Traveling to Space for Individuals

Hey, if a codger like former Senator John Glenn can go up, why not you? Well just about anybody in good physical shape will be able to go soon-anybody that is, with $100,000 in spare cash. Although NASA has not yet bought into the concept of consumer space travel, private American companies (and possibly the Russians soon after) expect to offer suborbital flights for amateur astronauts sometime between 2003 and 2005. Space Adventures of Alexandria, Virginia is offering seven-day packages culminating with a two-and-a-half-hour flight into space. The tickets, which cost $98,000 and require a hefty deposit, are reported to be selling rapidly.

During the trip, amateur astronauts will feel the pull of multiple Gforces on takeoff and reentry, and be able to clearly see the curvature of the Earth, though not that great blue marble as seen from the moon. The space trip will feature a two-minute-and-30-second period of weightlessness, during which tourists will do aerial backflips on videotape...that is, if the trip ever takes place. Space Adventures has not quite worked out the details of how they are going to get there. It is working with several rocket makers that are competing to develop the best design. Stay tuned for more developments.

If a ride in space costing $600 per minute seems a little ridiculous to you, just wait a few years. Robert Bigelow, who is president and owner of the Budget Suites of America motel chain, believes in the future of space travel. He has committed $500 million towards the construction a 100-passenger, half-mile-long luxury cruise ship that will orbit the moon (presumably at a lower cost). British entrepreneur and balloonist Richard Branson-a man with a nose for opportunity as well as publicity-wants to get into the act with Virgin Galactic(!) Airways. Former astronauts, like Buzz Aldrin, are also pushing to take the masses to space. There is even a course taught, at the Rochester Institute of Technology, called "Space Tourism Development," to train the next generation in space hospitality management.

Perhaps the real future is in space vacations. A joint study by NASA and the Space Tourism Association estimates space travel and tourism could be a $10- to $20-billion market. Bigelow Aerospace, also owned by Robert Bigelow, is exploring the construction of space hotels that would be partially assembled on Earth and carried into space for final assembly. But don't pack your bags yet; the cost to put things in space is still prohibitive. NASA's space shuttle costs work out to about $10,000 per pound to put satellites into orbit, and rockets aren't much cheaper. Bigelow

Aerospace believes launch costs need to fall to $550 per pound before space hotels become a reality. A California company, Space Island Group, thinks it has the solution: a space station built from used external fuel tanks left in orbit by space shuttles.

If big space hotels are not cost effective, how about a little orbiting bed and breakfast? MirCorp, a Netherlands-based company that attempted to salvage the Mir space station, hopes to launch a tiny space station in 2004 for tourists. The space bungalow, to be called Mini Station 1, will hold only three visitors at a time.