Just like those brave seafarers who risked calamity for a chance to visit the farthest corners of the Earth, these trailblazers are laying the groundwork for what may eventually become a mainstay of the travel industry: mass space tourism. To be sure, travel agents won’t be able to find too many guys eager to shell out $20 million to become human cannonballs. But if the price comes down, forget the sky–not even the Earth’s substratosphere is the limit. Earlier this year, Zogby International, a private polling firm, surveyed hundreds of affluent Americans (net worth: at least $1 million). One in five said he’d pay $100,000 for 15 minutes in space. That projects to thousands of potential customers and puts the annual market in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Robert Bigelow, founder of the hugely successful Budget Suites of America motel chain and a wanna-be pioneer in this new industry, says his motivation is simple: “It’s a real strong sense of greed.”
How close are we to making space travel a viable commercial option? Bigelow, who opened Bigelow Aerospace in 1999 to focus on developing custom interiors for spacecraft, thinks the current situation is akin to the “days of Columbus”: explorers’ quarters back then were spartan at best, and unbearably cramped at worst. It took a while, but as rickety caravels morphed into the Carnival Cruise Lines, so, Bigelow predicts, the “tin cans” of today’s space travel will inevitably evolve into capsules with all the creature comforts of a five-star resort. For those working on the rockets themselves, we are in a time more akin to the early 20th century–when mankind stood on the precipice of mass air travel. Charles Lindbergh “demonstrated the technical ability and broke down the psychological barrier,” says Brian Feeney, a rocket engineer. “Before his flight fewer than 4 percent [of the population] would fly in anything. Post-Lindbergh the numbers grew rapidly.”
Perhaps most importantly, there is once again an economic incentive driving the race to commercialize space travel. The St. Louis, Missouri-based X Prize Foundation is offering $10 million to the first privately funded team to launch civilians into suborbital space (100km) twice within a two-week span of time. It was a similar award, the $25,000 “Orteig Prize,” that spurred Lindbergh to cross the Atlantic. Feeney thinks he can hurtle through space by the end of next year in a cheap rocket he calls the da Vinci. His plan is to use a giant helium balloon to lift the automobile-size rocketship to an altitude of 80,000 feet. Twin engines will then ignite, sending the capsule on a parabolic trajectory that reaches its apogee 120km above the planet. To slow descent, a specially modified parachute will deploy 25 seconds later, turning the da Vinci into a giant shuttlecock. Predicts British designer Steven Bennet, “When the X Prize is won, the floodgates of capital investment will open, flights will become more common and ticket prices could go down as low as [Pound sterling]10,000 (about $15,000).”
No one would even be speculating about all this, of course, if not for the Dutch-based MirCorp. The firm formed a partnership in 2000 with the Russian Space Corporation Energia, gaining access to its rockets, the capsules and–when it was still floating around–space station Mir. So far, MirCorp has sent only Tito and Shuttleworth into orbit. But the company’s visibility will undoubtedly be raised by its next expected customer–‘N Sync vocalist Lance Bass. The 22-year-old singer is seeking sponsors to fund a “taxi mission” in October. If he succeeds, he’ll ride up on a Russian replacement capsule for the International Space Station, then hang out while the crews spend a few days making repairs and changing shifts.
The Russian example has had one critical effect–to spur NASA into another space race. Since the end of the cold war, the American agency has left space capitalism to the former communists, preferring instead to lavish its billions on unmanned space exploration. Whatever the scientific virtues of that strategy, it’s failed miserably from the standpoint of investors–in this case, American taxpayers–who have lost interest as astronauts have become faceless scientists rather than national heroes. Since the beginning of this year, NASA has muted its once sharp criticism of space tourism and has even announced plans to revive its “teacher in space program,” shelved after sixth-grade teacher Christa McAuliffe perished in the 1986 explosion of the shuttle Challenger. Some industry groups believe the almost $5 billion that NASA had budgeted for cheaper, second-generation reusable rockets will also help bring costs down to a manageable level.
All this has encouraged dreamers like Bigelow to envision a real tourist infrastructure in space. At the International Space Station, only two of the sometimes seven astronauts onboard can sleep lying down at one time, and the definition of a bed is a shallow crawl space that barely holds a sleeping bag. For meals, a small “kitchen table” makes anything close to a comfortable communal eating experience impossible. Bigelow boasts that the modules his company is developing will be able to sleep six people comfortably and offer such features as vaulted ceilings and multilevels. They can be customized for space structures such as the ISS or future space hotels. Ultimately Bigelow dreams of adding king-size beds, slot machines–even all-you-can-eat buffets. “Let your imagination go,” says Bigelow, a Las Vegas native. “If you’re really serious about space hotels, you’d incorporate all the hotel stuff I’ve been around all my life.”
Some say such talk is premature. “Now is not the time for space hotels,” snaps MirCorp’s president, Jeffrey Manber. “I’m not going to shy away from the realities of space: it’s an extremely dangerous environment. There are going to be more accidents, and people are going to die.” Bigelow says he shares that concern. “The last thing this industry needs is a fatality, or even people who don’t have a good story to talk about when they return.” But it’s never too early to dream. Soon there might be something new for humans to ponder when they look at the stars: should I pack the blue spacesuit, or the trendy red two-piece number?
