Book this space

"It’s not flat,” says the Space Adventures site. “Don’t believe us? See for yourself.” The it in question is the planet you’re currently living on and the invitation to see for yourself is part of a marketing drive to flog trips on ex-Red Army fighter aircraft to the edge of the atmosphere. MiGs in Space, if you will.

A 1997 NASA study suggests that by the end of this decade, the world will have a space tourism industry worth between $10bn and $20bn a year. Commercial shuttles will ferry people to and fro between the earth and the luxury hotels that will orbit above us, there will be guided space walks, self-sustaining communities and all kinds of interesting zero-gravity based activities, of which more later. Dozens of initiatives envisage a boom in space travel.
The aptly named X prize is offered by a consortium of US businessmen to the first enterprise that can design, build and fly a reusable launch vehicle which will take commercial passengers into sub-orbit. Sub-orbit, as the term suggests, means getting you high enough to win astronaut wings (50 miles above the earth in NASA terms) but not quite at a rate that would put you into orbit. Modelled on the Orteig prize won by Charles Lindbergh when he made the first successful solo crossing of the Atlantic, the US$10m competition has now attracted over 20 hopefuls.
The California based Space Island Group plans a wheel-shaped space resort constructed from abandoned space shuttle fuel tanks (man). By 2012, company president Gene Meyers reckons he’ll be able to offer week-long stays to couples for as little as $25,000. Among other things, he envisages special rooms with panoramic views of earth in which couples can enjoy “romantic interludes” in a gravity-free environment. A Dutch company, MirCorp, plans a private space station, Mini Station 1, which it reckons could be up and running by 2004. Hilton Hotels, Richard Branson’s Virgin Group and Daimler Benz have each reported substantial interest in intergalactic tourism.
Right now however, the space tourism industry remains lodged in a prolonged infancy. US company Space Adventures is one of a handful that offer space based experiences to civilians. You can get half way to the moon on one of the aforementioned Russian fighter jets. A MiG-25 will take you twenty-five kilometres above the earth’s surface, to the point where the sky becomes dark and you can see the curvature of the earth below. There’s also a zero-gravity package. At the Russian Space Agency’s Star City complex, you can take a parabola flight aboard the Illyushin-76. A vessel with a padded floor, it climbs to 35,000 feet and then plummets towards earth, giving those aboard a thirty second taste of zero g. Thrilling as it sounds, it’s worth noting that the US has a similar craft which is affectionately known in the industry as the vomit comet.
Meanwhile, in a deal Space Adventures has struck with two of the X prize contestants, you can actually book advance seats on which ever contestant gets his plane built first. Finally, there’s the deluxe package: a trip aboard a Soyuz craft to bring you for a stay aboard the international space station currently in orbit over the planet.
Fabulous perhaps, but still a long way from orbiting hotels and romantic interludes at zero-g. The reason why there’s such dissonance between the plans and the reality is not technological however. The science on which many of the X prize entries are based is forty years old. Experts say that even Space Island’s Group’s hotel-from-scrap idea is feasible – in fact the shuttle’s tanks were originally designed to be able to clip together. Flick down through Space Adventure’s price list however and you can see that the problems end at the bottom line. The MiG-25 flight: $12,595. The zero-gravity package: $5,400. The sub-orbital flight: £98,000. And it’s $20m for the deluxe package, not including $200,000 worth of pre-flight training.
Ask any of the organisations planning these other-worldly pursuits how they’re getting on and they’ll say great if only we had the cash. MirCorp’s private space station plans may be realisable within two years, but not without $100mn. Gene Meyers of the Space Island Group says it’ll take $2bn to fund the first seven years of his project. David Ashford is MD of Bristol Spaceplanes, a company whose vessel Ascender is currently hot in the chase for the X prize. He reckons he’ll needs about £10m to get the thing built. “That’s what I’m concentrating on at the moment,” he says, “trying to get the money.”
If the industry is to get off the ground, prices will have to fall to a point where travelling into space can be at least a once in a lifetime experience for us plain folk. But that can’t happen without investment. Another 1997 survey found that 42% of Americans would pay $10,800 for a trip to space, so, it is claimed, a healthy demand for space travel lies slumbering. Much of the infant industry’s enthusiasm is therefore of the build-it-and-they-will-come type, but, again, it’s just not that simple. Thus far, two civilians, Denis Tito from California and Mark Shuttleworth from South Africa have made it into space, both paying a reported £20m for the experience. Both are of course fabulously wealthy, and both had to take nearly a year out of their lives to undergo the rigorous training their “holiday” demanded. So not only will prices have to fall, the stress the body undergoes in travelling into space will somehow have to be mitigated or the popular appeal suggested by industry surveys will remain illusory.
If you don’t have $20m knocking around in an off-shore account, there are other ways of getting your face in space.
Russia’s TV1 television station just struck a deal with the Russian Aviation and Space Agency to send the winner of a new reality TV show into space next year. In addition, several corporations, including Taco Bell and Pizza Hut have put money down for advance seats in X prize contestant crafts with the aim of offering space trips as prizes at some highly indeterminate point in the future.
If that doesn’t suit, you could also engage the services of Celestis, the world’s first intergalactic undertaker. For an undisclosed sum, the company will place your ashes on board a rocket and blast them into space, where you will drift peacefully for eternity, or until someone recycles you for use in an intergalactic kitty litter. Or something.