Space tourism
Tourists are motivated by the possibility of viewing Earth from space, feeling weightlessness, experiencing extremely high speed and something unusual, and contributing to science.SpaceX announced in 2018 that they are planning on sending space tourists, including Yusaku Maezawa, on a free-return trajectory around the Moon on the Starship, however the project was cancelled on June 1st 2024.In 1983, Ulf Merbold from the ESA and Byron Lichtenberg from MIT (engineer and Air Force fighter pilot) were the first payload specialists to fly on the Space Shuttle, on mission STS-9.The subcommittee report was interested in evaluating Dennis Tito's extensive training and his experience in space as a nonprofessional astronaut.The tourists included entrepreneur and space investor Anousheh Ansari and Cirque du Soleil co-founder Guy Laliberté.The space industry could soon be headed for a tourism revolution if SpaceX and Boeing make good on their plans to take tourists to orbit.Originally the third member aboard Soyuz TMA-18M would have been the British singer Sarah Brightman as a space tourist, but on May 13, 2015, she announced she had withdrawn from training.[47][48] On September 12, 2024, Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis performed the first commercial spacewalk during the Polaris Dawn spaceflight operated by SpaceX.Under current US law, any company proposing to launch paying passengers from American soil on a suborbital rocket must receive a license from the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation (FAA/AST).The SICA gives legal protection to companies who provide private space flights in the case of accidental harm or death to individuals.[81] With the increasing advent of sub-orbital flights, there are growing concerns that the present international framework is insufficient to address the significant issues raised by space tourism.The concerns relate to commercial Liability, insurance, consumer protection, passenger safety, environmental impact, and emergency response.Rick Tumlinson of the Space Frontier Foundation, for example, has said: "I hate the word tourist, and I always will ... 'Tourist' is somebody in a flowered shirt with three cameras around his neck.NASA also lists Christa McAuliffe as a spaceflight participant (although she did not pay a fee), apparently due to her non-technical duties aboard the STS-51-L flight.The US Federal Aviation Administration awards the title of "commercial astronaut" to trained crew members of privately funded spacecraft.[108] The concept has met with some criticism; Günter Verheugen, vice-president of the European Commission, said of the EADS Astrium Space Tourism Project: "It's only for the super-rich, which is against my social convictions".[109] On October 14, 2021, Prince William suggested that entrepreneurs should focus on saving Earth rather than engaging in space tourism and also warned about a rise in "climate anxiety" among younger generations.[110] A 2010 study published in Geophysical Research Letters raised concerns that the growing commercial spaceflight industry could accelerate global warming.The study, funded by NASA and The Aerospace Corporation, simulated the impact of 1,000 suborbital launches of hybrid rockets from a single location, calculating that this would release a total of 600 tonnes of black carbon into the stratosphere.Classes in space tourism are currently taught at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York,[115] and Keio University in Japan.
Commercial astronautPrivate spaceflightSpace flight participantSpace TouristsSoyuz MS-20International Space StationYusaku MaezawaAlexander MisurkinYozo HiranoSpaceflightHistoryHistory of spaceflightSpace RaceTimeline of spaceflightSpace probesLunar missionsMars missionsCommunicationsEarth observationExplorationEspionageMilitaryNavigationColonizationHabitationTelescopesSpacecraftRobotic spacecraftSatelliteSpace probeCargo spacecraftCrewed spacecraftApollo Lunar ModuleSpace capsulesSpace ShuttleSpace stationsSpaceplanesVostokSpace launchSpaceportLaunch padExpendablereusablelaunch vehiclesEscape velocityNon-rocket spacelaunchSub-orbitalOrbitalInterplanetaryInterstellarIntergalacticSpace agenciesSpace forcesCompanieshuman space travelsuborbitalDennis TitoSoyuz spacecraftSpace AdventuresRoscosmosRSC EnergiaAnousheh AnsarimarketsSpaceXCrew DragonBoeing StarlinerBlue OriginVirgin Galacticplanning on sending space touristsfree-return trajectoryStarshipSoviet space programcosmonautsIntercosmosWarsaw PactCzechoslovakianon-alignedEuropean Space AgencyUS Space Shuttle programpayload specialistUlf MerboldByron LichtenbergAir ForceCharles D. WalkerMcDonnell DouglasRockwell InternationalSpacelabNational Space Societylunar orbitChrista McAuliffeTeacher in SpaceChallenger disasterBarbara MorganSTS-118mission specialistMiles O'BrienColumbia disasterSTS-107House of RepresentativesPerestroikaTokyo Broadcasting SystemToyohiro AkiyamaHelen SharmanProject JunoSoviet UnionMikhail GorbachevSoyuz TM-12Soyuz TM-11Sub-orbital spaceflightScaled CompositesX PrizeSpaceShipOneKármán LineMichael MelvillBrian BinnieSpaceShipTwoVSS Enterprisethe Enterprise broke upMojave DesertVSS UnityGalactic 01New ShepardArmadillo AerospaceretrorocketsExos AerospaceXCOR Aerospace