Space tourism has already taken off (and there is a waiting list)

There are already companies with prototypes and tested trips, specialized tour operators and billionaires who bet on a unique experience about to make it a reality.

Space travel is becoming a real possibility. The world is experiencing a second space race in which the competition focuses on who will consolidate a competitive market around space tourism, the most promising segment of luxury tourism, a potential global market of more than 10,000 million dollars.

The offer is so extensive that it is worth pausing to weigh up the different models and plan the most exclusive trip you can aspire to: space.

To begin with, there are different types of trip determined by the type of ship, which marks the differences in the route (orbital or suborbital), in duration (between ten minutes and several days) and also in price (between 150,000 euros and several million). To these must be added the need or not for prior training.

Five US companies compete for the market: Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, SpaceX, Axiom and Space Perspective. To them must be added Orbital Assembly, with its purpose of building the first space hotel – luxury, of course – Voyager Station, which could be operational in 2027. And the commercial operations of the space agencies of the United States and Russia. In the case of NASA, the US agency, despite its reluctance to take civilian passengers into space, already has its own program and ship, Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner, a reusable capsule up to ten times, designed to accommodate seven passengers. The prototype was launched on July 30. The Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos, has been offering the possibility of boarding the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz spacecraft for two decades. The seat is listed at around $30 million, an experience already enjoyed by eight billionaires.

The suborbital journey of the pressurized capsule of the Spanish company EOS-X Space will ascend up to 40 km in height.

2022, complete

The prices are going to be within the reach of very few, but the irruption of private companies is already revolutionizing the sector. Leading the way are Virgin Galactic, by Richard Branson, and Blue Origin, by Jeff Bezos. Its first prototype trips to test the quality of the customer experience, carried out this July, have become a priceless marketing campaign. Its offer is similar: suborbital trips aboard propelled ships that ascend to the edge of space to experience the overview effect, the curvature of the Earth, the blackness of space and a few minutes of weightlessness before returning to earth. The duration of the experience ranges from 10 to 30 minutes, and the price is $250,000. Both plan to be fully operational from 2022, including making the first official commercial flight this year. The waiting list to access one of the places that Virgin Galactic will offer exceeds 600 people. By 2022 everything is complete.

But the company of Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, is the best example of commercial success, due to the agreements closed with NASA and the solid catalog of projects related to space tourism, including the first tourist flight to the Moon, planned by 2023. They are offered through the world’s leading space tourism agency, Space Adventures. It is essential to take a look at the offers of the British agency Rocket Breaks, an expert in travel and accommodation in the luxury tourism sector, which hopes to start accommodating tourists in space hotels in 2027.

At the moment, only one travel agency in Spain, Bru&Bru, is authorized to make reservations for upcoming Virgin Galactic trips, Richard Branson’s company. The agency has already enabled a query and reservation channel on its website, 13 Spaniards have already booked at the agency. And since 2010, Destinia’s Viajes al Espacio division has been dedicated exclusively to offering this type of offer through three flight programs: zero gravity, orbital and suborbital, thanks to the alliance with two of the largest American companies of the space sector: Space Adventures and Zero G.

And two more proposals, and also Spanish, which are worth following closely: Zero 2 Infinity and EOS-X Space. Both have set themselves the goal of revolutionizing nearby space tourism and opening it up to a larger public, marketing flights to the frontier of space for 150,000 euros, for a six-hour trip, by means of a pressurized capsule that ascends with a hydrogen balloon or helium. The first manned test flights of EOS-X Space are planned for later this year.