Lyceum & Book Club - Week 52 - Second Part of wiki articles on space tourism

From wiki:

Sub-orbital space tourism

Successful projects

• Scaled Composites won the $10 million X Prize in October 2004 with SpaceShipOne, as the first private company to reach and surpass an altitude of 100 km (62 mi) twice within two weeks. The altitude is beyond the Kármán Line, the arbitrarily defined boundary of space. The first flight was flown by Michael Melvill in June 2004, to a height of 100 km (62 mi), making him the first commercial astronaut. The prize-winning flight was flown by Brian Binnie, which reached a height of 112.0 km (69.6 mi), breaking the X-15 record.There were no space tourists on the flights even though the vehicle has seats for three passengers. Instead there was additional weight to make up for the weight of passengers.

• In 2005, Virgin Galactic was founded as a joint venture between Scaled Composites and Richard Branson's Virgin Group. Eventually Virgin Group owned the entire project. Virgin Galactic began building SpaceShipTwo-class spaceplanes. The first of these spaceplanes, VSS Enterprise, was intended to commence its first commercial flights in 2015, and tickets were on sale at a price of $200,000 (later raised to $250,000). However, the company suffered a considerable setback when the Enterprise broke up over the Mojave Desert during a test flight in October 2014. Over 700 tickets had been sold prior to the accident.A second spaceplane, VSS Unity, completed a successful test flight with four passengers on July 11, 2021.

• Blue Origin developed the New Shepard reusable suborbital launch system specifically to enable short-duration space tourism. Blue Origin plans to ferry a maximum of six persons on a brief journey to space on board the New Shepard. The capsule is attached to the top portion of an 18-meter rocket. The rocket successfully launched with four passengers on July 20, 2021, and reached an altitude of 107 km.

Canceled projects

• Armadillo Aerospace was developing a two-seat vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) rocket called Hyperion, which will be marketed by Space Adventures.[28] Hyperion uses a capsule similar in shape to the Gemini capsule. The vehicle will use a parachute for descent but will probably use retrorockets for final touchdown, according to remarks made by Armadillo Aerospace at the Next Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference in February 2012. The assets of Armadillo Aerospace were sold to Exos Aerospace and while SARGE is continuing to be developed, it is unclear whether Hyperion is still being developed.

• XCOR Aerospace was developing a suborbital vehicle called Lynx until development was halted in May 2016. The Lynx would take off from a runway under rocket power. Unlike SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo, Lynx would not require a mothership. Lynx was designed for rapid turnaround, which would enable it to fly up to four times per day. Because of this rapid flight rate, Lynx had fewer seats than SpaceShipTwo, carrying only one pilot and one spaceflight participant on each flight. XCOR expected to roll out the first Lynx prototype and begin flight tests in 2015, but as of late 2017, XCOR was unable to complete their prototype development and filed for bankruptcy.

• Citizens in Space, formerly the Teacher in Space Project, is a project of the United States Rocket Academy. Citizens in Space combines citizen science with citizen space exploration. The goal is to fly citizen-science experiments and citizen explorers (who travel free) who will act as payload operators on suborbital space missions. By 2012, Citizens in Space had acquired a contract for 10 suborbital flights with XCOR Aerospace and expected to acquire additional flights from XCOR and other suborbital spaceflight providers in the future. In 2012 Citizens in Space reported they had begun training three citizen astronaut candidates and would select seven additional candidates over the next 12 to 14 months.

  • Space Expedition Corporation was preparing to use the Lynx for "Space Expedition Curaçao", a commercial flight from Hato Airport on Curaçao, and planned to start commercial flights in 2014. The costs were $95,000 each.

  • Axe Apollo Space Academy promotion of Unilever which planned to provide 23 people suborbital spaceflights on board the Lynx.

• EADS Astrium, a subsidiary of European aerospace giant EADS, announced its space tourism project in June 2007.

Orbital space tourism

Ongoing projects

• The Boeing Starliner capsule is being developed as part of the NASA's Commercial Crew Program. Part of the agreement with NASA allows Boeing to sell seats for space tourists. Boeing proposed including one seat per flight for a spaceflight participant at a price that would be competitive with what Roscosmos charges tourists.

• Bigelow Aerospace plan to extend their successes with the Genesis modules by launching the B330, an expandable habitation module with 330 cubic meters of internal space, aboard a Vulcan rocket. The Vulcan, which is the only rocket under development with sufficient performance and a large enough payload fairing, is contracted to boost BA 330 to low lunar orbit by the end of 2022.

• Aurora Space Station A United States startup firm, Orion Span announced during the early part of 2018 it plans to launch and position a luxury space hotel to orbit within several years. This project remains in the preliminary stages. Aurora Station, the name of this hotel, will offer guests (maximum of six individuals) 12 days of staying in a pill-shaped space hotel for $9.5 million floating in the unexplored universe. The hotel's cabin measures approximately 43 feet by 14 feet in width. Guests can enjoy non-space food and drinks for a small fee.

• SpaceX Axiom Space-1 (AX-1): Axiom Space and SpaceX plan to send tourists to the ISS in January 2022 using a Dragon 2 spacecraft.

• Space Adventures Crew Dragon mission: Space Adventures and SpaceX plan to send up to four tourists to low Earth orbit for a few days in late 2021 or early 2022.

Canceled projects

• In 2004, Bigelow Aerospace established a competition called America's Space Prize, which offered a $50 million prize to the first US company to create a reusable spacecraft capable of carrying passengers to a Nautilus space station. The prize expired in January 2010 without anyone making a serious effort to win it.

• The Space Island Group proposed having 20,000 people on their "space island" by 2020.

Tourism beyond Earth orbit

Ongoing projects

• In February 2017, Elon Musk announced that substantial deposits from two individuals had been received by SpaceX for a Moon loop flight using a free return trajectory and that this could happen as soon as late 2018.Musk said that the cost of the mission would be "comparable" to that of sending an astronaut to the International Space Station, about US$70 million in 2017.In February 2018, Elon Musk announced the Falcon Heavy rocket would not be used for crewed missions. The proposal changed in 2018 to use the Starship launch system instead. In September 2018, Elon Musk revealed the passenger for the trip, Yusaku Maezawa during a livestream. Yusaku Maezawa described the plan for his trip in further detail, dubbed the #dearMoon project, intending to take 6–8 artists with him on the journey to inspire the artists to create new art.

• Elon Musk said that the Starship will be ready for an unpiloted trip to Mars in 2022. The crewed flight will follow in 2024.[53]

• Space Adventures Ltd. have announced that they are working on DSE-Alpha, a circumlunar mission to the Moon, with the price per passenger being $100,000,000.

Canceled projects

• Excalibur Almaz proposed to take three tourists in a flyby around the Moon, using modified Almaz space station modules, in a low-energy trajectory flyby around the Moon. The trip would last around 6 months. However, their equipment was never launched and is to be converted into an educational exhibit.

• The Golden Spike Company was an American space transport startup active from 2010 to 2013. The company held the objective to offer private commercial space transportation services to the surface of the Moon. The company's website was quietly taken offline in September 2015.

• The Inspiration Mars Foundation is an American nonprofit organization founded by Dennis Tito that proposed to launch a crewed mission to flyby Mars in January 2018, or 2021 if they missed the first deadline.Their website became defunct by late 2015 but it is archived by the Internet Archive. The Foundation's future plans are unclear.