Traveling into space is becoming a real possibility. The world is experiencing a second space race in which competition is focused on who consolidates a competitive market around space tourism, the most promising segment of luxury tourism, a potential global market of more than 10 billion dollars .
The offer is so extensive that it is worth stopping to weigh the different models and plan the most exclusive trip to which you can aspire: space.
To begin with, there are different types of travel determined by the type of ship, which marks the differences in the journey (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.
Companies, Specialty Tour Operators, and Billionaires Compete to Cross the Last Frontier
Five US companies are competing for the market: Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, SpaceX, Axiom and Space Perspective. To these must be added Orbital Assembly, with its purpose of building the first space hotel-development, 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 spacecraft, Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner, a capsule reusable up to ten times, designed to house 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 priced at about $ 30 million , an experience eight billionaires have already enjoyed.
2022, complete
Prices will be within the reach of very few, but the emergence of private companies is already revolutionizing the sector. At the helm, Virgin Galactic, by Richard Branson , and Blue Origin, by Jeff Bezo s. His 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 frontier 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 the year 2022 everything is complete.
But the company of Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, is the best example of commercial success, by virtue of 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.
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 hosting tourists in space hotels in 2027.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, has included in his space catalog the first tourist flight to the Moon
At the moment, only one travel agency in Spain, Bru & Bru, is authorized to make reservations for the next trips of Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson’s company. The agency has already enabled a channel for inquiries and reservations on its website, 13 Spaniards have already booked at the agency.
And since 2010, Destinia’s Space Travel division has been exclusively dedicated to offering these types of offers through three flight programs: zero gravity, orbital and suborbital, thanks to the alliance with two of the largest US companies. of the space sector: Space Adventures and Zero G.
And two more proposals, and also Spanish, which are worth keeping a close eye on: 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, selling flights to the border 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 scheduled for this year.
