the capsule’s large windows. After a few minutes, the capsule will fall back to Earth under parachutes. All in, the trip lasts just 11 minutes—it’s a pretty short flight considering tickets will likely cost about $250,000. 

Blue Origin has successfully launched New Shepard on 12 un-crewed test flights since 2015, but it’ll need to get humans up into space before it’ll be certified to start carrying paying customers. The company originally hoped to launch a crewed test flight in 2019; however, it still has not done so, nor has it announced a new timeline for the test.

Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic, on the other hand, will fly passengers to space aboard a winged vehicle called SpaceShipTwo , which bears similarities to NASA’s space shuttle. But whereas the shuttle launched vertically via a rocket, SpaceShipTwo is launched horizontally. The vehicle, which seats six passengers plus two pilots, takes off from a runway like a regular plane via its carrier aircraft called WhiteKnightTwo. Virgin Galactic currently launches from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, but it will also launch from Spaceport America in New Mexico.

After takeoff, WhiteKnightTwo ascends to 50,000 feet, after which SpaceShipTwo is released, and its rocket-powered engines kick in to bring it all the way to a maximum altitude of roughly 68 miles. As with Blue Origin’s New Shepard, passengers will enjoy a few minutes of weightlessness before returning to Earth, but instead of a parachute landing, SpaceShipTwo will land on a runway like a plane—which is also how the space shuttle landed. Total run time: between two and three hours in flight, plus two-and-a-half days of training, with a price tag of $250,000.

Virgin Galactic has been conducting test flights since 2010, but progress has been a bit slow—and deadly. In 2014, a test pilot was killed after a SpaceShipTwo vehicle broke apart during a flight, primarily due to pilot error. Testing resumed in 2016 and is ongoing, with no official word on when commercial operations will begin.

Other Companies Dreaming Big

Of all the space tourism operations out there, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are by far the closest to launching passengers. (Elon Musk's SpaceX, which has already successfully launched NASA astronauts into space, is not focusing on tourism, though it will provide lifts for third-party companies.) But coming in hot on their heels is Boeing, whose Starliner vehicle is being developed for NASA's Commercial Crew Program; its contract, however, allows for tourists to potentially join flights. 

The other viable space tourism companies on the horizon are not developing their own vehicles, rather, they plan on hitching rides with other providers. Space Adventures is still in the game, having entered a partnership with SpaceX to fly passengers on Crew Dragon as soon as next year. It’s also revived its tourism operations with Roscosmos: two tourists are booked on a trip to the ISS in 2023. Another company, Axiom Space, plans on taking passengers to the ISS via SpaceX’s Crew Dragon as soon as 2021, before launching its own private space station by the end of the decade. Similarly, Orion Span has announced its intentions to launch its Aurora Space Station in 2021, though construction on the project has yet to begin.

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Space Tourism: All You Need to Know About Booking a Galactic Getaway

Your adventure to space awaits..

Sometimes you need to take a break and escape everyday life, and there's no better escape than placing a pin in the infinite interstellar map and taking a trip to outer space.

Space tourism has finally become a reality and although the ticket to ride is still at a premium for most, the cost of booking a galactic getaway is gradually falling as companies find new and innovative ways to make space travelling technology more efficient to reduce the prices for inquisitive citizen explorers.

So, whether it's something you could consider now or perhaps way off into the future, we have a rundown of everything you need to know before journeying beyond our planet. Click through our slideshow or scroll through the celestial catalogue below for all of the information you need about the services and packages currently on offer.

Space Tourism Guide: All You Need to Know About Booking a Galactic Getaway

Modes of Transport

Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and SpaceX are three companies that have been at the forefront of the race to space, having already made headlines for their various crewed spaceflights. However, more and more companies are now gearing up to offer suborbital jaunts to space… or at least to the very edge of it.

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin shared news of its fourth successful space tourism mission in March 2022. That trip saw five paying customers board the company's New Shepard capsule to travel past the Kármán line – the internationally recognized boundary of space – before floating weightlessly for several minutes to take in the surrounding sights.

According to the Blue Origin website , there are reclining seats in the pressurized crew capsule, with room to take up to six people on a suborbital spaceflight. Each passenger gets their own window seat, and those windows take up over one-third of the capsule's surface area, giving every occupant a spectacular view of the Earth as they depart it.

Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson achieved his dream and reached the edge of space aboard the SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane in July 2021. Following the success of that mission, the company reopened ticket sales to the general public for its commercial spaceflights. Those flights are due to start departing sometime in 2023, per SpaceNews .

Branson's company promises a "first-of-its-kind flight" that begins with a smooth runaway take-off, much like a regular plane lifting off from one destination to travel to another. The Virgin Galactic spaceship, however, is attached to a mothership and will climb to approximately 50,000 ft before being released and propelled towards the stars.

SpaceX launched its first commercial orbital crew spaceflight in May 2020, successfully transporting NASA astronauts to the International Space Station. More than a year later, it was reported that Elon Musk had sent four private passengers into orbit for a three-day flight, marking the company's first mission to space with an all-civilian crew.

NASA is using the Boeing Starliner spacecraft and SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft for its tourism missions . The Dragon spacecraft can carry up to 7 passengers to Earth orbit and beyond. The official site for Elon Musk's SpaceX shows the practicality of the capsule, with a row of seats, control displays, and storage space filling the quarters.

Two alternative options come by way of World View and Space Perspective. Both companies have designed space tourism solutions that will allow curious travellers to explore new perspectives from the "edge of space," with their Balloon capsules reaching a peak altitude of 100,000 feet (almost 20 miles), above 99% of Earth's atmosphere.

World View's Explorer capsule is equipped with eight reclining seats , personal monitors, and large viewing ports for passengers to gaze upon the curvature of Earth and the darkness of space, while Space Perspective operates a state-of-the-art, customizable Space Lounge with chairs, tables, couches, and even a bathroom that has a skylight.

Experiences

Companies such as World View and Space Perspective might not be able to thrust their passengers into the far reaches of space like Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and SpaceX, but they are offering a luxury experience to make their trips beyond the blue marble as memorable as possible for the passengers aboard their space balloons.

The seats in World View's hexagon-shaped pods are comparable to the level of luxury that a passenger would experience in business class on a standard commercial flight. According to Dezeen , each seat is accompanied by "a cocktail table, a screen providing educational materials and activities, a central console, personal storage and a beverage holder."

There's also a concierge service on board to ensure that all guests are catered to during their six-hour trip at altitude. Flyers will be offered "a gourmet meal as well as drinks" as part of their fare and will be able to "stream and use their mobile phones from the capsule," though the capsule's two-metre-high elliptical windows might make for better viewing.

Space Perspective's virtual tour of Spaceship Neptune reveals the luxury interior of its Space Lounge, complete with comfortable lounge chairs, mood lighting, and even plants and herbs that can be used in food and drink prep. The vessel also has its very own cocktail menu because, after all, it's five o'clock somewhere down on the Earth below.

The experience aboard Spaceship Neptune is fully customizable for those explorers looking to book a full capsule. "From the menu and cocktails onboard, to the soundtrack and lighting, your individual preferences can be incorporated into your journey to create your definitive ultimate adventure," the company's official website notes.

While space travel has opened up to the public, it's only possible for those who can afford it and prices vary from company to company. For example, a suborbital trip with Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic will typically cost between $250,000 to $500,000 while SpaceX is considerably more – a reported $55 million each for those that travelled to the Space Station .

Companies offering balloon rides over rocket launches can offer space tourism experiences at lower prices. A voyage with World View will cost $50,000 a ticket and they have "flexible financing" options available for curious space explorers. Meanwhile, Space Perspective is asking $125,000 per ticket with a $1,000 refundable deposit to reserve a seat.

Launch Dates

Booking a galactic getaway is just a few clicks away and most of the companies mentioned in this article are already up and running with their space tourism ventures. Reuters reports that Blue Origin completed its fifth crewed flight in June and the company currently remains open to bookings for flights in 2022 right the way through to 2025 and beyond.

Virgin Galactic opened its ticket sales back up in February and is still taking spaceflight reservations now. The company aims to have about three launches per month when operations start in 2023, according to SpaceNews. Likewise, SpaceX welcomes people to start planning their journeys now, though it's unclear when those flights will actually launch.

World View is taking bookings and deposits for its commercial spaceflights, which are scheduled to begin from the Grand Canyon and Great Barrier Reef in 2024, with more locations opening up in the future. And Space Perspective's first flights have sold out for 2024 but the company is still accepting reservations for its spaceflight experiences.

Gorgeous Photos of Earth from Space

Before you start exploring space for yourself, you might want to learn a little more about it. After all, there are over 5,000 planets outside our solar system and there are a lot of weird and wonderful ones . There are also heaps of noteworthy stars to write home about, including one named after a Tolkien character and another that is the farthest star ever detected .

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Thumbnail image credit: NASA/Reid Wiseman.

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The future of space tourism: op-ed

Dylan Taylor is a global entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist who acts as the Chairman and CEO of Voyager Space Holdings and the founder of Space for Humanity , a nonprofit organization that seeks to democratize space exploration. He has also served as an active advocate and philanthropist in the space manufacturing industry and a strategic advisor for the Archmission and the Human Spaceflight Program while also acting as the co-founding patron of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. He contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Opinions and Insights .

It's true that 2020 spawned a collective feeling of retreat coupled with a FOMO (fear of missing out) that inspires us to escape a chaotic world. For now, we have the silence of nature or an eventual trip abroad, but the future can provide a more adventurous escape: one to the stars.

The NewSpace industry has its sights set on space tourism , a growing market expected to be worth at least $3 billion by 2030 . As companies like SpaceX test reusable rocket technology to make spaceflight more affordable and accessible for humans, other private firms, including Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, are investing in suborbital space tourism to take Earthlings into the very edge of space and back. While only uber-wealthy passengers and private researchers will have access to space tourism in the immediate future, the long term holds promises for ordinary citizens.

The evolution of technology plays a vital role in sending more tourists to space and a few influential trends will determine the future of space tourism, along with the progress we make both on and off our home planet.

Related: Space tourists will face big risks, as private companies gear up for paid suborbital flights

Commercial suborbital trips

Suborbital travel will likely be the space tourism subsector to materialize first, but it may also be the most short-lived. However, Blue Origin , backed by Jeff Bezos, is testing its New Shepard system that will launch customers to the edge of space in a capsule which separates from a small rocket and retreats back to Earth under parachutes. Richard Branson's company Virgin Galactic relies on a space plane, dropped from a carrier aircraft, with a rocket motor that speeds up and takes passengers high into the atmosphere.

Both companies' shuttle systems are designed to fly passengers over 50 miles above Earth's atmosphere, allowing customers to experience the feeling of weightlessness for a few minutes. Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo will launch its next human spaceflight test on Dec. 11 as Blue Origin eyes early 2021.

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These brief spaceflights hold opportunities for tourism and scientific research and present unique experiences for space observation at varying trajectories and regulatory requirements. However, Axios reports concerns over declined public interest in suborbital tourism as a passing interest due to high costs and a short-lived ride. This may deflate the market as passengers await new developments in the field.

But there's some hope. Some experts look to commercial suborbital trips to take the place of long-distance air travel that can eventually cater to everyday citizens. SpaceX plans to use its Starship rocket to fly 100 people around the world in mere minutes. The company stated that a 15-hour flight to Shanghai from New York would be capable of flying in 39 minutes. According to UBS, if even only 5% of the average 150 million passengers that travel on 10 hour or longer flights pay $2,500 per trip, then returns could skyrocket to $20 billion per year in today's value.

A recent UBS report mentions, "Space tourism could be the stepping stone for the development of long-haul travel on earth serviced by space."

Related: Virgin Galactic wants to send people on superfast trips across Earth  

Orbital vacations

Orbital tourism, which entails remaining in space for at least one full orbit, is another major focus of governmental agencies and private space companies, all of which have the long-term goal to inhabit the moon and Mars. Projects from Boeing, SpaceX and Axiom Space plan to start launching tourists to the International Space Station on commercial spacecraft beginning as early as this year. SpaceX is also partnering with Space Adventures to send four tourists to low Earth orbit for a few days in late 2021 or early 2022.

As more companies consider in-space tourism, orbital vacations are set to become a popular trend. Orbital vacationing infrastructure, including orbital and lunar-based hotels, is positioned to become lucrative as space infrastructure companies already hauled in a combined $3.6 billion so far this year . 

Much of this infrastructure remains in preliminary stages, but the first approach may be to establish low-orbit hotels. One hotel design expects to send guests in a hydrogen-filled balloon with a pressurized capsule, utilizing Earth's gravity. Other options include designing or renovating an existing space station to accommodate guests. NASA, for instance, is opening up the International Space Station for commercial tourism . The Aurora Station , a planned luxury hotel that will host six guests for a $9.5 million, 12-day stay in low Earth orbit, will charge $9.5 million for the trip. It's pricey, but experts predict prices will fall like they did in the tech industry for computers and mobile phones.

A proposal for expandable space habitats may also serve as orbital hotels. Made of unique materials and easily stored at home, they are launched to space where they're inflated to true size. Bigelow Space invented the B330 , a space habitat that enlarges to form a hotel or living area for humans in space. As demand increases, they are interconnected to other inflatable habitats to increase their size. Bigelow also plans to develop an attached inflated module to the International Space Station as one of the first hotels in space. In-space vacations will eventually be the gateway for moon and Mars habitation.

Nurturing the space and world economies

Private space companies are devotedly investing across space tourism and firms like UBS consider access to space an enabler to broader opportunities for investment.

More next-generation engineers will enter the space tourism sector for the scope of opportunities and innovation, eventually decreasing the barriers to entry that will increase competition, lower costs, and ultimately democratize space travel for everyday citizens. 

Of course, there are crucial safety, comfort and health factors to consider. Training, medical screenings and liability waivers will need to be examined before tourists head to space. 

Space tourism will be a small subsector of the industry, but it will bolster the entire NewSpace industry. Once space tourism does become mainstream, it will also positively impact many socioeconomic factors on Earth: creating jobs, educating citizens about space and fostering a new solar-based energy infrastructure. The sweet escape to the stars can eventually awaken us to the awe-inspiring potential of space exploration while also giving us a better appreciation of home.

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How Much Does it Cost to Travel to Space?

Fast facts: 

• As of right now (2021), the cost of booking a trip to space in the near future is approximately $250,000 .
• The immediate cost of a trip to space (via something like SpaceX) in the next 2-3 years is in the tens of millions per passenger .
• In the medium-future, the cost of individual tickets into space will drastically fall in price.
• Based on estimations, it is likely that the cost of space tourism tickets will be around $10,000 – $25,000 within the next twenty years .

How much will it cost for a private citizen to travel to space?

Since the Champion Traveler research team is heavily focused on private travel (as opposed to how much it costs astronauts to fly to space), all data used in this article will be based on the idea of privatized space tourism. This industry is expected to hit a major milestone in the 2020s, and it is likely that space tourism will become not only more common but more affordable within the next twenty to fifty years.

As of right now, based on early estimations from several major private space exploration companies (SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic), the first privatized space travel will cost adventurous travelers somewhere around $250,000 for a short trip into Earth’s orbit. This quarter of a million dollar price tag for private space tourism will likely include somewhere between a few hours and a few days orbiting the Earth.

This type of space travel will remain expensive for several years, but as all things improve and become more efficient within the process, the cost will very likely start to decrease within a matter of years. There is likely a heavier price tag on the first couple of trips simply because of the historic nature of them. As market demand balances out and more space tourism is available, it seems likely the cost of a ticket for a short adventure into space will be somewhere around $10,000 to $25,000 depending on the length of the trip and the number of passengers included on each flight.

When will space travel become more affordable?

As of right now (2021), space travel is more likely a pipe dream for many than a realistic vacation. A quarter of a million dollars for one trip into outer space is likely not something many people will be able to afford in the short term. But as costs drop and space tourism becomes more efficient (and likely sees more competition), ticket prices for space travel will fall back down to Earth.

As for how long this will take, within 20 years (by about the year 2040), space travel should see a gradual decrease in price to somewhere in the $10,000 – $25,000 range (in 2021 dollars) where it will likely flat line for a while based on current cost estimations of scale, fuel costs, production costs, and regulation.

It is possible that we will see privatized space tourism drop down to somewhere in the $5,000 – $10,000 range as well if more competition enters the market if demand stays high.

Will space travel ever be cheaper than air travel?

The problem with comparing space travel to the current price of air travel is that the current market for air travel remains in high demand for both tourism and business purposes.

In the medium term, the only purpose that space travel as tourism will serve is for quick trips into space and back. There won’t be necessarily, at least in the foreseeable future, a spike in travel demand for business purposes and thus the overall market demand for space tourism will remain relatively small.

Because of this, it is very unlikely that we will ever see space tourism anywhere near comparable flights for something like a transatlantic flight to Europe from the United states for $500-700.

When will space travel be available to more people?

Based on current development of spaceships capable of carrying a larger number of private citizens, we expect that by the 2030s it will be possible to book a ticket via one of the current major space exploration brands (SpaceX, Blue Origin), and that we also will likely see between two and five new companies enter the market in that time.

With a growing number of companies producing spacecraft capable of allowing for space tourism, there will likely be hundreds of available seats in a given year within the next decade, and thousands of available seats a year after that.

Is space tourism safe?

This is something nobody has enough of a firm grasp on to say definitively one way or the other just yet, but it seems fair to assume given how long it has taken to commercialized space travel, that the early flights will take every precaution possible.

It’s fully reasonable to expect that over the course of space tourism expansion there will be accidents and likely death, but at the same time, the same can still be said about traditional air travel. While statistically considered extremely safe, there will always be a minimal amount of risk associated with any type of travel.

What companies offer private space travel?

There are many now-defunct companies who have tried to establish footing in space tourism, but as of now there seem to be three main companies we will be watching closely when it comes to offering one of the grandest possible adventures for private citizens:

• SpaceX – Led by Elon Musk, this company seems the most likely to begin ramping up space tourism within the next two decades. They have a planned launch for their first space tourists in the coming two years.
• Virgin Galactic – Led by Richard Branson, this company has been around the longest (of the surviving companies), but has yet to launch their first commercial space tourists into space.
• Blue Origin – Led by Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin has focused mostly on commercial space travel, but has also discussed expanding their efforts into personal space travel in the near future.

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The space tourism industry is stuck in its billionaire phase

The spectacle of launching billionaires into space is the beginning of a long road ahead.

By Joey Roulette

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Richard Branson’s extravagant jaunt to space on Sunday signaled the dawning of a new space age — for the few people that can afford it. Jeff Bezos is about to set off on a similar excursion next Tuesday when he launches to space with three others on his company Blue Origin’s first crewed flight. The two billionaires are validating their companies’ tourist-tailored rockets and, they say, fulfilling lifelong dreams to get a brief taste of space.

But what Virgin Galactic’s mission on Sunday proved, and what Bezos’ flight will similarly show, is that space is almost open, not for you and me or the general public, but for more billionaires.

Opening up the cosmos to the masses and normalizing space travel is a goal companies and their billionaire backers have been targeting for years but haven’t yet achieved. There’s economic potential beyond launching rich people to space: microgravity research for scientists and — a much farther goal — rapid transportation between continents. That’s the vision they’re selling with these flashy flights; once exclusive to government astronauts, traveling in space could be a thing for everyone else too.

“It’s tough at the beginning”

“That’s the dream, right? That space isn’t just for NASA anymore,” Kathy Lueders, NASA’s human spaceflight chief who oversaw development of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon astronaut capsule, said during a press conference in April. “I mean, I think that’s what we’re trying to do... what we were hoping is that you would hopefully have so many customers that at one point, the price-point would go down to having it be accessible. It’s tough at the beginning.”

In this beginning phase, flying to space is priced only for the ultra-rich, driven by the high costs of new space technology. Virgin Galactic’s launch of Richard Branson represented one of the final key test missions to validate its shiny six-seated spaceplane, SpaceShipTwo, but it was also a meticulously crafted marketing event, complete with flashy promo videos, inspirational speeches, and a pop concert, all designed to help attract more attention, and more customers.

To live their own version of Branson’s dream, customers will have to pay at least $250,000 for a seat (the company already has roughly 600 booked passengers). And right now, the quarter-million-dollar price tag is the cheapest option on the market. The price for a seat on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket could be higher. And if you want to go into orbit for a few days, a ride on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule will set you back at least $55 million (that could be higher too; SpaceX hasn’t publicly confirmed the real price).

A long road ahead to bringing prices down

While Branson and Bezos’ flights to space mark key moments for their space tourism businesses, the space industry is far from being able to offer its services to the rest of the public. To get there, they’ll have to clear several hurdles: Can these rockets reliably fly humans on multiple missions without a hitch? If there is a hitch, like a fatal accident, can the market survive a damaged reputation? And can someone buy a ticket to space just as they can book an expensive flight (instead of just the ultra-rich)?

Then there’s the court of public opinion, which may be difficult to win over. Bezos, Branson and Elon Musk’s space ambitions have been criticized as another example of billionaires spending money on passion projects when there are places and causes where those funds could arguably be put to better use. The US alone struggles with vast wealth inequities, poor access to healthcare and a rapidly changing climate, among other problems that, when paired with space tourism, makes the activity look insultingly selfish to many. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a leading critic of billionaires, has repeated that point as the private space race heats up. “Here on Earth, in the richest country on the planet, half our people live paycheck to paycheck, people are struggling to feed themselves, struggling to see a doctor — but hey, the richest guys in the world are off in outer space!,” he tweeted in March.

“I can understand it,” Branson says of critiques like Sen. Sanders’, speaking on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on July 14th. “But I think maybe they’re not fully educated as to what space does for Earth.” Branson, like other space advocates, point to the technologies that investments in space have helped propel into the mainstream, like the GPS capabilities wired into smartphones, weather tracking services or climate change research and modeling from satellites in low-Earth orbit. Many of those investments came from public funds — it’s still unclear what spin-off developments might emerge from the still-fledgling private space tourism industry.

“We have to deal with the fact that billionaires trying to make more money are the public face of the space sector right now”

As long as the space industry is dependent on billionaire funds for spacecraft built for billionaire (and millionaire) customers, the perception that this is a hobby for the ultrawealthy will inevitably remain. “We have to deal with the fact that billionaires trying to make more money are the public face of the space sector right now,” Brian Weeden, a director at the Secure World Foundation, said.

Putting faces on nascent industries isn’t unusual in itself. Charles Lindbergh, the first pilot to fly across the Atlantic Ocean alone, famously helped propel commercial aviation from its infancy in the 1920s and 1930s. Same with Steve Jobs or Bill Gates at the dawn of the desktop computer at the end of the 20th century.

Those industries, too, had doubters and critics. The US was skeptical of the early planes being built by the Wright brothers and top military officials dismissed aviation as a fad. “Any man who sticks to it is either crazy or else a plain damned fool,” said American Admiral William A. Moffett, who would later embrace aviation under the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics. And in 1943, when computers were massive room-sized objects, the chairman of IBM, Thomas Watson, scoffed at their potential: “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”

“A fairly large learning curve” from development to routine operations

Flights became commonplace. Computers became less expensive and more widely used. And at each phase of the computer’s evolution, people found new ways to use them as they became accessible to more markets and a wider swath of consumers, notes Carissa Christensen, CEO of BryceTech, a tech and space industry analytics firm.

“There’s going to be a fairly large learning curve as companies go from the process of developing a capability and testing it, to operating it routinely,” Christensen said. It’s possible that space tourism will follow the same path as computers or airplanes, but there’s no guarantee that it will succeed. In part, that’s because there’s no single solution to driving down the cost of launching people to space. Virgin Galactic earlier this year unveiled a new version of SpaceShipTwo that’s tailored for quick production rates, signaling it’s gearing up to accommodate its hefty customer backlog and reopen ticket sales, which have been closed since a fatal 2014 accident during a test flight. (Branson’s presence on Sunday’s flight also served as a visual reassurance to customers that the ship is safe.) Musk is focusing on better rocket fuel efficiency with SpaceX’s Starship, a fully reusable launch system being developed to slash the cost of sending humans to space.

But again, what exactly those next-generation prices will be remain a mystery. Musk hasn’t said how much it’ll cost prospective passengers to fly on Starship. And Virgin Galactic hasn’t said how much it plans to charge for tickets for its newer spaceplane, SpaceShipThree, just like Blue Origin, which hasn’t revealed its New Shepard prices.

Keeping space tourism dreams alive while the price comes down

Currently, you either have to be talented (hand-picked by a billionaire) or lucky to book a ride on one of these rockets without paying the steep price tag. Raffling off tickets, like Virgin Galactic plans to do , and donating seats to space enthusiasts who can’t afford them keeps the public dream of normalized, low-cost space travel alive while the industry races to find the right recipe for bringing prices down. “I think that in any competitive market you’re going to see products improve and/or prices drop,” Christensen added.

The competition has only just begun, and other companies are angling to get into space tourism. Texas-based Axiom Space has plans to build a private space station and arrange private rides on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsules. A new rocket under development by Rocket Lab, the California-based launch company that plans to go public, is designed to launch humans to space in the future. Boeing’s Starliner capsule is designed to ferry private astronauts to the space station, too.

At the moment, there’s no telling which one will make it — if any of them do. For now, space tourism is still in a phase controlled by billionaire cash. Whether or not the industry can grow out of the spectacle and into something more mature will depend less on Bezos or Branson fulfilling their childhood dreams of flying to space and more on bringing down the cost of building rockets — and the price we pay to fly on them.

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The Past, Present, and Future of Space Tourism

It’s been more than 20 years since the first space tourist took flight, but there’s a lot more to come in the emerging industry of space tourism..

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Are space vacations in our near future?

Illustration by Delcan & Co.

When Austrian journalist Gerhard Pistor requested to book a trip to the moon in 1964, his travel agency forwarded his query to Pan American World Airways—Pan Am. The now-defunct airline accepted the reservation and noted that the first flights to the moon would take off in the year 2000. So began a years-long space-tourism marketing stunt in which some 93,000 people joined Pan Am’s First Moon Flights Club, a waiting list for the first civilian trips to the moon.

That, of course, never happened. But as the Space Age advanced, space tourism did, too. In 2001, American entrepreneur Dennis Tito became the first true space tourist, launching aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and spending more than a week aboard the International Space Station (ISS)—reportedly spending $20 million to do so.

Today, we’re in a new era of space tourism, with growing numbers of civilians leaving Earth for brief moments through private enterprises focusing on such endeavors. And in the coming decades, we may even see the dawn of regular long-duration space vacations.

The Birth of Space Tourism

After the Apollo era, companies investigated opportunities to send civilians rather than government professionals—that is, NASA astronauts—into space. In the 1970s, manufacturing conglomerate Rockwell International, a contractor for NASA’s Space Shuttle program, researched the possibility of passenger modules that could fit into the payload bay of the Space Shuttle, with similar concepts developed by other companies over the subsequent decade. None came to fruition.

NASA did open up its spaceflights to nongovernment professionals, though, primarily as payload specialists, who were tasked to complete specific in-flight projects by companies outside of NASA. NASA also developed the Teacher in Space and Journalist in Space programs to open up spaceflight to several civilians annually. But the programs were ended after the Challenger disaster in 1986, which killed the first Teacher in Space participant, Christa McAuliffe, along with her six crew members. The program was considered for a revival, but that, too, was ended after a Space Shuttle failure—this one, the fatal Columbia disaster in 2003.

Space tourism finally became successful in 2001 with Tito’s launch to the ISS. That trip was organized by a company called Space Adventures, which ultimately saw eight other space tourists take trips to the ISS through 2009, each launched on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. But these tourist flights ended after the retirement of NASA’s Space Shuttle program in 2011. Because the only spacecraft capable of human spaceflight at that time was the Soyuz , every seat on every launch was needed for professional astronauts from around the world, and tourism was put on the back burner.

Space Tourism Today

For the past decade, private space tourism companies have been developing spacecraft to take passengers on suborbital flights, which bring them to the edge of space and back down to Earth in relatively short “hops” lasting anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. By comparison, the first nine Space Adventure clients flew orbital missions that encircled the planet for days.

The method of flight varies by company. Blue Origin , for instance, launches vertically like most rockets, whereas Virgin Galactic flies a rocket-powered space plane that is launched from the belly of a carrier aircraft. While these two companies are the only suborbital companies cleared by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for launches—both have already carried passengers to space—other companies are preparing for liftoff. That includes space-balloon companies Space Perspective and World View , which offer a far more leisurely journey than rocket-powered ascents, gently lifting passengers to high altitudes in a high-tech version of a hot air balloon. Across all suborbital space tourism companies, prices range from approximately $50,000 to $450,000 per seat.

Orbital tourism has also made a comeback, though at far higher prices: tens of millions of dollars per seat. SpaceX , which is contracted by NASA to launch astronauts to the ISS, is also available for private charters. In 2021, entrepreneur Jared Isaacman organized the Inspiration4 mission, the world’s first all-civilian mission, during which he and three crewmates orbited the Earth in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule as a fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. In 2022, SpaceX provided the launch vehicle for the Axiom mission 1 (Ax-1), the world’s first all-civilian mission to the ISS, during which four crew members spent eight days onboard the orbiting research facility.

Space Adventures is also back in business; it organized a flight to the ISS for Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa, who traveled to space in December 2021. Maezawa intends to charter SpaceX’s under-development Starship spacecraft for a moon mission called the dearMoon project, taking with him eight civilians on the journey.

What’s Next for Space Tourism

Space tourism remains in its nascent phase, with plenty of work to be done. Existing suborbital companies are still tweaking launch vehicles and increasing launch cadence to approach regularity, while upcoming ones are waiting for FAA approval to begin their operations. And, hopefully, the space tourism companies will eventually be able to reduce the cost of flights, too.

But many enterprises are already eyeing the future when it comes to space tourism—a future in low-Earth orbit (LEO). NASA itself is investing in that future through the Commercial LEO Development Program, through which it is funding the development of private space stations. As NASA and its international partners move toward retiring the ISS in the next decade or so, the agency hopes to rent facilities from private stations that will be able to host not only its professional astronauts but also commercial visitors.

Four projects have received funding from NASA’s Commercial LEO Development Program, including Axiom Space, the company that launched the Ax-1 mission. Axiom has partnered with avant-garde interior designer Philippe Starck to work on its Axiom Station. Another funded project, Starlab by Voyager Space and its subsidiary Nanoracks, has partnered with Hilton to develop astronaut accommodations.

Three of the four companies are expecting to launch their space stations by the end of the decade, but as space programs go, delays are highly likely. (NASA’s current Artemis program, for instance, was hoping to land humans on the moon in 2024, but that deadline has been pushed back to at least 2025.) Still, the future is bright for space tourism and certainly within the realm of reality—all we have to do is wait. And for travelers who have always wished to be among the stars, that wait will be worth it.

We have liftoff: Space Tourism and the Space Economy

The past year has been revolutionary for the space economy, with space tourism finally becoming a reality. While traveling to the stars seemed like a far-fetched dream, companies like SpaceX , Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic have seemingly made it possible, each having flown their first tourist-focused missions in 2021.  

Following the milestone number of successful commercial space launches in 2021, it seems like every week there are new announcements of plans for space travel. With more private citizens than ever before making the trip outside of the Earth’s atmosphere in 2022, it is clear that Space Tourism is now a reality. But what does the emergence of space tourism mean for the space economy?   

What is space tourism?

Simply put, space tourism refers to the activity of traveling into space for recreational purposes. While to many it seems like an unattainable dream, the concept of space tourism isn’t new, with Dennis Tito, the first space tourist, having paid $20 million in 2001 to go to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.   

While approximately 600 people have traveled into space, only a small fraction of them have been space tourists, meaning they traveled into space for leisure or recreational purposes, and not for any scientific research. Between 2001-2009 eight space tourists reached orbit, each of them utilizing government rockets and/or government space stations for their journey. In fact, the 2021 SpaceX voyage was the first all-private mission to orbit with the crew even planning their own itinerary.   

The rapid growth of interest in space tourism has resulted in many companies researching, designing and testing spacecraft to carry tourists to space on a regular basis. Companies such as SpaceX and Virgin Galactic are leading the space tourism industry in outlining plans to deliver various forms of commercial space travel in the near future. Individuals who one daydream of being space tourists will be able to choose from three different types of space travel; suborbital space tourism, orbital space tourism, or lunar space tourism.   

Suborbital Space Tourism

Suborbital space flights will aim to reach an altitude that will qualify as reaching space but will not achieve a full orbit. The spacecraft will fly at low speeds with its trajectory intersecting the atmosphere of the surface and will fall back to the earth after the engines are shut off. Suborbital space tourists will reach altitudes of approximately 100 kilometers and will have a few minutes in space, they will also experience some moments of weightlessness as the spacecraft free falls back to earth.  

The suborbital space tourism market is currently dominated by two competing companies: Virgin Galactic, which debuted on the public market in 2019 and Blue Origin, the private space company funded almost exclusively by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Tickets for Virgin Galactic suborbital space flights are being sold at a cost of $450,000 for the 90-minute spaceflight.   

Orbital Space Flights

Orbital space flights will reach altitudes of over 400 kilometers and orbital space tourists tend to spend days or even more than a week in space. The spacecraft will be placed on a trajectory to remain in space for at least one full orbit and should achieve the orbital velocity to remain in the orbital path. Due to the increased length, speed and distance, orbital space flights are significantly more expensive than suborbital space flights, with SpaceX’s four passengers on their September 2021 orbital space flight allegedly paying $50 million per ticket.  

While in the past orbital space tourism has been largely limited to a few flights to the International Space Station that used Russian Soyuz spacecraft, new companies entering the market are making orbital space tourism more possible. SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, has been the market leader, having launched the first all-private orbital space flight in 2021. 

Lunar Space Tourism

Lunar space tourism aims to complete full trips to the moon with a suitable lunar spacecraft. While no lunar space tourism flights have yet been launched, plans to launch Lunar tourism on the moon’s surface or around it between 2023 and 2043 have been announced.   

SpaceX announced plans for the dearMoon project in 2021, the first ever lunar space tourism mission. The project is being financed by Japanese Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, with a proposed launch in 2023. It will make use of a SpaceX Starship spacecraft with the aim of achieving a single circumlunar trajectory around the Moon. The mission is expected to last 6 days and is currently looking for eight crew members to take part in this historic project.  

The space economy

The space economy, as defined by OECD , includes the full range of activities and the use of resources that create value and benefits to human beings while exploring, researching, understanding, managing, and utilizing space. It comprises all public and private sectors involved in developing, providing and using space-related outputs, space derived products and services as well as the scientific knowledge that comes from various space research. Space tourism is a small subsector of the larger space industry that is expected to see exponential growth in the coming decades.  

The space economy can be further divided into two categories, space-for-earth and space-for-space activities. Space-for-earth activities are the activities that produce goods or services in space for use on earth. These activities currently dominate the space economy in terms of revenue and include activities such as telecommunications and internet infrastructure, earth observation capabilities, national security satellites, and more. In contrast, space-for-space activities are the activities that produce goods or services in space for use in space. These activities are currently experiencing high levels of growth, with space tourism opening the door for businesses to start creating an array of space-for-space goods and services over the next several decades.   

The space economy is one that is continuously growing and evolving alongside the development of the space sector as well as the further integration of space into our society and economy.  

Current trends in the space industry including the increasing public interest and investment in space activities worldwide, the unprecedented levels of private investment in space ventures, and the growing space industry revenues have led predictions of the space industry being the next trillion-dollar industry by 2040.  

The space tourism market

Space tourism has finally become a reality, and while the ticket cost is still unobtainable to most, the cost of booking a trip to the stars is expected to gradually decrease as companies continue to find new and innovative ways to make space tourism more efficient and inexpensive.   

Due to significant technological innovations coupled with the increased interest in having access to space, the space tourism market is expanding at a rapid growth rate.  

(Graph 1: 2021 Global Space Tourism Market Share)  

The global space tourism market size was valued at USD 598 million in 2021, with the commercial space tourism market dominating in 2021, gaining a market share of 56.7%. In 2021 alone, there were thirteen commercial spaceflight missions undertaken, with Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, SpaceX, and NASA having undertaken the majority of spaceflight missions to transport non-astronaut individuals across space and bring them back to Earth after a certain period.  

(Graph 2: U.S. Space Tourism Market Size 2020-2030)  

North America led the overall market in 2021, with a market share of 38.3%. The U.S. Space tourism market is the largest globally, valued at USD 191.6 Million in 2021. Factors including advancements in technology, rising interest in space travel, and increased focus on research and development activities for space tourism are some of the factors fueling the growth of the market. The U.S. Space tourism market is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37.1% from 2022 to 2030, meaning the space tourism market is predicted to be a multi-billion-dollar market in the coming decade.  

The future of Space Tourism  

Space tourism is expected to grow far beyond tourists traveling to space just for the ride, with orbital space flights involving tourists staying in space for a period of time, while the international space station is the only habitable structure in space now, companies have begun to look beyond this.   

Designs for Voyager Station , the first ever space hotel were released in 2019 by the Gateway Foundation. The project is now being overseen by Orbital Assembly Corporation , a space construction company, who has recently taken over the project from the Gateway Foundation and is now aiming to launch two space stations with tourist accommodation: Voyager Station, the original design, as well as a new concept design Pioneer Station . Voyager Station is scheduled to open in 2027 and will accommodate an expected 400 tourists. The Pioneer Station is expected to open in three years, housing 28 tourists at a much smaller capacity. While the international space station is primarily a place of work and research, Orbital Assembly’s space hotel fulfills a different niche; they offer a destination for space tourists. While collaborations between Orbital Assembly and the companies organizing space flight such as Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s company SpaceX have not been publicly announced, they are expected.  

It is likely that space tourism will continue to grow in the years to come, and competition between private space companies for leadership will intensify. There is no doubt that private space tourism will have a substantial economic impact. While space tourism is currently a small subsector of the larger space economy, it will redefine it in the coming decades.   

It is likely that the space tourism industry will evolve during the next decade, as barriers to entry will be reduced, competition will grow, costs will be lowered, and eventually, space travel will be affordable for everyone. The future of space tourism has the ability to positively impact many socioeconomic factors on Earth including creating jobs, educating citizens about space and fostering further innovation in the space economy.  

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Space travel is the next frontier in tourism, but is it a marketing opportunity?

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By Joanna Lewis, Head of content

The Drum Network article

This content is produced by The Drum Network, a paid-for membership club for CEOs and their agencies who want to share their expertise and grow their business.

February 28, 2024 | 8 min read

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Space tourism used to be the reserve of sci-fi. But, says Joanna Lewis of Relevance, a trip to space is increasingly a reality – if you can afford the price tag.

More and more people are taking trips beyond the Earth's atmosphere, says Joanna Lewis / Freepik

Space travel is the new frontier for ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWI), giving the world’s wealthiest travelers the chance to view life on Earth from a whole new perspective.

Commercial flights into space are becoming more routine, with the race for space travel being led by Virgin Galactic , SpaceX , Blue Origin, and Space Adventures. However, space tourism remains the reserve of the world’s richest individuals, with space travel companies focusing their marketing efforts on UHNWIs and billionaires.

According to research by UBS, the space tourism market is expected to reach a value of US$3bn (£2.4bn) by 2030. And it’s not surprising, given the global UHNW population in 2022 was 395,070, according to Wealth-X, with a combined wealth of $45,430bn. The total billionaire population stands at 3,194 individuals, with a collective wealth of $11,107bn.

Not only will space tourism add an exciting dimension to where UHNWIs vacation , but it will also provide a lucrative market for successful space tourism companies.

What are the different types of space travel ?

There are several different types of space travel, including orbital, suborbital, and lunar space tourism. Currently, space tourism is primarily focused on orbital and suborbital.

Suborbital space tourism is when the spacecraft reaches space but doesn’t break the gravitational border. Space tourism is currently dominated by suborbital spaceflights, with space travel companies Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin dominating this market. Suborbital flights typically reach altitudes of about 62 miles and give passengers just a few minutes in space and the chance to experience micro-gravity.

Orbital space tourism is when the spacecraft reaches orbit and passengers can spend up to a week orbiting Earth. SpaceX and Space Adventures are the only companies currently offering orbital space tourism.

Who are the key players in space tourism ?

The key players at the forefront of the race to bring space tourism to the masses are Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and SpaceX.

Virgin Galactic was established in 2004 by the British entrepreneur and billionaire Richard Branson. It launched its first commercial spaceflight in June 2023 for research purposes only and carried three passengers from the Italian Air Force and National Research Council.

The company took its first paying space travelers aboard Galactic O2 on August 10, 2023. The space tourism flight was launched from New Mexico and took three passengers – mother and daughter Keisha Schahaff and Anastasia Mayers, and Jon Goodwin, an 80-year-old former Olympian – to the edge of space and back, reaching an apex point of 55 miles above Earth and lasting a total of 72 minutes.

Virgin Galactic now offers a monthly cadence of spaceflights, asserting itself as a major player in space tourism. Each flight can accommodate three paying passengers, along with an accompanying astronaut.

Aerospace company Blue Origin was founded by American billionaire Jeff Bezos in 2000. Bezos traveled to space aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket in 2021, describing the experience as the “best day ever.” His journey into space lasted 10 minutes and 10 seconds and was Blue Origin’s first crewed flight. The flight also took aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, the youngest space traveler.

SpaceX is owned by billionaire Elon Musk and was founded in 2002. In 2021, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, the first orbital class rocket capable of re-flight, successfully took four passengers into orbit – 363 miles above Earth. A year later, the company, in conjunction with Axiom Space, took four passengers to the International Space Station, where they spent more than a week. According to reports, the passengers paid US$55m each for the trip.

SpaceX is the only space tourism company to send private civilians into orbit and to the International Space Station. To date, the Falcon 9 rocket has undergone 299 launches, 257 landings, and 231 re-flights. SpaceX’s Starship is the world’s most powerful launch system and in the future should be able to carry up to 100 people on long-duration, interplanetary flights.

While space tourism has gained headlines over the past few years as the industry is poised to become more accessible, it has been around for several decades. Indeed, American businessman Dennis Tito was the first space tourist in 2001, visiting the International Space Station while joining two Russian cosmonauts on a supply mission. The trip cost him a reported US$20m.

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How much does a trip to outer space cost?

The cost of space tourism has dramatically decreased since Tito's trip. However, it can vary significantly depending on the type of flight – suborbital or orbital – and on the company.

A Virgin Galactic ticket, for example, costs $450,000; however, even those with the cash to splash will have to join an 800-long waiting list.

Blue Origin does not publicly publish its flight costs. However, according to a space tourist who booked a flight in 2021 aboard Blue Origin, he paid a reported US$28m, although later had to skip the flight due to a “scheduling conflict”.

While the cost of space travel is currently prohibitive except for the world’s wealthiest individuals, there’s no doubt that as technology advances and space tourism companies reach economies of scale, space travel will become more affordable to more people.

What’s next for space tourism ?

Beyond commercial flights becoming more regular and more affordable, space tourism companies are already setting their sights on extended stays in space. In 2018, Orion Span, a galactic experience company, launched plans for an extended stay in a luxury space hotel – the Aurora Station – on the moon. The experience will reportedly set travelers back $9.5m.

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Pros and Cons of Space Tourism

People put space tourism in the same bracket as flying cars as little as twenty years ago. The starting point of space tourism can be traced back to 2001 and the first space tourist, Dennis Tito. However, this term didn’t become a buzzword until 2021, when two billionaires, Sir Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, set off to space in separate spacecraft in the same week. These two events marked the beginning of the new-generation space race.

Space tourism became available in February 2022, when Virgin Galactic started selling tickets for the next trip to space. While many people jumped on the space tourism bandwagon, others are beginning to wonder whether traveling to space as a tourist is a good idea.

This article will discuss the basics of commercial space travel, outlining its most essential advantages and disadvantages.

What Is Space Tourism?

A completely new level of sightseeing, it will become more widely available, you don’t need to be an astronaut to travel to space, new opportunities for space exploration, it will inspire more people to become astronauts, passengers will be able to experience weightlessness, it can boost scientific research, a new perspective of our planet, the possibility of finding additional resources, the possible discovery of extraterrestrial life, we may find other planets to colonize, more opportunities for employment, it could identify potential dangers to our planet, major technological advancements, endless opportunities, it contributes to global warming, few people can afford it right now, limited space, it’s not available for everyone, space tourism costs a lot of money, it’s not 100% safe, you pay a lot of money for a short trip, the issue with space junk, wasting natural resources, exposure to radiation, not going above the kármán line, out-of-date information, space sickness, all those resources could be invested elsewhere, it could put our planet at risk, space tourism – should we do it.

Before we go into the details regarding the pros and cons of space tourism, let’s talk about what this newest form of travel means.

Space tourism and space travel are not the same. What sets them apart is their purpose. Astronauts are sent to space to conduct various types of scientific research and experiments, and they go through rigorous training and preparation before they’re allowed to leave Earth. As a result, becoming an astronaut is incredibly challenging. Every year, NASA chooses a handful of people among tens of thousands of applicants.

Space tourism, or commercial space travel, refers to traveling to space for recreational reasons. People who want to become space tourists must satisfy three requirements: They must be 18 or older, physically fit, and rich. For example, one ticket for a 90-minute trip with Virgin Galactic costs $450,000, but we’ll get to that later.

There are three types of space tourism: orbital, suborbital, and lunar space tourism. The main difference between orbital and suborbital spacecraft is speed. Orbital space travel reaches an altitude of 1.3 million feet (400 kilometers), for which a spacecraft would need to travel at 17,400 miles per hour (28,000 kilometers per hour).

Suborbital rocket ships can only fly to a certain altitude (330,000 feet or 100 kilometers) because they don’t have enough power to orbit around the planet. As a result, these spacecraft must fly at a minimal speed of 3,700 miles per hour (6,000 kilometers per hour).

Most people assume that space tourism is pioneered by NASA and other government agencies. However, privately owned aerospace companies are now leading the global space tourism market. The three most important are Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The first two companies offer suborbital space travel, both licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for passenger space travel.

On the other hand, SpaceX plans to introduce orbital space tourism to the public. SpaceX rockets can reach 120 miles above the Earth, while Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic can’t achieve half that distance. Aside from SpaceX, Space Adventures, an American space tourism company is another enterprise that plans to introduce tourism flights to Earth’s orbit.

The final form of space tourism is lunar space travel, which includes orbiting around the moon or even landing on it. Space Adventures wants to introduce circumlunar flyby tours, but one ticket will be estimated at $150 million. SpaceX will also organize a space trip around the moon, which will be reached via the Starship.

Space tourism isn’t only in the hands of privately owned aerospace companies. NASA announced that space tourists, formally called private astronauts, will be allowed on board the International Space Station. They’ll be able to get there with the SpaceX Crew Dragon and the Boeing Starliner, which is currently being developed. Space tourists will be required to pay $35,000 for this trip to space.

Pros of Space Tourism

Many people are looking forward to the development of space tourism. In fact, the PEW Research Center surveyed the public’s opinion on space tourism in 2018. The survey revealed that 42% of participants stated they were definitely or probably interested.

It won’t only benefit people who want to be a part of this new era of space exploration but also space scientists. The advantages aren’t just limited to scientific and technological advancements. The dream will come true for many people who have always wanted to go to space.

Here are some of the most essential advantages of space tourism.

People have always been drawn to brand-new, unique experiences, and what could be better than viewing the Earth from a spaceship? Whether you’re a fan of science fiction or deeply fascinated by the endless wonders of our galaxy, traveling to outer space sounds like an unattainable fantasy. However, it’s closer than you might think.

People who said they were interested in space tourism in the 2018 PEW survey named three main reasons. Most participants (45%) said they wanted to experience something unique, while 29% of those surveyed wished to view the Earth from space. The others said they wanted to travel to space to learn more about our world.

Space tourists will be able to see the Earth, the Moon, the International Space Station, the Kármán Line, and many other parts of our solar system. Traveling to space will undoubtedly be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for many.

Since the beginning of space travel, only about 600 people have been to space. However, the development of space tourism will make traveling to space available for many people. According to a study by Northern Sky Research, there will be almost 60,000 space tourists by 2031.

There are currently long waiting lists for Virgin Galactic flights due to take place by the end of 2022. Although it’s nearly impossible to get a seat on this cutting-edge space vehicle right now, Virgin Galactic hopes to conduct 400 flights a year.

Even though prices for space tourism are currently going through the roof, it’s believed they will be significantly reduced when commercial space exploration becomes mainstream. One day, it may even become affordable for ordinary people.

You don’t need to be a trained astronaut to become a space tourist. Previously, the opportunity to fly to outer space was only available to astronauts. However, it will be possible for everyone who can afford it in the future.

Astronauts undergo years of preparation for a single flight, whereas space tourists receive the proper training a few days or even hours before the trip. If you want to fly with Blue Origin, you’ll only need one training day. On the other hand, Virgin Galactic’s training takes five days to complete.

The requirements for becoming a space tourist vary depending on the company. For example, if you want to fly with Virgin Galactic, you must be 18. Another important factor in traveling to space is physical fitness. You need to be relatively healthy for this adventure. People with heart problems or those who are overweight or underweight won’t be able to go.

Exploring outer space has been the goal of many government agencies and privately owned space companies ever since the 1950s. One of the most notable events of space exploration was the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. This 20-year battle gave rise to many technological advancements and scientific achievements. It was also when the two nations sent the world’s first-ever satellites, rockets, and astronauts into space.

Space tourism and space exploration are inherently connected, where one directly influences the other. Therefore, increasing interest in space tourism will renew the global interest in space exploration, leading to more opportunities.

Many children want to be astronauts when they grow up. Kids usually start with sci-fi movies and space camps before pursuing educational opportunities in engineering, science, or technology. The chance to go to space when they grow up can inspire many young minds. Many people who have visited space as tourists have stated that the experience was life-changing.

Going to space will inspire many more people to become astronauts or contribute to the space industry in another way.

Other than being able to view our planet from outer space, passengers will also get a chance to experience weightlessness. Of course, zero-gravity simulators have already been developed on Earth, like the Zero G Experience , where people can experience weightlessness without going to space.

Space tourism allows people to sample the real thing. Once the spacecraft is launched, passengers will go through a similar experience to roller coaster rides. Space tourists who booked a flight with Blue Origin will be in zero-gravity for three minutes before the space vehicle descends to Earth.

Space tourism can help collect valuable research data. Such information will be essential in the development of space travel and space exploration. This kind of data wouldn’t be provided by space tourists but by people who organize the trip to space. Scientific research could encourage various innovations and solutions to problems.

Seeing our planet from space is a unique experience that will make us realize how small we are. We tend to think that we are the center of the universe and that the problems we face in life are insurmountable. However, going into space, even for a few minutes, puts things like conflicts and other issues that can be easily solved into perspective.

Another advantage of space tourism is the possibility of finding resources that are being depleted from our planet. If spacecraft take frequent trips to the moon or other locations in outer space, there is a greater chance of finding valuable resources that can be used for various applications.

For example, resources such as water, metals, minerals, atmospheric gases, and volatile elements can be found on various celestial bodies surrounding the Earth. For example, water was already found on the moon, Mars, and in some asteroids. Oxygen is another valuable resource that’s necessary for rocket propellants.

Not only can we use the raw materials to make life easier on Earth, but those resources can be put into improving aerospace technology. In other words, space tourism might pay off in the long run.

Space tourism brings us closer to finding extraterrestrial life. The subject of aliens has always been controversial, sparking many arguments about their existence. However, even though there is no solid proof of extraterrestrial life, many scientists agree that the odds of life on other planets are high.

The more money and resources that are invested into the commercial space travel industry, the further we will be able to explore. One of the goals of space exploration is discovering life outside of Earth, and space tourism can make this happen.

Space tourism may even bring us closer to finding new planets to colonize. But unfortunately, there haven’t been any discoveries of planets that are habitable and safe for human life yet. The planet closest to Earth in terms of habitability is Kepler-452b, which seems to be the most promising candidate.

The Mars colonization project is already on the way. Elon Musk plans to take SpaceX to Mars in five to ten years. So even though moving to a new planet seems like a plot from a movie right now, who knows what the future might bring? One thing is sure – space tourism will open new doors for us and allow us to explore more of the universe.

Hundreds of thousands of people are employed in the space industry, government agencies, and private companies. The growth of space tourism will open new doors for many individuals. As a result, the sector will likely see an increase in employment in the next couple of years.

Traveling to space lets us view the Earth from a different perspective. This will help us identify dangers to our planet and prepare for potential hazards. For example, if an asteroid or a comet is heading toward Earth, we would have more time to prepare. By exploring space, we could locate some of those hazards before they even come close and prevent a potential disaster.

As interest keeps growing in space tourism, more and more private companies will want to be a part of the new-generation space race. This will lead to significant technological advancements in the aerospace sector, facilitating space tourism even more. As a result, we can expect to see bigger, faster, and better rockets in the future, which will be made for suborbital space tourism and orbital space travel.

The future of space exploration through space tourism presents countless opportunities. The Northern Sky Research space tourism study suggests that the global space tourism market will be worth $20 billion in revenue.

Space tourism may replace long-air flights. Instead of traveling 16 to 17 hours from one continent to another, space travel will enable passengers to reach their destinations in under an hour.

One day, there might even be hotels in space, allowing space tourists to enjoy the wonders of space for a longer time. This is the goal of the Orbital Assembly Corporation. Their space hotels, the Voyager Station and the Pioneer Station, will orbit the Earth. Blue Origin and Orion Span are also working on building hotels in space called the Aurora Station and the Orbital Reef.

Cons of Space Tourism

Now that we’ve gone through all the advantages of space tourism let’s look at some downsides. Space tourism is extremely expensive and inaccessible, but it can also be dangerous in several ways.

Launching a rocket creates a significant carbon footprint. Spacecraft generate soot, a harmful substance of large amounts of carbon. Once it’s released into the atmosphere, the soot from a spacecraft is absorbed by sunlight, which increases the warmth in the atmosphere.

A spacecraft must burn excessive fuel to reach space and overcome Earth’s gravity. We’re talking hundreds of tons, which can leak through the rocket and spill into the atmosphere. The harmful chemicals, along with rocket fumes, harm the ozone layer.

It’s already possible to purchase tickets for space. However, it’s costly. One ticket for a ride with Virgin Galactic costs $450,000, and that’s only for a 90-minute trip. Now, becoming a space tourist is only possible if you’re a multi-millionaire. The only people who have become space tourists are billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Sir Richard Branson. That’s why space tourism has been dubbed “the billionaire space race.”

Right now, both Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin have enough room for a maximum of six passengers. However, if we were to include the two pilots, they could only accommodate four more people. For that reason, those who wish to participate in the space exploration experience must book tickets several years in advance. More than 600 reservations have already been made for Virgin Galactic space tours.

In other words, if you were thinking about buying a ticket for a space trip that will take place this year, you can forget about it. That being said, SpaceX announced they were working on a spacecraft with enough room for up to 100 passengers.

As mentioned before, not everyone will be able to become a space tourist. Even if you have the money and you’re old enough, your health and physical condition could prevent you from participating in space tourism.

Those allowed to travel to space need to be in pretty good shape. Aerospace companies have different rules and requirements. For example, Blue Origin only lets you buy tickets if you can climb seven flights of stairs in under 90 seconds. People who fail to meet their requirements are automatically eliminated.

There are also different height and weight requirements. For example, you can’t weigh less than 110 pounds or more than 223 pounds to become a space tourist.

Space tourism isn’t only expensive for the passengers but for the private space company as well. For example, a return trip to the International Space Station with the Boeing Starliner or the SpaceX Crew Dragon will cost around $50 million.

The trips to the International Space Station carried out by Space Adventures from 2001 to 2009 cost $20 to $30 million for eight- to 14-day trips. The more recent trip to the International Space Station cost $55 million when Axiom Space sent the Crew Dragon Endeavor spacecraft in June 2022. The space tourists were there for 17 days.

Space tourism is still a generally new concept. In fact, Blue Origin has only carried out three space tourism launches so far, while Virgin Galactic went just once. Space travel continues to be dangerous due to many factors, such as inadequate safety protocols and lack of proper regulation. Traveling to space isn’t safe, so we must consider the worst-case scenario. If the spacecraft crashes, there won’t be a way to save any passengers.

Space tourists will be required to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a short time in space. For example, if you choose to travel with Blue Origin, you will only spend a few minutes in zero gravity, for which you would have to pay $200,000.

Other aerospace companies offer longer trips. For example, Virgin Galactic will send their spacecraft into space for three hours. Similarly, the New Shepard will be in space for approximately 11 minutes, while the Virgin VSS Unity flight takes two and a half hours.

Space junk refers to man-made debris and satellites that are no longer active and always orbit around our planet. While testing new rockets, launching them into space, and even on space missions, these rockets create a large amount of waste. In the 60 years of human space travel, we have generated over half a million items of space junk.

Space junk is another form of pollution that directly affects the Earth. Not to mention that space junk can also damage active satellites and spacecraft that might be close by. Space junk is dangerous because all those micro shards accumulate into larger piles of debris.

If the space mission is successful, all the investments and resources put into the project will pay off one way or another. However, if the experimentation fails, the resources will have been spent for nothing. The same applies to space tourism. If we were to look at a trip to space from that perspective, we would have to ask ourselves, is it worth spending so much money and resources just to send six people to space for three minutes?

One of the dangers of being an astronaut is constant exposure to harmful radiation from the sun, which leads to a greater risk of cancer and other health problems. Of course, space tourists who only spend a few minutes or hours in space shouldn’t have anything to worry about. But those who spend days or weeks in space might want to consider this factor.

The Kármán Line is a widely accepted border between the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. It’s roughly 100 kilometers (62 miles) above sea level, located in the Earth’s thermosphere. Although no globally accepted law defines where space begins or ends, most regulatory agencies agree that the Kármán line is the closest we have to a border.

Suborbital spacecraft belonging to Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic won’t be able to cross the Kármán Line, which is considered “real” space. However, this may change in the future.

No matter how fast space technology might be developing, space scientists still use outdated information for some matters. Unfortunately, outdated information is useless and can also be dangerous and cause serious issues.

The problem with space research is that most of the celestial bodies that aren’t in our solar system are light-years away. Unfortunately, measuring time and distance in space is difficult, so we often receive inaccurate information.

Even for three minutes, exposure to zero gravity can affect the human body. To be more specific, passengers won’t have any side effects while they’re in space. The issues start when they return to Earth when space tourists experience space adaptation syndrome (SAS).

This is more commonly known as space sickness, like the space version of motion sickness. Space sickness manifests itself through loss of muscle power, bone resorption, loss of consciousness, and other short- and long-term effects. However, such symptoms are more likely to affect astronauts who spend months in space.

Space tourists may experience mild symptoms, like headaches, nausea, puffiness, temporary anemia, loss of appetite, and similar. They can even feel sick a few days after their journey to space. That’s why space tourism will only be available for passengers who are in good health.

Space tourism is a multibillion-dollar industry, and its revenue is only expected to grow. Since so much money is being invested, it raises many controversies. The Earth is in a lot of trouble, financially, politically, and environmentally. As a result, many politicians, humanitarians, and public figures have tried to highlight other matters that require our immediate attention. This includes poverty, global warming, world hunger, and many more issues that could benefit from these resources.

Last but not least, space tourism can be dangerous because it puts our planet at risk. This is another scenario that could be taken from a sci-fi movie. But in the future, traveling to space might have grave consequences.

Space tourism is a controversial topic. On the one hand, it can be a wonderful experience that allows us to view our planet and other celestial bodies from space. In addition, it opens up new doors for space exploration, inspires technological advancements, and boosts scientific research. But on the other hand, space tourism is extremely expensive; it accelerates global warming, is only available for a limited number of people, and can be very dangerous.

Whatever your opinion on space tourism, there’s no stopping its advancement. People will always be drawn to new things no one has experienced before, which is just one of the reasons the commercial space travel industry will grow. One day, we might even have hotels on the moon or other planets. There’s no telling what the future might bring.

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How Much Will It Cost To Be a Space Tourist?

I n October 2021, actor William Shatner explored the final frontier as the oldest person to ever cross the Karman line — the commonly accepted divide between the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space.

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Shatner traveled on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin spacecraft, New Shepard, as the billionaire’s guest , per People . Other celebrities, including Michael Strahan, have also traveled on the New Shepard. Flights on the prestigious rocket range from free — if you are invited by Bezos — up to $28 million, according to Observer .

A flight on Virgin Galactic’s suborbital rocket plane costs $450,000, but it only reaches the edge of space, to an altitude of more than 50 miles. The New Shepard, on the other hand, reaches an altitude of 66 miles.

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Is Space Tourism Actually Going To Happen?

This decade has seen more civilians and non-astronauts venture into space than ever before. Yet, the space tourism industry hasn’t quite taken off as many expected.

In the town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, Spaceport America sits largely unused. The commercial spaceport cost $218.5 million in public money, funded partly by sales tax from local businesses. The venture was expected to bring in $550 million in economic activity for Sierra County and create roughly 4,300 jobs, The New York Times reported.

Yet, following the first flight carrying people in May 2021, the project has only generated roughly 800 jobs and brought in an extra $138 million to the county.

Learn More: 11 Expensive Vacation Destinations That Will Be Cheaper in 2024

Virgin Galactic Slows Operations for Spaceport America

Virgin Galactic, the spaceport’s primary tenant, made six launches this year but recently announced it would suspend flights in mid-2024 following layoffs that saw 185 employees let go.

The cutbacks were designed to enable Virgin Galactic to shift focus to a new class of suborbital space planes, putting launches from Spaceport America on the back burner temporarily.

Richard Branson — founder of the Virgin Group, parent company of Virgin Galactic — said the private space company holds about $1 billion in capital, enough to carry the company through 2026. “We don’t have the deepest pockets,” he told The Financial Times .

If space tourism is to become accessible, turning Spaceport America into the attraction the people of Truth or Consequences had hoped it could be, prices will have to drop. Meanwhile, the price of the cheapest ticket, unless you’re friends with a billionaire, is more than the median home price in the U.S., which is $411,887, according to Redfin.

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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com : How Much Will It Cost To Be a Space Tourist?

Space: The $1.8 trillion opportunity for global economic growth

The space industry is approaching the next frontier, with each week bringing news of a major development somewhere in the world. Be it a test of a new rocket system, the launch of an innovative satellite, or a robotic exploration mission safely landing on the moon, activity in space is accelerating.

About the authors

This article is a collaborative effort by Alizée Acket-Goemaere, Ryan Brukardt , Jesse Klempner , Andrew Sierra, and Brooke Stokes, representing views from McKinsey’s Aerospace & Defense Practice and the World Economic Forum.

We estimate that the global space economy will be worth $1.8 trillion by 2035 (accounting for inflation), up from $630 billion in 2023. This figure includes both “backbone” applications—such as those for satellites, launchers, and services like broadcast television or GPS—and what we term “reach” applications”—those for which space technology helps companies across industries generate revenues. Uber, for example, relies on the combination of satellite signals and chips inside smartphones to connect drivers and riders and provide directions in every city.

In 2023, backbone applications made up $330 billion, or slightly greater than 50 percent, of the global space economy, while reach applications represented $300 billion. The expected annual growth rate for backbone and reach applications is twice the projected rate of GDP growth over the next decade (exhibit). 1 2023–2035 Global Nominal GDP growth forecast – Average scenario – McKinsey, Oxford Economics (January 2024).   For comparison, the value estimates for space are similar to those for semiconductors (estimated at $600 billion in 2021 with 6 to 8 percent annual growth into the 2030s) 2 Ondrej Burkacky, Julia Dragon, and Nikolaus Lehmann, “ The semiconductor decade: A trillion-dollar industry ,” McKinsey, April 1, 2022. and roughly half of the projection for the global payments industry (estimated to reach $3.2 trillion in revenues by 2027). 3 On the cusp of the next payments era: Future opportunities for banks , McKinsey, September 18, 2023.

The growth drivers for the space economy include the need for greater connectivity via satellites, higher demand for positioning and navigation services on mobile phones, and increased demand for insights powered by AI and machine learning. These innovations are delivering greater benefits to a more diverse set of stakeholders than ever before, including companies in industries ranging from food and beverage to transportation. They may also help solve some of the world’s greatest challenges, such as climate change.

This report by the World Economic Forum and McKinsey shines a light on the important developments that will shape the space industry, and the industries adjacent to it, through 2035. As part of our research, we interviewed over 60 leaders and experts across the space sector and other segments to get a detailed view of the trajectory of space technology and its impact—often indirect—on a range of sectors. The insights from these interviews, combined with market forecasts and other data, will help answer three critical questions:

• How big will space’s “backbone” and its broader “reach” be across the world, by 2035?
• How will the essential factors determine the trajectory of the future space economy?
• How can space change the world beyond revenue growth?

For more information, including a detailed assessment of the space economy outlook by segment, download the full report, Space: The $1.8 trillion opportunity for economic growth .

Alizée Acket-Goemaere is a consultant in McKinsey’s Paris office; Ryan Brukardt is a senior partner in the Miami office; Jesse Klempner is a partner in the Washington, DC, office; Andrew Sierra is an associate partner in the Chicago office; and Brooke Stokes is a partner in the Southern California office.

This article was edited by Eileen Hannigan, a senior editor in the Boston office.

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Brands in Space: What’s behind the rush to advertise in the final frontier?

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A lot has changed in the 50 years between NASA’s last Apollo mission and the landing of Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander this February. For one thing, the Apollo mission didn’t brandish the Columbia Sportswear logo.

The unlikely partnership between Intuitive Machines and the outdoor apparel company created the first U.S.-built commercial spacecraft to touch down on the moon, highlighting an explosion of private sector space endeavors. But, why Columbia Sportswear?

As NASA waits to decommission the International Space Station in 2030, the government agency is helping private aerospace companies like Intuitive Machines, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezo’s Blue Origin “advance capabilities for science, exploration, or commercial development of the Moon,” according to NASA’s website .

In addition to a possible lunar economy, the privatization of the space industry is creating a competitive market for space tourism. Take, for example, Blue Origin’s spaceflight booking page , or the British company Virgin Galactic selling 800 space tourism tickets, with prices as steep as $450,000 each, in June 2023. The company performed its first space tourism flight carrying private passengers the next month. As with all commercial travel comes the opportunity of sponsored ads and amenities from other companies.

Brands using space as a backdrop to market their products that have seemingly nothing to do with it isn’t anything new — see KitKat and Estée Lauder chucking their merchandise into the expanse for some eye-catching images. And with the surge of private companies developing technologies to reach space, these partnership opportunities may multiply. But, just how effective is this marketing strategy?

In Columbia’s case, part of Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander was layered with patented material called Omni-Heat, which can be found in their bulkier coats, and was said to be “protecting [the lunar lander] from extreme temperatures in space,” according to the company’s promotional web campaign.

“They make black puffer coats, like all of their competitors,” said Ian Parkman, associate professor of marketing at the University of Portland.

Parkman sees this marketing strategy as leaning into hyperbole to differentiate Columbia’s coats from the countless other options consumers are given by, say, The North Face, Patagonia and other apparel brands.

“It just becomes increasingly difficult for those firms to find any point of differentiation,” Parkman said. “No one is meant to really think that the Columbia material is really protecting the spacecraft… But if it works in this extreme environment, it’s just good enough for me walking around on a rainy Saturday in Portland, Oregon.”

Just seven days after landing on the moon, Intuitive Machines announced its lunar lander mission ended, citing “harsh temperatures of the lunar night” as the reason. All is not lost, though.

Parkman said that Columbia Sportswear is now the apparel brand that can be associated with space, which can be seen as innovative and exciting. But, is space really exciting to consumers anymore?

“I don’t know if young people care as much about space as much as maybe even those of us a few years older,” Parkman said. “I’m looking at the webpage right now, you know, they’re talking about Apollo in 1972. You might as well be talking about the colonial era.”

Parkman said the ad’s messaging is more “salient” to an older target audience, who may also be more likely to splurge on products like the Omni-Heat hooded jacket that retails for $180.

“Gen Z might be interested in other messaging from Columbia,” he said.

Anna Kim is an assistant professor at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism who specializes in advertising and digital storytelling. She said the marketing value of Columbia’s partnership with Intuitive Machines also lies in the aspirations of consumers.

“As consumers, we care what’s in there for me? How that makes me feel, and then how [products] can help me to express who I am, who I want to be,” Kim said. “Some people dreamed of traveling to the moon and space.”

And now that possibility is closer to consumers than ever before.

NASA is assisting private companies in building commercial space stations like Voyager Space’s Starlab — a low-Earth orbital designed for astronauts to conduct scientific research in place of the ISS after its shutdown — which will be launched in 2028 at the earliest. Hilton partnered with Voyager Space to design the interior of the space station in hopes to make a more comfortable zero gravity environment.

“We’re looking at this through the lens of space tourism,” Hilton Senior Vice President of Global Design Larry Traxler said. “How do we elevate the stay?”

This isn’t the first time Hilton and Voyager Space partnered for a space stunt. In late 2019, the global hospitality company Nanoracks — most of which was acquired by Voyager Space the following year — and Zero G Kitchen, a food development company creating products for space, teamed up to bake a batch of the famous Doubletree cookies in the ISS. 

According to internal data from Hilton, the experiment garnered a 422% increase in brand conversation during the initial launch week back in November 2019, along with other metrics meant to trace the collaboration’s ROI — which, Kim said, is almost impossible to do with space stunt digital ad campaigns like Columbia Sportswear’s.

“It’s kind of a huge investment, but it’s not really giving you any ROI,” Kim said. “That’s risky.”

Despite the risk and unclear rewards of space partnerships, Traxler said opportunities like Starlab can differentiate Hilton from competitors, marketing Hilton as a leading, innovative brand in the hospitality industry. He added that he receives emails regularly from other companies asking about Hilton’s experience working in the space sector.

“You know, it’s pretty exciting to think about the new Starlab orbiting the Earth at 17,000 miles per hour with the Hilton logo on it,” Traxler said.

In 2021, the Space Foundation reported that the global space economy hit $469 billion. Traxler said he has no concerns about demand for space tourism once companies are equipped to send consumers to space regularly, and that pre-launch programs preparing people for space travel, as well as post-launch medical facilities, are being developed for the future as well.

Although space marketing may seem like one big leap for ad-kind, companies promoting products in the final frontier may not only be looking to differentiate their brand, but also to establish a stake in the ever-growing space industry.

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Iran missile and drone attack on Israel – what we know so far

Israel’s military has reported minor damage after Iran launched dozens of drones and missiles towards it late on Saturday

• Iran attack on Israel – live updates
• Full report: Iran launches drones and cruise missiles against Israel

Iran launched hundreds of drones as well as cruise missiles towards Israel , in the Islamic Republic’s first ever direct attack on the Jewish state, in response to the 1 April strike on an Iranian diplomatic building in the Syrian capital, Damascus, which killed a senior figure in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards and eight other officers.

Benny Gantz, a member of the war cabinet, said that Israel will exact a price from Iran in response to its mass missile and drone attack when the time is right. His comments came ahead of a war cabinet meeting alongside Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the country’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant.

Tehran has warned it will strike again with greater force if Israel or the US retaliate for the Iranian strike on Israel by more 300 drones and missiles on Saturday night. The air raids , the Islamic Republic’s first ever direct attack on the Israeli state, brought a years-long shadow war into the open and threatened to draw the region into a broader conflagration as Israel said it was considering its response.

However, the attack, mostly launched from inside Iran, caused only modest damage in Israel as most were shot down with the help of the US, Britain and Jordan. An air force base in southern Israel was hit, but continued to operate as normal and a seven-year-old child was seriously hurt by shrapnel. There were no other reports of serious damage. Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm Daniel Hagari said that 99% of the launches had been intercepted.

Most of the Iranian drones flying over Syria’s airspace during Tehran’s strikes overnight were downed by Israeli and US jets before reaching their targets in Israel, two western intelligence sources told Reuters .

The UN security council will hold an emergency meeting on Sunday at the request of Israel’s ambassador to the UN, the council’s president said in a statement.

Iran informed Turkey in advance of its planned operation against Israel, a Turkish diplomatic source has told Reuters . The source also said that the US conveyed to Iran via Ankara that its operation must be “within certain limits”. These reports come after Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian , said in a meeting with foreign ambassadors in Tehran that Iran had informed the US that its attacks against Israel will be “limited” and for self-defence only.

John Kirby, the White House’s top national security spokesperson, told ABC’s This Week programme on Sunday that the US will continue to help Israel defend itself, but does not want war with Iran. “We don’t seek escalated tensions in the region. We don’t seek a wider conflict,” Kirby said. News outlet Axios reported that Joe Biden , the US president, had told Netanyahu that he would oppose an Israeli counterattack against Iran and that the prime minister should “take the win”.

UK Royal Air Force fighter jets and refuelling aircraft were also involved in Israel’s defence, taking off from bases in Cyprus. Their role, according to the UK Ministry of Defence, was to fill in for the US air force in the sorties against Islamic State normally carried out over Iraq and north-eastern Syria, but also to intercept Iranian drones if they came into the UK area of operations.

World leaders have condemned Iran’s attack, with regional powers including Saudi Arabia and Egypt calling for restraint. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said: “I am deeply alarmed about the very real danger of a devastating region-wide escalation. I urge all parties to exercise maximum restraint to avoid any action that could lead to major military confrontations on multiple fronts in the Middle East.”

Jordan’s prime minister, Bisher Khasawneh , warned that any escalation in the region would lead to “dangerous paths”, joining a chorus of condemnation from world leaders to the attack. Other countries including the UK, Spain, the US, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and China, have called for restraint amid fears of a regional escalation of conflict across the Middle East. Iran’s foreign ministry has summoned the ambassadors of the UK , France , and Germany to question what it referred to as their “irresponsible stance” regarding Tehran’s retaliatory strikes on Israel, the semi-official Iranian Labour news agency reported .

Major airlines across the Middle East, including Emirates Airlines and Qatar Airways , announced they would resume some of their operations in the region after cancelling or rerouting some flights in response to Iran’s attack on Israel. Israel said it had reopened its airspace as of 7:30am local time on Sunday morning, with Beirut airport also reopening this morning. Several Iranian airports, including Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International, however, have cancelled flights until Monday.

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