Galt Global Review

Branson’s suborbital space flights, which will take six passengers for a 15-minute joyride going out 100km or so (until passengers can see the horizon of Earth in space) comes at a price of $200,000. Not cheap, but so far, more than 150 reservations and $13.1 million in deposits have been made, many enthusiasts paying the whole sum up front. The demand proves it: private citizens want to go into space, moreover, they are willing to pay a lot of money for it.

This is only the beginning of space tourism. Market studies conducted by NASA and many other organizations show that not only is the market for this fledgling industry already out there now, but that it will continue to grow rapidly as the cost of sending people into space decreases. Consider, after all, how air-flight travel began as something only afforded by the very rich, until competition and innovation inevitably dropped prices to a level that allowed more and more people to participate.

Space tourism is expected to follow this same path, especially as the amount of private investment being spent on research and development increases. In fact, the most exciting developments are not those which involve big governments and mega-funded projects. Space tourism is becoming a fast-impending reality because of the projects undertaken by private enterprises to make spaceflight a money-making venture.
The spacecraft that Virgin will use, for example, is a modification of SpaceShipOne, the rocket that came to notoriety in 2004 when it won the $10 million Ansari X prize. The top prize in this privately-funded competition was awarded to the first private organisation to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space. Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, was the big backer of SpaceShipOne, investing $25m into the project.

Since 1998, private-sector spending on space applications has begun to exceed government spending on it. A group of influential entrepreneurs, including Branson, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, Paypal founder Elon Musk, Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, and John Carmack, the creator of Doom, to name a few, have been backing space-related ventures since the mid-90’s. Most of these ventures, including suborbital space tourism, space hotels and solar satellites, don’t exist yet. Yet all have the potential to generate a lot of money over the next few decades.

In the nearer future, the US government is already set to begin contracts with the private sector to deliver cargo into space. This echoes a similar progression from a century ago, when cargo delivered via airmail created a market for civilian spaceflights.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is also currently reviewing proposals from New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas to secure “hubs” for private space travel – the long-term economic benefits of which are considered to be substantial. Some of these proposals could be approved this year, with space tourists being able to secure flights within the next few years. In Texas, the FAA is considering two proposed spaceports, one of which would be a private spaceport on 165,000 acres of ranch land bought by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. From here Bezos’ company, Blue Origin, will begin suborbital flight tests within the next few years.