IMPACTS OF FUTURE SPACE TRAVEL TO THE TOURISM

Impacts of Future Space Travel to the Tourism

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction3

Phases of Space Tourism10

Chapter 2: Literature Review12

ESA Support for Commercial Human Spaceflight26

UK Space Entrepreneurs27

Chapter Three: Methodology34

Research Design34

Data Collection and Ethical Issues37

Chapter 4: Discussion & Analysis39

Chapter 5: Conclusion66

Recommendations79

References88

Chapter 1: Introduction

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 (Blume, 2005: p21). 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.

The first steps will just be short sub-orbital flights, like Alan Shepard made in 1961, since these are easier than getting to orbit. But the technical know-how to make passenger launch vehicles and orbiting hotel accommodation is available, and there is enormous unsatisfied demand - 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. This gives huge scope for reducing the cost of space travel by large-scale operation like airlines (Angerer, 2003: p45).

According to Carreau (2001) "Space tourism" is the term that has come to be used to mean members of the public traveling to and from space by buying tickets like an airline. It's a distinct category of "space travel" which also includes travel in space for work purposes - to date, mainly by government staff. In recent years it has become increasingly recognised that, although government space agencies are not interested in space tourism, it is a legitimate objective of space development - and it is likely to generate substantial investment funds that will help to develop space.

Indeed NASA itself published a report "General Public Space Travel and Tourism" in March 1998 which endorses the idea of space tourism; points out that it is going to start quite soon in the form of sub-orbital flights; and argues that it is likely to become a much larger market for launch systems than satellite launch (Caldwell, 2003).

Although space tourism appears in a number of science fiction stories, it's very striking that in almost none of them is tourism portrayed as more than a small-scale activity greatly overshadowed by government space activities - military operations, scientific research, defence, etc (Schonfeld, 2000) . This seems to be a good example of how the Cold War pattern of space activities paralyzed the public's imagination. That is, government monopoly organizations carrying out "missions" in space ostensibly for the benefit of the taxpayer created a fixed image of what space activities are, which has dominated the imaginations of engineers and scientists, the media, politicians and the general public for several decades (Blume, 2005: p26).

This effect has been so strong that even most science fiction writers became unable to imagine anything different - although they are generally thought to be some of the ...