Space tourism for everyone

Countries are closing down, but will space open up for tourists?The quarantine has closed the door on world travel for many of us, but Virgin Galactic offers an alternative — space tourism. Virgin Galactic is a company founded by billionaire Richard Branson to organize commercial flights to near-Earth orbit aboard the SpaceShipTwo spacecraft. The total flight time is 2.5 hours, including 5–6 minutes of weightlessness.This sounds tempting, especially considering that prices for flights to open countries have become astronomical. However, recent news fuels increasing uncertainty about the imminent launch of mass space flights: during the final test of the tourist spacecraft on December 13, an accident occurred, and the engine failed.The company claims that the flight failure will have only a minor impact on the schedule of future tours. But it is hard to believe, as the start date for mass flights has been postponed almost every year. Back in February 2020, Virgin Galactic planned to launch its first tour by the end of the year. The reasons lie not only in technical aspects but also in regulatory requirements. Mass flights will remain prohibited until the company can prove their 100% safety.[caption id="attachment_217" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Virgin Galactic, Image source: aopa.org[/caption] Which will happen first: will terrestrial tourism normalize, or will Virgin Galactic complete its first tour?As early as 2017, Richard Branson stated that 900 people had already purchased tickets for a flight at a price of $250,000. At the same time, the spacecraft's capacity is 6 passengers and 2 pilots. Surprisingly, even the endless postponement of space tours and accidents do not deter potential customers. Virgin Galactic announced the resumption of sales in 2021, with the number of applications already exceeding 8,000. Demand is growing so rapidly that the company decided to charge a deposit from interested parties.[caption id="attachment_218" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Cabin interior, Image source: psm7.com[/caption] Virgin Galactic's direct competitor is Blue Origin, with its New Shepard spacecraft. The company was created by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon. The flight principle of New Shepard differs from SpaceShipTwo: the Virgin Galactic spacecraft is a "spaceplane" and reaches its launch altitude using the White Knight Two carrier aircraft, whereas New Shepard takes off vertically like a full-fledged rocket. The duration of a New Shepard flight will be 11 minutes, with tourists experiencing weightlessness for 4 minutes. Other companies are also working on space tours: Boeing, Roscosmos, and SpaceX. However, the distance and cost of their tours differ from those of New Shepard and SpaceShipTwo.Going on a space tour is not the same as visiting the International Space Station (ISS). The most realistic option has become suborbital flights, for which the spacecraft only needs to be lifted to an altitude of about 100 km (the ISS is at 400 km), meaning there is no need to accelerate to the first cosmic velocity. The principle of suborbital flights was used by NASA as early as its first flights in 1961, but commercialization was only achieved half a century later. The cost of such a flight is less than $100,000, whereas a flight to the ISS costs tens of millions. Throughout history, only 7 tourist flights to the ISS have been made, with the last one occurring 11 years ago. The differences are indeed significant: a tour on the ISS can last several hours or even days, while suborbital flights offer less than 10 minutes of weightlessness.Despite all the nuances, the prospect that space flights will soon become available to the masses no longer seems like a plot from a science fiction movie. After all, once even air travel was available only to the "chosen few." Let's hope that technology and competition will do their job, and space tours will become accessible to us as well.On the other hand, once space tourism becomes available to everyone, perhaps the charm will disappear. Is it worth paying hundreds of thousands of dollars when, in reality, you will not be in space but somewhere "near" it? Perhaps similar feelings can be experienced in zero-gravity flights offered by aerospace centers. For example, from the company "Country of Space Tourism" in the Moscow region, with a cost of no more than $4,000.