Sustainable Space Tourism

An Introduction

Annette Toivonen

• Publisher: Channel View Publications
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781845418045
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

This book explores the relationship between space tourism and the discourse in sustainability and futures research. It offers comprehensive information on the current understanding of the space tourism industry and assesses the possible impacts of space tourism on the environment, economics, legislation and society. The volume aims to encourage more dialogue and critical examinations of aspects of space tourism related to future sustainability. From data gathered from empirical research, it provides a vision for the future of sustainable space tourism. It will be of interest to students and researchers in tourism, sustainability and futures studies, as well as individual space tourist 'hopefuls', space tourism industry operators and tourism policy regulators.

1 Introducing Space Tourism

We are entering a new space age and I hope this will create a new unity. Space exploration has already been a great unifier, we seem able to cooperate between nations in space in a way we can only envy on Earth.

Stephen Hawking, 2016

Introduction

By our very nature, humans are exploratory creatures and the Earth is no longer an adventurous enough place for some experienced tourists. Space tourism could be considered a new sector of adventure tourism, providing a novel opportunity to experience the extreme unknown (Toivonen, 2017). Expanding tourism into outer space could also prove to be a hugely significant endeavour for humanity, as travelling beyond the biosphere may fundamentally alter how we view ourselves, our place in the universe and our relationship to the Earth (Cohen & Spector, 2019). However, while space tourism has appeared within the context of adventure tourism and extreme sports in the tourism literature, these classifications are slightly problematic: actual space travel offers the tourist very few opportunities for expressing mastery over oneself or the environment. The space tourist is primarily a passive traveller, and all ‘mastery’ is left to professionals doing all the essential work required to make the space flight a success (Spector, 2020).

This chapter explores the history of space tourism, highlighting momentous historical milestones and governmental roles in the development of space tourism, followed by insights into the new space economy. It will then explore different space tourism activities, and introduce the main companies currently competing for the status of becoming the world’s first private space tourism operator. Finally, it will consider safety aspects and the implications for the human body of visiting a space environment.

Historical Milestones

That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.

Neil Armstrong on his first step onto the Moon on 20 July 1969

The first century of aviation saw the industry move from the Wright brothers’ miniature ‘Flyer’ to the development of passenger rockets to the Moon. However, space travel remains very different from aeroplane aviation, which has continued to be a growing and privately operated global industry though, until the 2010s, mainly a government monopoly (Finnair, 2008). Even though the 2010s saw the emergence of a new space economy combining private start-ups and entrepreneurs with traditional governmental actors, the argument that private enterprise has only factored prominently in space exploration in recent years has been opposed by MacDonald (2017) who, in his book The Long Space Age, demonstrated that private companies have actually always played a prominent role. Private space exploration, not including actual travel, can be traced back to the 19th and early 20th centuries when dozens of astronomical observatories were privately funded in America, with comparable relative economic significance to modern robotic spacecraft (MacDonald, 2017).

Occasionally, the feasibility of potential commercial space tourism has been under investigation, especially in research connected to NASA, showing enormous potential demand, at least based on people’s desires to experience the Hollywood movie-styled setting of space. Over the past six decades, since the Soviet Union started the space race in 1961, there have been many visions about what space travel and tourism would entail, and what kind of conceptual designs of passenger space vehicles and infrastructure would be available.

During the Second World War, Germany’s rocket programme proved the most significant transformative force for developing space technology. The first successful space flight was achieved in Germany on 3 October 1942, the first step on the path to suborbital passenger space flights (Launius, 2019).

Do you realize what we accomplished today? Today the spaceship was born. This third day of October 1942 is the first new era in transportation, that of space travel. (Walter Dornberger, 1942, following the first successful space flight on V2)

Instead of this possible new transportation scenario, rocket development was dominated by Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, which led to the production of tens of thousands of long-range missiles, resulting in a more than half-century delay in developing passenger space travel. In this light, the rockets used to launch satellites today, rather than being considered ‘futuristic’, could reasonably be described as ‘obsolescent’, as they could have been replaced by reusable launch vehicles several decades ago if policymakers had so chosen (Cole, 2015).

The US space programme emerged in large part because conquering space represented the ultimate symbolic power during the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union were fearful of each other’s capabilities and intentions (Launius, 2019). The Soviet Union’s space programme declared a victory by successfully launching the first human being, Yuri Gagarin, into space on 12 April 1961. Orbiting the Earth, his flight lasted 108 minutes on the Soviet Union’s Vostok spacecraft and, following his safe return to Earth, Gagarin became a cultural hero in the Soviet Union (Redd, 2018).

This victory motivated the United States to adopt the attitude of ‘saving’ the planet from ‘evil intentions’. In his speech in May 1961, President Kennedy famously declared, ‘If we are to win the battle that is going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, if we are to win the battle for men’s minds… I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth’. The national hero attitude towards the Soviet Union’s first cosmonaut was also reflected on early US astronauts, which helped NASA to accomplish bold future space plans with large budgets and start the race to the Moon (Ashford, 2002).

Project Apollo, which ran from 1961 to 1972 at a cost of $153 billion (in 2019 currency equivalent), presented the greatest engineering achievement of all time with the goal of the first human lunar landing on the Moon (Apollo, 2019). On 20 July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the Moon’s surface, with Armstrong’s world-famous words leading the way forward for future human endeavours in space. However, the American public questioned the value and cost of undertaking further human expeditions to the Moon at a time when society was in crisis over the Vietnam War, race relations and urban problems (Launius, 2019). The last Apollo mission was completed in 1972, resulting in the world-famous picture of planet Earth, The Blue Marble, that later became a symbol of environmental movements.

The 1960s space race between the United States and the Soviet Union provided a great opportunity to start forming and transforming space transportation for public use as well; however, this prospect was completely overlooked, with consequences that still have an impact today. Satellites have been launched using ballistic missiles or similar developments, with the fundamental disadvantage that they cannot be reused, creating higher launch costs and more emissions into the environment. The United States has been the leading power for most of the existing ‘space age’ and has carried responsibility for further developments of launchers and feasible planning for space vehicles.

Fully reusable launchers were still widely considered both feasible and the next logical step in the 1960s, but were not advanced for a number of reasons, primarily short-term invested interests, budget pressures and the political environment creating a lack of desire to pursue and further advance such projects (Ashford, 2002). Orbital space flights traditionally used launchers with complex single-use components based on ballistic missile technology. The X-15 model (from 1968) was the only fully reusable vehicle to have been to space over many decades; it had the capability to reach space and the ability to land like a conventional aeroplane, using wings for lift. Despite design teams at large aerospace companies carrying out studies on reusable launch vehicles, it wasn’t until 2018 that private sector space tourism operator SpaceX introduced its reusable space vehicle in action.

First Space Tourists

The desire to connect with what lies beyond the Earth can be traced back to the early planetary science of Galileo, Greek astronomy, Aboriginal dreaming stories about the stars and even Captain Cook’s first voyage to the South Pacific, in which his actual goal was to observe the transit of Venus across the Sun (Cater, 2019). The private sector’s role in generating interest in space became obvious in America during the 19th century when many space observatories were built and funded privately (MacDonald, 2017). Later, various Hollywood productions further fed the human desire to explore the unknown and, during the 1960s, Pan American World Airways opened its first reservation lists for their first passenger flight to the Moon. The list, with over 93,000 names, was only closed decades later, upon the airline’s cash-strapped demise in 1991.

In 2001, American Dennis Tito became the world’s first space tourist to travel on board a Russian Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station (ISS). His trip made the option of space travel real for millions of ‘ordinary’ people without experience as astronauts. Later in the decade, wealthy businessmen who were able to afford the $20–$35 million cost also took journeys: South African Mark Shuttleworth (2002), American Gregory Olsen (2005) and Hungarian Charles Simoyi, who took two trips in 2007 and 2009 (Cater, 2019). A valid question, however, is whether these pioneering space travellers can be called ‘tourists’, as they all underwent months of training to become temporary astronauts, as well as participating in some scientific experiments in the space environment.

Space Adventures has so far been the only private company to arrange for paying passengers to go into space, in conjunction with the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation and Rocket and Space Corporation Energia (Space Adventures, 2019). The publicised price for flights to the ISS aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft ranged from $20 to $40 million and seven space tourists made eight space flights between 2001 and 2009. Some space tourists signed contracts with third parties to conduct certain research activities while in orbit. Russia halted orbital space tourism in 2010 due to the increase in the ISS crew size, using the seats that would previously have been sold to paying space flight participants for expedition crews. Orbital tourist flights had been set to resume in 2015, but the expected date for an operational start may now be in 2021 (Wikipedia, 2019b).

Box 1.1 NASA’s Space Tourism

• During the 1970s and 1980s there were various proposals (e.g. Space Habitation Design Associates) for removable passenger module cabins that could fit into the shuttle’s cargo bay, carrying up to 74 passengers into orbit for up to three days.

• In the early 1980s, NASA introduced the Space Flight Participant Programme.

• In 1984, Charles D. Walker became the first non-government astronaut to fly with his employer, McDonnell Douglas, paying a sum equivalent to $96,000 today for his flight.

• In 1985, Christa McAuliffe was chosen to become the first teacher in space. Unfortunately, the Challenger disaster ended in tragedy at launch and the programme was cancelled.

• In 2003, a programme attempting to launch a second journalist into space was cancelled because of the Columbia di...