I love tourism and how it allows one to explore new places, cultural and sights and expand your viewpoint. For some people though, travelling planet earth is not enough for them and they want to head off to even greater horizons – or I guess lack of them, in wanting to travel to space. Something which we may soon be able to do if the Elon Musk’s’ SpaceX have their way.
Just how distant is that future though? Well, sadly far too away for the sci-fi fan who thought it would be a thing in the year 2000 already, but at least we are getting closer – and it appears that for SpaceX, they foresee a date of around end 2021 or early 2022 as the date when they might be ready to launch their first private citizen’s into space, as revealed in a recent tweet.
The company announced an agreement on Tuesday with Space Adventures, a space tourism business that has helped seven different private citizens take trips to (and from) the International Space Station aboard Russia’s Soyuz rocket and spacecraft to put four people into space.
No costs were disclosed nor details of how the super-rich tourists that could possibly afford this would train for the trip, but what was revealed was that the tourists will fly in the human-rated version of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and that they will orbit Earth at two to three times the roughly 250-mile height of the ISS. A view that is bound to be a memorable and once-in-a-lifetime experience for those willing to pay for it.
SpaceX will probably not be the first in this space race as Virgin Galactic are planning to send their first tourists up in space later this year, That though is to experience just a few minutes of weightlessness about their plane-like spaceship and not as long a trip like this. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is promising customers a similar amount of time in space, though in a spacecraft that’s more similar to SpaceX’s Dragon capsule. Both of these companies though are charging ticket prices of around $200 000 for these trips, so if you were to add the extra length of SpaceX’s flight, the prices could easily double or triple here.
I would love to experience space, but just don’t quite have that kind of money lying around. If you are feeling benevolent and willing to let me write a review for the sake of science and fun, I would gladly take that kind of money off your hands.
Last Updated: February 19, 2020
Original Heretic
February 19, 2020 at 16:18
Terra Firma is my friend.
Llama In The Rift
February 19, 2020 at 16:40
Would rather buy a Nvidia Cyberpunk 2077 Themed GPU of Ebay with that cash.
HvR
February 20, 2020 at 16:28
Waaaaay more than double or triple.
It is a lot more expensive to get a payload into a LEO orbit vs a suborbital flight.
Just the launch cost per tourist will be at least $12.5 million; that is if they ride on a reused Falcon 9 and before training fees and recovery which will be a the cost of recovery crew (pilots and medical), 2 fast boats and the recovery ship.