space tourism case study

This case study looks at the fledgling space tourism sector. It discusses space tourism's place in the space economy, patents being published by space tourism companies, the key players, planned space hotels, and the main source markets that companies should be targeting. Finally, the case study considers the challenges and opportunities in this highly innovative sector.

Key Highlights

• Until leading companies such as SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin can scale their technology to make it accessible to non-millionaires, these companies will have a minute target market of roughly one percent of the global population. When considering that many high-net-worth individuals will find the idea of space travel too alienating, this small percentage decreases even further. This means that there could be a lack of demand beyond the short-term.
• The Ax-1 mission marks the start of truly authentic experiences for space tourists. As noted in the publisher's Premiumization in Travel and Tourism Report (2022), companies that only target high-net-worth individuals need to integrate authenticity into all elements of a trip, and encourage participation in their offerings. If these aspects are met, guests will be more likely to leave with their needs fulfilled. This experience with Axiom certainly meets this criteria. Everything from spending time with professional astronauts onboard the ISS, to undertaking research makes for a truly realistic experience of what it must be like to be a professional astronaut.
• Due to how new the space tourism sector is, and the fact it is constantly evolving, regulation is lacking, from passenger safety to environmental pollution. It could take many years for regulators to develop policies to make trips to the edge of space as safe as possible for paying customers. The Federal Aviation Administration does have the authority to regulate commercial space travel through its Office of Commercial Space Transportation, but Congress has imposed a moratorium through 2023 on regulating the fledgling sector.

Reasons to Buy

• Gain an understanding of the space tourism sector.
• Recognise the range of different companies that will be battling for market share.
• Gain an understanding of the opportunities and challenges in space tourism.

Key Topics Covered:

• Main findings
• Space tourism's place in the space economy
• Key players with pricing below $500,000
• Key players with pricing above $50 million
• Space hotels
• Main source markets
• Challenges for space tourism
• Opportunities for space tourism

Companies Mentioned

• Space Perspective
• Virgin Galactic
• Blue Origin
• Axiom Space
• Zero 2 Infinity
• Orbital Assembly Corporation

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/ouwpno

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• Automotive and Transport /
• Commercial Aerospace /
• Space Tourism

Space Tourism - Case Study

• February 2022
• Region: Global
• ID: 5560057
• Description

Table of Contents

• Companies Mentioned

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Key Highlights

• Until leading companies such as SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin can scale their technology to make it accessible to non-millionaires, these companies will have a minute target market of roughly one percent of the global population. When considering that many high-net-worth individuals will find the idea of space travel too alienating, this small percentage decreases even further. This means that there could be a lack of demand beyond the short-term.
• The Ax-1 mission marks the start of truly authentic experiences for space tourists. As noted in the publisher’s Premiumization in Travel and Tourism Report (2022), companies that only target high-net-worth individuals need to integrate authenticity into all elements of a trip, and encourage participation in their offerings. If these aspects are met, guests will be more likely to leave with their needs fulfilled. This experience with Axiom certainly meets this criteria. Everything from spending time with professional astronauts onboard the ISS, to undertaking research makes for a truly realistic experience of what it must be like to be a professional astronaut.
• Due to how new the space tourism sector is, and the fact it is constantly evolving, regulation is lacking, from passenger safety to environmental pollution. It could take many years for regulators to develop policies to make trips to the edge of space as safe as possible for paying customers. The Federal Aviation Administration does have the authority to regulate commercial space travel through its Office of Commercial Space Transportation, but Congress has imposed a moratorium through 2023 on regulating the fledgling sector.

Reasons to Buy

• Gain an understanding of the space tourism sector.
• Recognise the range of different companies that will be battling for market share.
• Gain an understanding of the opportunities and challenges in space tourism.
• Main findings
• Space tourism’s place in the space economy
• Key players with pricing below $500,000
• Key players with pricing above $50 million
• Space hotels
• Main source markets
• Challenges for space tourism
• Opportunities for space tourism

Companies Mentioned (Partial List)

A selection of companies mentioned in this report includes, but is not limited to:

• Space Perspective
• Virgin Galactic
• Blue Origin
• Axiom Space
• Zero 2 Infinity
• Orbital Assembly Corporation
• Adventure Tourism
• Commercial Aerospace
• Travel And Tourism

Sub-Orbital Transportation and Space Tourism Market by Flight Vehicle Type, Application, End User, and Region 2024-2032

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• January 2024

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Global Sub-Orbital Space Tourism Market by Flight Vehicle Type (High-altitude Balloon, Parabolic Aircraft, Suborbital Reusable Vehicles), End-use (Commercial, Government) - Forecast 2024-2030

Space Tourism - Global Strategic Business Report

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Surborbital Space Tourism: A Case Study on Virgin Galactic and the Environmental Impacts of the Emerging Industry

Throughout my four years at the University of Virginia (UVA), I have culminated knowledge in aerospace engineering and engineering ethics to prepare me for my capstone class and my undergraduate Science, Technology, and Society (STS) thesis. The technical project is the result of my efforts in the Spacecraft Design class with Professor Haibo Dong and Professor Michael McPherson. A class of thirty students, including me, worked on the technical project to deliver a final report on the design, analysis, and tests. I worked on the STS research paper throughout my fourth year and with Professor Joshua Earle. The following details the specifics of the senior capstone design project and the research gathered for the STS undergraduate thesis. The technical design project was to research, design, and prototype a high-powered rocket to achieve a 4,000ft altitude and deploy a payload while allowing for student research and experimentation. Three main sub-teams–Aero-structures, Propulsion, and Mechatronics & Control–worked on the high-powered rocket. As the Propulsion Team Lead, our sub-team’s main concern was designing, fabricating, and testing the 75mm motor hardware and propellant to ensure that the rocket would reach the target apogee. There is a delicate balancing act between each sub-team because any shifts in the weight of other team's designs would affect the amount of outputted thrust required for our motor. Furthermore, there were several changes in the constraints within the course itself that ranged from differing budgets, certain safety constraints from UVA Environmental Health & Safety, and timing limitations. After several iterations, we designed, fabricated, and tested a final product through non-energetic means. The motor was 21” long, and 3” in diameter, and consisted of a snap-ring casing to hold the closures and nozzle. We chose a 3” diameter to adhere to the standard typically found in commercially available high-powered motors. Team members used computer simulations to determine the geometries and chemical formula for the propellant, and they fabricated the motor using equipment at UVA. The final product showcased the class’s abundant knowledge of aerodynamics, structures, and project management, along with many more engineering skills. The STS research paper is a Technological Momentum analysis of the emerging suborbital space tourism industry with a specific focus on its environmental effects. The journey to space was exclusive, limited to a select few who underwent rigorous training and scrutiny under federal programs like Gemini and Apollo. However, with technological advancements, space travel is becoming more accessible through various companies, including Virgin Galactic, offering different methods to get to space. The increased accessibility to space stems from more capital going into the space industry, particularly in the commercial sector. Although traveling to space is exciting, it is important to consider the environmental effects of many launches happening within a short period. Firstly, I address the significance, history, and future of space tourism, focusing on Virgin Galactic as a case study because of its significant presence in space tourism. Then, I highlight the environmental impact of the rapidly rising space industry, particularly regarding launch vehicle propulsion systems, which historically harm the Earth's atmosphere. By utilizing the Technological Momentum framework, I examine the environmental consequences of increased space activities and provide recommendations for regulations to balance technological innovation with environmental preservation. Through this analysis, I show that space tourism's rise is inevitable, highlighting the need for proactive environmental regulations to mitigate its adverse effects on the Earth. The rocket that is the focus of my technical project will have extremely negligible effects on the immediate environment of the launch site. Even so, I believe there is a connection between the STS topic and the results of my capstone. The main difference between the two is the scale and the project objective. The propulsion system proposed for the technical project is a very common propulsion system used in full-scale launch vehicles: ammonium perchlorate composite propellant (APCP). Furthermore, many launch vehicles used in the emerging space tourism industry have a very similar silhouette to the capstone class’s rocket, but at a much larger size. Although we are working with smaller rockets, it is important to consider the socioeconomic and environmental effects of all our products as we apply our engineering expertise to our respective careers. Overall, the ethical analysis of the space tourism industry will apply to the technical project, simply at a different scale.

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Space tourism: prospects, positioning, and planning

Journal of Tourism Futures

ISSN : 2055-5911

Article publication date: 16 March 2015

The purpose of this paper is to explain how the elements of a tourism policy class (historical, structural, economic, social, and technological) are employed in the discussion and analysis of space tourism.

Design/methodology/approach

The material serves as revision class of methods and concepts. The topics and methods covered depend in part on previous class content making use of space tourism materials available on the web and in the literature.

The sources cited cover a remarkable and growing range of space tourism endeavors worldwide. Whilst it is definitively not a forecast, the paper does appraise future directions in space tourism.

Practical implications

Further research is required in order to properly evaluate the value of space tourism to future human societies, and strategize accordingly.

Originality/value

As a source‐based review, the paper has limited originality, but shows the possibilities and limitations of tourism planning methods for space tourism.

• Forecasting
• Tourism policy
• Economic impact analysis
• Teaching and learning
• Future studies
• Tourism planning methods

Cole, S. (2015), "Space tourism: prospects, positioning, and planning", Journal of Tourism Futures , Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 131-140. https://doi.org/10.1108/JTF-12-2014-0014

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2015, Sam Cole

This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial & non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

As material for a slightly tongue in cheek revision class for a tourism policy course, my paper serves primarily as a reminder of the concepts and methods to be used in students’ term projects. The course itself similarly revises and applies methods from previous courses. Here, it should be said that methods used in tourism planning practice are considerably less exotic than the subject of space tourism, while the subject itself shows the power and importance of imagination, and by extension futures thinking in general. Tourism and the study of tourism has become explicitly such a multi‐dimensional field where globalization directly confronts locality and identity. However, it is a field in which future defies history, futurism confronts tradition, unprecedented wealth co‐exists with abject poverty, and imagination bends reality. For these reasons the study of tourism begs insights from many disciplines and illustrates many of the challenges for planning and policy.

Where to begin?

Students from planning programs typically enter city and county‐level planning departments that increasingly incorporate tourism promotion and development as a cornerstone of their activities. Methods in planning practice are relatively pragmatic and heuristic, unless some dubious policy or investment is to be advanced. The course aims to provide students with a supplementary grounding in heuristics such as Butler (1980) and Plog (2001) . Students’ final projects typically devise and detail aspects of a tourism strategy for some exotic destination or an exotic development in a familiar location, addressing economic, cultural, social, and ecological aspects of a tourism strategy. This course segment had its origins with a student who insisted on covering space tourism for his final project!

There are several starting points for thinking about space tourism for planning students: science fiction and science, defense in space, space tourism speculation, actual space tourists, or currently planned space tourism projects. Beyond a vehicle for revising tourism planning methods and indulging my own fantasies, the most important rationale for introducing the topic of space tourism into a tourism planning course is simply that space travel fiction has (almost) become fact. Since the industry is forecast to become a driver of the global economy and space tourism ports have been proposed for a number of island and rural locations, it is also possible, even likely, that some current students could be involved in some aspects of space tourism planning. Already research has left the solar system and there are currently five satellites from Earth around Mars. In the Americas alone, space tourism bases are planned for the Nevada desert, and others are under negotiation for the Caribbean islands of Puerto Rico and Curacao.

A useful starting point is the growing technical, specialist, and other literature on the prospects for space tourism. This covers a broad range of topics with the most current available on the web. There are a goodly number of books and technical reports, but not yet a dedicated “Journal of Space Tourism” but this can only be a matter of time. There is already a “Space Futures Journal” on the Space Futures web site. A selection of these publications and web sites dealing with aspects of space travel from craft design, health, accommodation, and other topics are referred to throughout this review. These web sites have over‐lapping, complementary, and sometimes contradictory information. In some cases, the sources are more topical or more detailed and less or more cautious about the challenges and prospects. For example, the first flight from the relatively small Caribbean island of Curacao will be carried out in 2016 by Space Expedition Corporation with the Lynx.

There are also several articles in the tourism literature, for example, Crouch (2001), in “The Market for Space Tourism: Early Indications” reviewed the hurdles facing the development and growth of space tourism, not least of which was simply making “credible and reliable estimates of market demand.” He identified several research challenges and methodological alternatives to improve research findings. Coincidentally, Crouch's article coincided with the first tourist in space. Patrick Collins (2000, 2014) appears to be the most consistently cited space‐tourism analyst and proponent of space tourism development, and his recent (May, 2014) video presentation updates this material and makes the strongest case for space tourism ( Collins, 2000, 2014 ). The most comprehensive web site, SpaceTourism.com, is an excellent on‐line tutorial on space tourism that appears to draw liberally on Collin's work, as I do in my tourism course review. The SpaceTourism.com site lists “some key documents from the archive to get you started”: First, what the growth of a space tourism industry could contribute to employment, economic growth, environmental protection, education, culture and world peace. Second, space tourism market demand and the transportation infrastructure. Third, general public space travel and tourism. Fourth, artificial gravity and the architecture of orbital habitats. Fifth, prospects of space tourism.

Space, stars, and status – marketing and positioning space tourism

In 2001 the world's first space tourist, American Dennis Tito, travelled on a Russian Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station, as did the second, South African Mark Shuttleworth, and the third, Greg Olsen, in 2005, and also Charles Simonyi in 2007 and 2009. As wealthy businessmen, they could afford the $20‐35 million (about half what NASA currently pays Russia for its own astronauts). International recording artist, Sarah Brightman, is slated to be the first female space tourist in 2015. In view of the astronomical cost of their trips, counting these space travelers as “tourists” may be a stretch. Nonetheless they are the acknowledged pioneers. Well before this, in 1964, Gerhard Pistor, an Austrian journalist, walked into a Vienna travel agency and asked for a booking on the Pan American World Airways first flight to the moon. By 1989, 20 years after man first set foot on the lunar surface, Pan Am had more than 93,000 wait‐listed for the airline's first passenger flight to the moon, sadly preempted by the airline's cash‐strapped demise in 1991! (Sun Sentinel September 3, 1989). Nonetheless, the latent demand was clear.

SpaceTourism.com sees “an enormous unsatisfied demand for space travel […] market research has revealed that most people, at least in the industrialized countries, would like to take a trip to space if it was possible.” They explain that “Space Tourism is the term that's come to be used to mean ordinary members of the public buying tickets to travel to space and back. Many people find this idea futuristic. But over the past few years a growing volume of professional work has been done on the subject, and it's now clear that setting up commercial space tourism services is a realistic target for business today.” And the reasons why it is going to happen this time include that “people want it, it's a realistic objective, it's the only way in which space activities can become profitable, it's the quickest way to start to use the limitless resources of space to solve our problems on Earth, living in space involves every line of business, from construction to marketing, fashion, interior‐design and law, and not least, because it will be fun!” Box 1 illustrates some of the space tourism stories to be found on the web.

The 2013 Virtuoso Life® “Travel Dreams” pitch for space travel epitomizes tourist marketing hype: “At Park Avenue Travel we help create your dream vacation. We can tailor your trip to provide a unique, unforgettable experience. We believe that travel should be a journey, not just a destination! Virgin Galactic's sub‐orbital space trips promise to be the most intense and wonderful experiences that passengers have ever had. Astronauts of the past 45 years have all returned to earth struggling to convey the enormity of what they have discovered and with their perceptions clearly changed. To be able to extend that privilege to people from all walks of life has been a long held ambition at Virgin.”

Despite that flights initially scheduled to begin in 2009 were repeatedly postponed, by 2012 more than 200 tickets had been sold. Seat numbers 1‐100 costing US$200,000 are sold out, as are the similarly‐priced 101‐199, 200‐299, and 300‐399 rides. “Call 1‐800‐220‐TRIP to reserve your ticket today”!! They are not alone in the space tourism promotion universe: HowStuffWorks.com encourages us to “Make your reservations now. The space tourism industry is officially open for business, and tickets are going for a mere $20 million for a one‐week stay in space.” Richard Branson cited in “Tough day’ for space travel as Virgin Galactic's spaceship crashes” says over 700 seats are now reserved. But as Encyclopedia Astronautica observes, few can afford the $20 million or the trip to the Mir space station and so far there are no takers for the Russian offer to take a trip around the moon for $100 million. In contrast, pre‐marketing of sub‐orbital rides suggests there are thousands willing and able to pay the $100,000‐$200,000 for a few minutes weightlessness with view of the earth as a planet. But, they say, “Orbital tourism is another matter.”

Surveys of the potential market for space travel began well in advance of its arrival. Indeed, the first space‐tourism market research was undertaken in Japan in 1993 showed “extremely positive” results: some 70 percent of respondents would like to travel to space, and almost half would pay three months’ salary to do so. Soon after, in 1995, nation‐wide telephone surveys in Canada and USA found that “the idea of space tourism is massively popular.” In 1997 the US “National Leisure Travel Monitor” survey included questions on space tourism for the first time. Of 1,500 Americans surveyed, 42 percent were interested in a space cruise, and were willing to spend an average of $10,800 for the trip. These findings are very similar to those for Japan.

There is an inevitable overlap between age, income, and geography, with the greatest interest 20‐40‐year‐olds. The published surveys do not show how this latent demand for space travel in the USA and elsewhere varies across the income spectrum, but like other forms of high‐end, very expensive recreation, one factor driving demand has to be shift in national and global income distribution. In the USA and several other counties, including emerging markets such as Russia and China, the income of richer top few percent of households has risen at an unprecedented rate, creating the necessary discretionary income for the target market.

It will be interesting to observe (say, by the year 2100) how space destinations correspond to Plog's (2001) useful heuristic – expressing how the distribution visitors’ personalities along a psychometric spectrum (from very cautious and conventional to risk‐taking and adventuresome) overlays the positioning of destination. It represents a cross‐section of destinations at a given point in time, whereby destinations (and visitors too) transform as they age. A speculative illustration is given in Figure 1 . Jules Verne's space tourism pioneers would be Plog's “venturers.” At some point in the future, these same personality types will be surfing Jupiter's moonbeams.

The space destination life cycle

Spacetourism.com explains that “Like any other business, once space tourism gets started it will develop progressively. It can be helpful to think of it as going through several phases. Starting with a relatively small‐scale and relatively high‐priced ‘pioneering phase,’ the scale of activity will grow and prices will fall as it matures. Finally it will become a mass‐market business, like aviation today.” This sequence is summarized in Table I .

The kind of service, volume of travelers, and expected price discussed are below. Segmentation of visitor markets and destinations, psychometric or otherwise, overlaps another core heuristic of the tourism literature, Butler's tourist area life cycle (TALC) that incorporates the ideas of Plog and others about the composition of a destination into the product life cycles theories associated with Vernon and others. Figure 2 shows the correspondence of these postulated phases of space tourism development when superimposed onto the “classic” Butler TALC. The first steps will be short sub‐orbital flights, similar to the space‐race flights of the 1960s. Whether “space” as a whole or “near earth‐orbits” or individual hotels, lunar sites, and so on are defined as the “tourist area,” the issue here (as with destinations on Earth) is the capacity of the destination and associated constraints and technologies.

This pioneering stage is closer to a nineteenth century Grand Tour, early balloonists or trans‐Atlantic airships, or a 1960s Hippie Trail. The next phase will see a maturing equivalent to the jet aircraft age. And as with most new technologies the initial stages are plagued by delays. The more important later stages of the TALC embody the ideas of congestion, sustainability, and the like. Given the volume of visitors anticipated, many space destinations – orbital, or moon‐based, or otherwise off‐worldly, are likely to become “over‐crowded.” Just as with the multitude of potent island and wilderness sites scattered across the globe, it is a fact that for reasons of scale economies, history, familiarity, marketing, herd‐instinct among investors and travelers, that destinations and resorts have become “overcrowded,” usually implying a considerable deterioration of the original attractions.

Spacetourism.com remarks that it is “Apparently unthinkable to most people in the space industry, even 1 million passengers per year is just 8 [ presumably million ] hours of aviation!” There's certainly no limit to the possible destinations. “And the access to space resources that low cost launch will bring about will ensure that economic growth needn’t end for a few more millennia at least!” Whilst it might not be implausible to explore the implications of rapid growth of space tourism in total, or even at the sub‐orbital, orbital, moon‐based, and inter‐planetary levels, every individual destination will likely face their own issues of capacity and congestion that underlie thinking about the tourist‐destination lifecycle. Thus, as with the projections of UNWTO and other agencies, one might give pause when exponentially extrapolated global trends are used to promote tourism at the destination level (see e.g. Cole and Razak, 2009 ).

Indeed, the future of space tourism with unlimited growth might be as some consider that we simply “mess up and move on” into an increasingly‐infinity of accessible destinations and spaces. There certain has to be some slowdown in the rate of increase – if the exponential growth period is extended then the annual number of passengers would eventually exceed the expected population of Earth. Of course, by then, travelers may make multiple trips and sub‐orbital flight may be the primary mode of inter‐continental travel, and business people may travel regularly to corporate subsidiaries on the Moon and wealthier tourists may have purchased timeshare, fractional ownership, and recreational homes, and the AirBnB.com web site graduated to SpaceBnB.com

Presumably, too, in the more distant future with more permanent colonies and dedicated off‐earth tourism destinations, there will be similar confrontations as portrayed in several science fiction movies. The point here is not to Cassandra humankinds’ potentially greatest‐ever endeavor, but to point out that there are many lessons to be incorporated into thinking about future space‐tourism from many tourist‐destination experiences, past and present.

Space travel for all?

An article on Spacetourism.com (from the 1999 50th International Astronautical Congress in Amsterdam) says that “According to current reports in the media, traveling to outer space should become possible for everyone by the beginning of the next century. Developing low‐cost passenger launch vehicles is not just to create an expensive pastime for the wealthy but develop a large ‘middle‐class’ market rich. Indeed, until access to space is cheap, it will not be possible to make use of the limitless resources available in space to solve the problems of our ever‐more‐crowded Earth. And here it is argued that tourism can generate the large‐scale launch activity needed to reduce costs sufficiently to start to use space resources. Hence, this is “one of the most important projects in the world today.” Collins (2014) projects that, by 2100, there could be annually 30 million sub‐orbital, 40 million orbital, and 10 million lunar surface travelers.

As with many business plans and proposals, it is especially tricky to evaluate and compare the various costings, forecasts, and marketing models. But as with any new technology, including hotel, travel, and entertainment enterprises, there are price reductions as the technology matures, and the scale of operations, operators, and markets increase. Over the last decade the precise costs have varied, but whether this is because of modified vehicle techniques and spaceport location, discount rates and margins, products and market appraisal, is not always clear. That said, there are differences in products and prices – although even these, on review, raise further questions.

Table II compares the estimated price and duration of the flight and weightlessness times associated with each of the soon‐to‐be introduced sub‐orbital offerings of Virgin and Lynx. (A full‐length video comparing the Lynx and Galactic is found at www.parabolicarc.com/2011/08/24/ ). The trade‐off for travelers in terms of “value for money” in terms or exclusivity and experience are not as clear cut as generally perceived. Luxurious pre‐flight offerings are similar: “After two or three fabulous days of preparing with your crew – you’re suited up and you’re raring to go.” But, while both offer a unique experience they may also be a very expensive one‐off thrill. They compete with skiing, mountain biking, scuba diving, hang gliding, base jumping, rock‐climbing, and the ever‐increasing plethora of activities for committed excitement seekers. All might be considered better value for money.

As Collins observes, the potentially huge market for space tourism “gives huge scope for reducing the cost of space travel by large‐scale operation like airlines.” There are a variety of scale economies in number of passengers per flight and number of flights per year: for example, once the technologies reach maturity the costs fall drastically, For example, a cost comparison between the Sänger launcher as “developed to airliner maturity” and a Boeing 747, indicated that the cost per seat to orbit is about 1,000 times less than that of the Space Shuttle. Of course, this may be a dubious comparison. There are also similar scale economies from the number of operations and flights. Table I illustrates the enormous potential “chicken and egg” feedbacks between the number of space travelers and the cost per trip.

Collins explains that at the same time that the cost of each version of space tourism becomes less expensive the experience will be extended (in both distance and duration) and trips will become more costly. Collins (2014) indicates that by the 2020s a sub‐orbital ride will cost $N,000, by the 2030s (with “N” being a number between 1 and 9), an orbital trip will cost $N0,000, and in the 2040s a lunar ride will cost $N0,000, about the same as sub‐orbital rise today. A rough estimate of price per mile is $20 ($2K/100), 40cents ($20K/50K), and 20 cents ($200K/1 m), a factor of 100 in 20 years (comparable to Moore's Law for the increasing speed and declining cost of computing power). Table III shows that there are substantial cost‐reductions in moving from small (20 passenger) two‐ to single‐stage reusable space vehicles, with less advantage trebling capacity from 60 to 180 seats. Indeed, the smaller craft appears to offer a slight advantage. It should be noted that the “costs” here are that for operating vehicles, rather than price to space tourists, and the prices quoted earlier indicate a healthy mark‐up reflecting risk investment, insurance, and so on. Similarly, there appears to be rather smaller advantage in multiple launch sites, at least for smaller craft, which suggests that several independent commercial enterprises might co‐exist, at least in the initial phase of space tourism.

The information in Table II allows various dimensions of the “value” of space flights to travelers to be scored. The overall cost with Virgin is double that of Xcor but since the flight time and weightless flight times are Virgin is cheaper in terms of cost per minute, but more expensive in terms of cost per weightless‐minute. Xcor is also cheaper in terms of cost per day and the Curacao operation extolls the advantage of its Caribbean location. On the other hand, the Virgin flight can be shared by honeymoon couples.

Multipliers in space

One of the more important concepts in tourism planning is that of the “multiplier.” Precisely which type of multiplier is most relevant, income, jobs, revenue, land footprint depend on the issue at hand; but in each case what matters is the net contribution of a tourist activity to the local community. With most international tourism there is a very high leakage of income, so only a small proportion of tourist spending is circulated within the local economy. Nonetheless, many sophisticated destinations focus on maximizing total tourist (and notably REVPAR) spending rather than the net impact on their population (product of the retained revenue and the appropriate multiplier).

For localities hosting the launch site, the main goal, in terms of its economic development, must be to generate jobs, income, and revenues. Unlike land‐based destinations where, from a development planning perspective, the goal is to use tourism to drive the local economy through the creation of jobs, building on local skills, culture, and ecology. This is especially difficult when enormous international commercial enterprises are involved, as is inevitably the case with the infrastructure and operation of space tourism. The model for conceptualizing space tourism development might be a “Disney World” in the case of the Nevada launch‐site of Virgin's Galactic, or a busy cruise port such as the Grand Bahamas for aspiring space‐tourism launch sites islands such as Curacao and Puerto Rico. For earth‐based space ports, it may be that a three‐day stay at a tax‐exempt all‐inclusive and exclusive spa resort is the better starting point for considering the local economic impacts on employment and revenues.

In contrast, a cruise ship analogy may be the appropriate starting point for assessing the impacts of space flight and accommodations: SpaceFuture.com observes that “Most cruise ships are owned by off‐shore companies operating out of countries with beneficial tax and regulatory regimes such as the Bahamas”. Thus, the mammoth cruise ship analogy also illustrate the eventual scale and operation of space hotels with an ever expanding variety of concessions, entertainment and activities, even sports stadia and theme parks.

As with cruise lines, space hotel operators will also try to minimize the taxes and deflect constraining legislation with corresponding income allocation and impacts. Figure 3 characterizes the likely income flows from space tourism showing the various leakages and circulation of income between investors, space tourists, space ports and their host communities, and space resorts (the density of line indicates the relative scale of income flows).

Eventually off‐planet space destinations will become “communities” with temporary and semi‐permanent residents living in company towns with their own local electronic currency and administration. Beyond this, new space island cultures will arise in migratory settlements, leading to their own unilateral declarations of independence.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, it is not implausible that major new economic regions based on the manufacture of spacecraft, supporting infrastructure, and launch sites will emerge. Indeed, it is not difficult to concur with Collins and others cited in this paper that space tourism could become a new driver for global development, and ultimately for human development beyond our planet and solar system. A short survey of students in the tourism class indicated that they share this view and they too have ambitions to travel in space (see Table IV ).

The very week this paper was completed saw two spacecraft disasters: a launch failure of an unmanned Antares space station delivery rocket and the more tragic Virgin Galactic Spaceship II test flight. The second especially potentially poses a significant setback for space tourism.

A psychometric mapping of space tourism destinations and activities

The tourist area life cycle in space

Multipliers in space: markets, space ports, and space resorts

Phases of space tourism

Cost versus value in space travel

Scale economies in the size and number of spaceports and vehicles

Students in space

Notes: a Very likely=5, Very Unlikely=0; b the survey was conducted two days after the Virgin Galactic disaster

Annotated adventures in space

Professor Sam Cole can be contacted at: [email protected]

Butler, R. ( 1980 ), “ The concept of a tourist area cycle of evolution: implications for management of resources ”, Canadian Geographer , Vol. 24 No. 1 , pp. 5 - 12 .

Cole, S. and Razak, V. ( 2009 ), “ Tourism as Future ”, Futures , Vol. 41 , pp. 335 - 45 .

Collins, P. ( 2000 ), “ How space tourism can help solving Italy's crisis ”, Congress of Space Proceedings of Space 2000, Presented at Space 2000, ASCE, Albuquerque, March , pp. 594 - 603 , available at : www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ9dhMoKVi4

Collins, P. ( 2014 ), “ Renaissance Italia ”, held at the Politecnico di Milano, Campus Bovisa, May 8‐9.

Plog, S. ( 2001 ), “ Why destination areas rise and fall in popularity ”, The Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly , Vol. 42 No. 3 , pp. 55 - 8 .

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How the Space Tourism Business Could See Orbital Boom

This story is part of a SPACE.com series to mark a decade of space tourism. Coming Tuesday: A SPACE.com reporter looks at what it feels like to launch in a rocketship; Also, who are the first space tourists?

Orbital space tourism is a niche industry at the moment, but business could really boom if costs come down by a couple of orders of magnitude, a new study asserts.

To date, only seven people -- beginning with multimillionaire businessman Dennis Tito in April 2001-- have paid to launch into Earth orbit , and they've reportedly plunked down between $20 million and $35 million for the experience.

Those are not the numbers of a thriving industry. But things could change dramatically if prices drop significantly -- down to about $500,000 per seat or so. That reduced rate could lure in hundreds of thousands of customers for orbital tourist trips, potentially generating revenues in excess of $100 billion per year, according to the study.

"This is the first time in the theoretical realm that we are at a closed business case," said study lead author Ajay Kothari, president and CEO of the aerospace engineering firm Astrox Corporation. "So that, to me, is very exciting."

Kothari and his colleagues have also mapped out a rough plan for dropping the cost to $500,000 per seat or less -- and it involves developing fully reusable, two-stage-to-orbit spaceships.[ Vote Now! The Best Spaceships of All Time ]

Shallow customer pool

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The current going rate for a two-week tourist trip to space -- including a stay at the International Space Station -- is more than $30 million. The Virginia-based company Space Adventures sells seats for such flights aboard Russian Soyuz vehicles, and right now they're the only game in town.

That's not terribly surprising, because the pool of potential customers willing and able to pay $30 million for a space jaunt isn't very deep. Kothari and his team wanted to figure out how that pool might deepen if the price came down. [ Video: Fly to Space with Rocketship Tours ]

They started out by looking at a landmark 2002 space tourism study put out by the technology consulting firm Futron, with help from the polling company Zogby. This report used interviews with 450 American millionaires to make an assessment of the market for space tourism, both in the orbital and suborbital realms.

Though the Futron/Zogby report is nearly a decade old, it remains the most in-depth look at space tourism's potential customer base, Kothari said.

The report found, among other things, that 30 percent of the polled millionaires would be willing to spend $1 million for a two-week orbital trip, though only 7 percent would go if the price was set at $20 million per seat.

More potential customers

Kothari and his team used the Futron-Zogby results -- as well as data from studies of the numbers and purchasing habits of wealthy people -- as a starting point. Then they performed their own in-depth analysis of the potential global tourist market for orbital spaceflight.

The researchers took into account a variety of factors, including eagerness to go to space and physical fitness. For example, the average age of American millionaires is 57 -- so a substantial proportion of willing customers is likely to be too old or infirm to safely withstand the rigors of spaceflight .

The team then computed a conservative case, which assumed that passengers would be willing to spend just 1.5 percent of their net worth on an orbital voyage. And they calculated a more optimistic scenario, which assumed a 5 percent net worth threshold.

After crunching the numbers, Kothari and his team determined that the worldwide customer base at $5 million per seat is only about 600 people at the 1.5 percent threshold, and about 1,500 folks in the 5 percent scenario. So even if prices drop by a factor of four, that's not good enough to "close the business case" for orbital tourism.

If the price comes down to $1 million, the pool is about 9,000 people at the 1.5 percent threshold and 23,000 at 5 percent. That's better -- but still not good enough to support a thriving industry, Kothari said.

But that changes if tickets go for $500,000. At that price, the global customer base is 14,000 in the conservative case, but nearly 225,000 in the optimistic scenario. With hundreds of thousands of people willing to fly, revenues could top $100 billion per year within a few decades, according to the study.

"A closed business case is definitely possible," Kothari said. He presented the results in San Francisco earlier this month, at the 17th International Space Planes and Hypersonic Systems and Technologies conference, which was organized by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

A new vehicle

It's a steep drop from over $30 million per seat to $500,000, but Kothari and his team have some ideas about how spaceflight companies could get there.

The key is having the right spaceship.

After analyzing a variety of designs, the researchers determined that a fully reusable, two-stage-to-orbit vehicle is the best bet. Kothari presented one such design at the conference. [ Top 10 Private Spaceships Headed for Reality ]

The concept vehicle would have a payload capacity of 20,000 pounds (9,091 kilograms) and could carry 40 passengers. It would launch vertically, with a rocket booster doing the heavy lifting for the first part of the journey. At an altitude around 75,000 feet (22,860 meters), the booster would separate and glide back home to the launch pad.

At that point, advanced engines on the upper stage -- the actual spaceship -- would kick in. These engines would be dual-function, employing ramjet/scramjet technology -- which uses vehicle speed to compress outside air before combusting it -- until about 100,000 feet (30,480 m) and Mach 10 (10 times the speed of sound).

Then the engines would switch over to a rocket function, which would carry the craft the rest of the way into orbit.

After completing its space mission, the vehicle would land on a runway, like an airplane or NASA's space shuttle would. While development costs for such a new spacecraft would be high, the vehicle's owners would recoup their money over time by flying it often, according to the study.

This fully reusable architecture could eventually lead to launch prices as low as $340 per pound (compared to current figures of $5,000 to $10,000 per pound), Kothari said. And that could well translate to ticket prices lower than $500,000.

Getting there

This spaceship is just a concept vehicle for now, and more work needs to be done before it can become a reality. For one thing, scramjet technology needs to be further developed and tested, according to Kothari.

"The scramjet is the cake, and everything else is the icing," Kothari told SPACE.com. "If you don't have the scramjet, you cannot get there."

Still, such a spaceship is eminently possible, and it could be operational within a few decades — provided it receives enough funding, Kothari added.

"This needs to be developed," he said. "It really should become a program."

Works in progress

Of course, many other orbital vehicles are further along in development than the spaceship Kothari envisions. Multiple companies are devising their own crewed craft, with considerable funding help from NASA.

Just last week, for example, the space agency doled out nearly $270 million to four companies — Blue Origin, Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) — for this very purpose. NASA wants private industry to start carrying cargo and crew to space as soon as possible, in the wake of the space shuttle program's retirement later this year.

So orbital space tourists may not be limited to the Soyuz for much longer.

"There are going to be other vehicles coming down the line," said Tom Shelley, president of Space Adventures. "And I think pretty much all of those vehicles have private spaceflight as part of their business plan, if you like. It's part of what closes the business case."

Space Adventures, for its part, has signed a contract with Boeing to fly people to orbital space on its CST-100 vehicle. And those trips could start relatively soon.

"We hope, come 2015, we'll be able to start flying some paying passengers" on the CST-100, Shelley told SPACE.com.

This new race to orbital space could help drive costs down substantially, through competition and the development of new, more efficient techologies. But only time will tell if prices drop -- and if so, how much and how fast.

Still, all signs point toward the dawn of a new era in human spaceflight, experts say. NASA's effort to encourage private companies to develop their capabilities could open the heavens to more and more folks who don't have $30 million lying around.

"This really is what I would call an inflection point for human spaceflight," said Bretton Alexander, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. "This change in human spaceflight will not only regain leadership [for the United States], it will take us light-years ahead of everybody else."

You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall . Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook .

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with  Space.com  and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.

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Space Tourism Guide [CASE STUDY]

Space Tourism Guide is my second site, the one I spun out of an idea I had on my first (main) site, Valerie & Valise . It initially launched in February 2017 on Medium, but didn’t gain traction until I migrated to WordPress in November 2017. (That’s why I count November as the official site “launch.”)

It focuses on space tourism and astrotourism (astronomy-focused travel experiences on earth), including stargazing, aurora and eclipse chasing, viewing rocket launches, and more. It helped prove the market for Dark Skies, the book I wrote in partnership with Lonely Planet which was released in 2019.

Since launching four years ago, STG has grown to become a stable traffic and income driver for my business. It has a highly cyclical nature – both annually and in time with both astronomical and meteorological trends.

Today, it typically peaks at around 150,000 page views per month in October each year, but had a really great month in August 2023.

Here’s the latest traffic chart for this site:

Click below to explore reports about this site. Note I did not publish reports prior to the four-year mark for this site, as Site School didn’t exist yet!

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Chinese state-backed company to launch space tourism flights by 2028

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese commercial space company CAS Space announced its "space tourism vehicle" will first fly in 2027 and travel to the edge of space in 2028, state media reported on Friday.

The announcement comes just days after Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin announced that its New Shepard Rocket, which flies cargo and humans on short trips to the edge of space, would resume flights on Sunday, ending a near two-year pause of crewed operations.

CAS Space said that its vehicle will include a tourist cabin that has four panoramic windows and can carry seven passengers per flight. The company plans to arrange a launch every 100 hours from a newly-built aerospace theme park, with ten vehicles available to take tourists to the edge of space in shifts.

Tickets will cost 2 million to 3 million yuan ($415,127) per person per trip, state media said.

Guangzhou-based CAS Space was founded in 2018 and its second-largest shareholder is China's biggest state research institute, the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

China's space exploration program has recently narrowed the gap with the United States and could become the first country to return samples from the far side of the moon after it launched the Chang'e-6 mission earlier this month.

That launch attracted hordes of tourists to the launch site on China's island province of Hainan. Before blast-off tens of thousands of people gathered in different viewing spots near the launch site, causing long traffic jams.

($1 = 7.2267 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Eduardo Baptista; Editing by Sonali Paul)

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