Lyceum & Book Club - week 52 - Summary of Space Industry article in Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tourism

Space Industry

Brief Summary

After Apollo 11 in 1969, when we reached our stated goal of being first to put a man on the moon, there was no new goal that was promoted that could draw in the public with its short attention span. The general public lost interest in space exploration and Congress started cutting NASA’s budget. That pretty much signaled the eventual demise of NASA as a viable route to further space travel and set the stage for private companies to eventually become the shapers of our future in space.

The practice of allowing non-professional astronauts who have no or little pilot experience on space missions for state agenda has had an unacknowledged history in world space programs, perhaps starting with the Soviets choosing a female cosmonaut,Valentina Tereshkova, whose only experience with flight was as a member of a parachute club, but who served the pr objective of beating the US in putting a woman into space, after which we don’t hear of any priority for female cosmonauts via Soviet promotion of female pilots in their cosmonaut program. What we do hear of is a Soviet cosmonaut program that included candidates from Warsaw Pact member countries and non-aligned countries, whom the state was courting in other matters. The European Space Agency also took advantage of this Soviet program. While these cosmonauts went through a full training program, they usually went on shorter flights than the Soviet cosmonauts.

The Russians expanded their program in the 90s to include civilians whose companies / sponsors paid a hefty fee.

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From wiki:

The Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) offered to pay for one of its reporters to fly on a mission. Toyohiro Akiyama was flown in 1990 to Mir with the eighth crew and returned a week later with the seventh crew. Cost estimates vary from $10 million up to $37 million. Akiyama gave a daily TV broadcast from orbit and also performed scientific experiments for Russian and Japanese companies.

In 1991, British chemist Helen Sharman was selected from a pool of 13,000 applicants to be the first Briton in space.The program was known as Project Juno and was a cooperative arrangement between the Soviet Union and a group of British companies.

The Project Juno consortium failed to raise the funds required, and the program was almost canceled. Reportedly Mikhail Gorbachev ordered it to proceed under Soviet expense in the interests of international relations, but in the absence of Western underwriting, less expensive experiments were substituted for those in the original plans. Sharman flew aboard Soyuz TM-12 to Mir and returned aboard Soyuz TM-11.

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But the US was not to be left out of including civilians in their space shuttle program when it advanced their agenda. NASA included personnel whose qualification was that the agency sought to curry favor with their sponsors. In the US case, they included Payload Specialist positions that were filled with representatives from the company, institution or government who had bought a specific payload on the mission. These Specialists did not receive the same training as NASA astronauts and were not on the NASA payroll.

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From wiki:

In 1983, Ulf Merbold from 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.

In 1984, Charles D. Walker became the first non-government astronaut to fly, with his employer McDonnell Douglas paying US$40,000 (equivalent to $99,641 in 2020) for his flight.

Payload specialists were flown from 1983 (STS-9) to 2003 (STS-107). The last flown payload specialist was the first Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon, who was killed in the Columbia disaster on mission STS-107 with the rest of the crew.

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Starting in the late 70s with a push to include women and minorities in the space program, NASA finally allowed a woman (along with men who were also scientists) who had a science background (Sally Ride was a physicist) on a mission as an official astronaut in the position of Mission Specialist, the previous requirement of having to have been a jet test pilot (which you will remember automatically cut women out of the loop since they were barred from military jet test pilot positions) was not required for this crew position. Mission Specialists had the same vetting and training as mission pilots and co-pilots, etc and were employed by NASA.

At the same time, they decided to expand their program to include regular citizens who had no scientific or military flight qualifications as a pr strategy to reignite public interest in the program (which would help with funding efforts in Congress).

These programs were: Teacher in Space, Journalist in Space and Artist in Space. It was expected that there would be two to three civilians going up in space a year. But with Christa McAuliffe’s death in the Challenger disaster in 1986, all of these programs were canceled. Another attempt to have a journalist in space was canceled after the Columbia disaster in 2003.

But these situations did not involve paying customers, each person who went up into space served a purpose other than the amount of money they provided. And while there was a precedent of sending non-professional astronauts up to space, the defining line of accepting money is what makes going into space a money making market.

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Lecture:

We are going to concentrate on space tourism with only brief mentions about other space ventures.

Space tourism is just one part of the space industry. It is concerned with human space travel for recreational purposes.

You have space vehicles which may just serve as transportation to space stations in orbit or to planetary habitats on the ground of the moon and/or mars or they may be the end destination themselves.

Space tourism takes place either aboard govt owned space vehicles like the Russian Soyuz, space stations like the International Space Station or in planetary habitats yet to be built or on vehicles/ spaces/ habitats owned by private companies.

Space tourism takes place in either suborbital, orbital, lunar or martian space.

And then there are those who are using the tourism platform as a jump off for expansion into other ventures, like colonies on the Moon or Mars or suborbital travel on Earth.

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I want to note here that there was a time earlier in the NASA program when one of their prime contractors in the space Shuttle program, Rockwell International, had flirted with the idea of paid customers.

From wiki:

During the 1970s, Shuttle prime contractor Rockwell International studied a $200–300 million removable cabin that could fit into the Shuttle's cargo bay. The cabin could carry up to 74 passengers into orbit for up to three days. Space Habitation Design Associates proposed, in 1983, a cabin for 72 passengers in the bay. Passengers were located in six sections, each with windows and its own loading ramp, and with seats in different configurations for launch and landing. Another proposal was based on the Spacelab habitation modules, which provided 32 seats in the payload bay in addition to those in the cockpit area. A 1985 presentation to the National Space Society stated that, although flying tourists in the cabin would cost $1 to 1.5 million per passenger without government subsidy, within 15 years 30,000 people a year would pay US$25,000 (equivalent to $60,156 in 2020) each to fly in space on new spacecraft. The presentation also forecast flights to lunar orbit within 30 years and visits to the lunar surface within 50 years.

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First space tourism deal was between Russian company MirCorp and the American company Space Adventures Ltd.

First space tourist was American businessman, DennisTito, on April 28,2001.

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We can see the transition in the US to viewing space travel as a money making venture in this 2001 hearing in the House of Representatives:

The Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics Committee on Science of the House of Representatives held in June 2001 revealed the shifting attitude of NASA towards paying space tourists wanting to travel to the ISS in its statement on the hearing's purpose:

"Review the issues and opportunities for flying nonprofessional astronauts in space, the appropriate government role for supporting the nascent space tourism industry, use of the Shuttle and Space Station for Tourism, safety and training criteria for space tourists, and the potential commercial market for space tourism.”

The subcommittee report was interested in evaluating Dennis Tito's extensive training and his experience in space as a nonprofessional astronaut. - wiki

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From that date of Dennis Tito’s flight in 2001 to 2009, there were 7 space tourists who took the Russian space craft,Soyuz, up to the International Space Station.

All of these were brokered by Space Adventures in conjunction with Russian state corp, Roscosmos and RSC Energia. The price was around $20-25 million per trip.

1 - Tito

2 - Shuttleworth

3 - Olsen

4 - Ansari

5 - Simonyi

6 - Garriott

7 - Simonyi - repeat customer

8- Laliberte’

The rest were commercial agreements between state government space agencies and the Russian federal space agency.

It was thought at the time that the space tourism industry was now firmly on its way to expansion.

In January 2011, the Space Shuttle ended with no other space vehicle ready to take over the task, leaving the Russian Soyuz the only available space vehicle, so NASA bought up all of the seats and there now was no way to transport private citizen tourists.So space tourism was cut short for lack of alternate space craft to take customers up to the space station.

While previously, NASA frowned on non-professionals on ISS, in 2019, NASA announced it would now join the club and allow non-professionals on ISS traveling via SpaceX Crew Dragon space craft and Boeing Starliner space craft. The cost for the stay will be $35,000 a day and $50 million for the ride there. (Because now NASA needed the path to revenue space tourism provided their program, just as it did for the Russians when they allowed it.)

Some space tourists have signed contracts with 3rd parties to conduct certain research activities while in space -wiki

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From - travelandleisure.com:

After the loss of 14 astronauts in accidents in 1986 and 2003 (along with its astronomical cost), the Space Shuttle's demise was inevitable. NASA then had a game-changing idea: Why not cut costs by helping to create a highly competitive private space industry? After a decade of grants and test flights, NASA's Commercial Crew Program finally came to fruition in the summer of 2020 when Elon Musk's SpaceX flew two NASA astronauts to the ISS. Its Falcon 9 reusable rocket — which blasts satellites and spacecraft into orbit and then lands back on the launchpad — has helped reignite the public's interest in space. Musk has been talking about Mars colonies since well before 2015's iconic movie "The Martian" starring Matt Damon.

SpaceX is set to go into partnership with NASA to get the first woman and the next man on the moon in 2024.

Meanwhile, Sir Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos have both successfully launched into space to kick-start space tourism. "Now we have the spectacle of fabulously wealthy figureheads engaged in a whole new race into space, with a return to the moon and even Mars on their radars," says Burgess. "Without this commercial effort, such things would undoubtedly be decades instead of years away."

Examples of each type of venture:

Suborbital

Some of the biggest private company names in developing suborbital tourism vehicles are Blue Origin (Bezo) and Virgin Galactic(Branson). These ventures are looking to build a sustainable tourist attraction where people (with money) get to experience a short time period (of minutes) of zero gravity and views of the earth from space. Some of them hope to have as an end destination a hotel where people can stay. Some hope to eventually create rotating cities with artificial gravity where people can live and vacation.

Earth Orbital

SpaceX vehicle (Crew Dragon space capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket) will launch in September 15,2021 - first all-civilian crew - 4 people will orbit around the Earth three days. Led by Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur from New Jersey who is bankrolling this flight. The flight is called Inspiration4flight. They are tying it into a charity campaign for St.Jude’s Hospital. The members include a female physician’s assistant & childhood bone cancer survivor from Louisiana, who will serve as the medical officer aboard, a male data engineer from NC (given the seat by a friend who won by donating to St. Judes), a female geoscientist & artist from AZ, Dr. Sian Proctor, who will be the mission’s pilot. Musk is less focused on tourism and more on all of this as a build up to habitats on Mars.

Lunar Orbital

SpaceX (Musk) has as its end goal, sending tourists on a trip around the Moon and back to Earth.

The lunar space vehicle SpaceX plans to use is called the Starship.

One of the tourists who has already paid the fare for a lunar orbit trip with SpaceX is Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire who owns Japan’s largest online fashion retail site.

Musk has set himself up as the transportation vehicle for any moon planetary settlements and then as the company to turn to for eventual Mars settlement. He wants to take over as the exclusive contractor for space just as military industry outfits were before he broke their monopoly.

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Choices in Space Tourism Experiences:(from traveling leisure.com)

1) Just want to experience weightlessness?

Zero Gravity Corporation

They fly in massive arches called parabolic flights which at their apex, you will experience 30 sec of weightlessness. They do these loops 15 times, so you get about 6.5 minutes of weightlessness. Prices start at $7,500.

2) An alternate to fueled aircraft that won’t pollute Earth’s atmosphere

SolarStratos

This is a 2 seater solar powered aircraft (240 sq ft of solar cells) that will travel into the stratosphere. Again you won’t be beyond the boundary of our atmosphere, but you will get to see the curvature of the Earth from that point.

3. Want to just float up into near space for the "overview effect", seeing the whole planet from space?

Zero2infinity's Bloon Pod

Based in Spain, this pod will carry 4 passengers and two crew members up to an altitude of 22 miles above the earth (near space) via a massive balloon. There is no surge of g-force since you are just basically floating up like you would in a huge hot air balloon.

Space Perspective company plans to do the same thing - called Spaceship Neptune.

On both, you won’t experience weightlessness, but you will get to have that fabulous view of Earth and have cocktails and dinner above the Earth.

4) if you are looking to just cross the 50 mile mark above the Earth that marks space, so you can say you went to space:

Virgin Galatic’s VSS Unity

A SpaceShip Two-class craft that seats two pilots and 6 passengers. Took its first successful test flight in summer of 2021. Hundreds of people have already put down deposits on tickets that now cost $450,000. (Early comers who reserved tickets got them at the bargain rate of $250,000

5) Want to experience a rocket launch?

Blue Origin’s New Shepard

New Shepard system (like Roscosmos’ Soyuz and SpaceX’s Dragon) has a vertical take off via rocket with passengers in a capsule at the top. You get to experience the excitement of a countdown, the crushing pushback of g-forces (3 times the gravity of earth) as you lift up into space, the weightlessness of space and then a parachute landing.

Ticket sales are predicted to be around $250,000.

6) Want to spend a few days aboard the International Space Station?

Space Ventures

Space Ventures has used the Russian spacecraft to take passengers up to ISS and is scheduled to take two more passengers in partnership with the Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos in 2023, one of whom is scheduled to participate in a space walk.

Axiom Space plans to book seats aboard SpaceX to bring customers to ISS for a stay.

7) Want to stay in a space hotel?

Orbital Assembly’s Voyager Station

The plan is for the hotel to start construction in 2026 and be open for guests in 2027. They will offer a gourmet restaurant, a bar, gym, hotel rooms and even vacation villas will be available for purchase. A 3.5 day stay will cost around $5 million.