Space Travel: Will The Ends Justify The Expense?

When the concept of space travel was in its infancy 40 years ago, the prospects for a booming tourist industry seemed bright indeed.  After all, if Neil Armstrong could conquer the moon, surely ordinary citizens would soon be able to fly through space as well.  That theory didn’t prove to be as accurate as has been hoped.  To date, just a few private citizens have journeyed into space, and these were put through a gauntlet of stringent medical examinations, undergoing months of training and coughing up anywhere from $20 million to $45 million dollars for the trip.

For the average person dreaming of visiting space the picture didn’t look promising.  But low and behold prospects are looking decidedly brighter thanks to the creation of the commercial space-flight company Virgin Galactic and their vehicle the VSS Enterprise, hailed as the world’s first commercial space craft.

The company’s CEO, Stephen Attenborough states that Galactic will be accepting passengers by as early as next year.  The price for a round trip ticket will be $200,000, but costs are likely to be reduced quickly as the industry expands.  Space Adventures, which became the first company to launch a private citizen into space in 2001 has already undercut Galactic’s fee by announcing it will give citizens a similar experience for $100,000.  Experts have held out the possibility that within the next decade, the cost of space travel could drop to as low as $50,000.

The question is, will paying these colossal fees really be worth what you get in exchange?  If you book your flight with Virgin Galactic your adventure will begin a little mundanely with a couple of days preparation including:  medical tests, safety training and some time to get acquainted with the pilots who will be taking you up, up and away.  The aircraft will separate from the mother ship at 50,000 feet.  Once free the Enterprise will accelerate to three times the speed of sound, lifting it up and over the Earth’s atmosphere.  Once that happens, the engines will shut off, enabling the passengers to see Earth from space while the ship idles.  In about five minutes the gravitational pull will haul the spaceship back down to earth.  And that’s all there is to it.  In less than an hour passengers will have traveled to space and back and be $200,000 poorer.

As for Space Adventures, while it will prove the shorter flights, its main goal is to concentrate on orbital trips — which take tourists hundreds of thousands of miles and last up to 10 days.  Oh and by the way, in exchange for offering more bang for your buck,  these orbital trips only cost  a mere $30 million.

Is it worth it?  Well, apparently 80,000 people seem to think so.  That’s how many people have registered their interest in being launched into space with Virgin Galactic, and the company’s already taken in $50 million of deposits without having   its first batch of passengers yet.