Why are private space companies pushing tourism? Is there a future for tourism in space? Is this an overall good thing for space exploration, or just a distraction? I discuss these questions and more in today’s Ask a Spaceman!

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Episode Transcription (Auto Generated)

How much would you pay to go into space? I suppose I should clarify that because going to space can be anywhere from a few minute suborbital hop to a multi month stay at the hotel ISS. So let's say orbital, 3 days. Small capsule. There's a bathroom, but, otherwise, no privacy.

You'll have to undergo weeks of rigorous training and meet stringent physical and emotional requirements. It will be uncomfortable, and you may permanently damage your body. But you would get to see the entire earth held before you in your gaze. You just might transform your entire outlook on life and humanity. You can briefly look down on all of us peons from your orbital vantage point.

And for the rest of your life, you get to say you've been to space which is pretty awesome. How much would you pay? Well, that question is fast becoming a reality for many people with the continued rise in space tourism, which is wildly enough a thing in humanity. So I'd like to take some time this episode to look at space tourism, go through a brief history, look at some major selling points, and some not so great sides to it. And then we can decide if any amount of money is worth going into space for and if anyone should bother doing it at all.

So let's start with the history. The wonderful world of space tourism is generally regarded to begin in 2001 when an American business dude named Dennis Tito paid a cool 20 mil to the company Space Adventures. And Space Adventures act like a middle man. Originally, they were working with the Russian Space Agency to send people up to Mir, and then that kind of fell through. And so they switched over, and they worked out a deal with NASA.

And Dennis got to visit the International Space Station for a week. Over the years, 6 other people from various walks of very wealthy life have joined them paying tremendous sums of money for a few days stay at a well, it's not exactly the Ritz Carlton, but you can't beat the views. But in my reckoning, and this is my show so I get to do whatever kind of reckoning I want, space tourism started way earlier. Yeah. Dennis Tito is the first person to have a let's call it a purely transactional relationship with NASA.

Dennis paid the money, did all the trading, got certified, went to the ISS, did some science experiments, and came back home. No list, no competitions, no government sponsorships, just cold hard cash. But going all the way back to 1984, NASA was including, quote, payload specialists in their flight rosters. These were people not employed by NASA, not given the full suite of training that NASA astronauts get, and they were generally representatives of various contracting companies. And they aren't generally considered space tours because they weren't paying the bills themselves, and they had some minor role to play in the mission, like babysit a satellite before the shuttle deployed the satellite in orbit.

But, you know, the the line's a little blurry here, so I say space tourism goes back to 1984, but not many people listen to me. You can disagree with me if you want. But then after that, NASA even set up programs for us regular folks to go into space. They had a teacher in space competition, an artist in space competition, a journalist in space competition. They even had a politician in space thing.

They didn't call it that. They just invited members of congress to go on space missions. I guess the idea was if they got to go to space themselves, they might be more willing to approve future budget requests. That plan didn't exactly work out, but that's a different story. All of these name that profession in space, programs ended abruptly with the Challenger disaster in 1986, but, they did a few.

The 19 nineties saw a major shift in NASA's thinking. Prior to the 19 nineties, the NASA's thinking was there's no way we're going to dirty our hands with private individuals paying us money to get seats on launches. And in the by the end of 19 nineties, this shifted to we might be open to dirtying our hands with private individuals paying us money to get seats on launches. And if you're wondering what motivated that change in thinking, I'll give you a clue. The clue begins with the letter b and it ends with ajit.

And so you end up in 2001 with folks like Dennis Tito going up in space by just paying cash and having no other reason to be there. Russian Space Agency finally got along on the gig. They also let some paying customers go up to the Mir space station, but all of this ended with the end of the shuttle program in 2011. And that's because the space shuttle has lots of seats, so it's easy to buy a seat. And once that program ended, NASA was sending all its astronauts up on Soyuz capsules, which don't have a lot of seats.

And they were buying up every single spot for their own astronauts, and there wasn't any room left. And so it seemed in 2,011, like, that was the end of the story for space tourism. You know, a handful of folks got to go to the space station, but now there weren't enough seats to just hand out like candy, and that was that. Space tourism was a cute side diversion that lasted a few years, and a few people went up, and then that's it. And then private space flight happened.

Now I don't know the actual history, the backroom conversations, the negotiations, and so on. But what I like to imagine is that a bunch of billionaires wanted to pull a Dennis Tito and go play astronaut and asked NASA for a seat to the space station. But NASA shrugged and said, sorry. Without a space shuttle, there aren't enough seats, and and you can't go. And so the billionaires went back to their corner and decided that if NASA wasn't going to let them be astronauts, then they were going to make their own space agency with their own rockets and be astronauts all on their own.

And that's basically what happened. We have Elon Musk starting SpaceX. We have Jeff Bezos starting Blue Origin. We have Richard Branson with Virgin Galactic. All independent privately funded space companies.

And that deserves an entire episode on its own, the emergence of private space flight. Go feel free to ask. I would love to discuss it more in-depth. But of the 3 of them, of SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic, only Virgin Galactic has a stated long term goal of space tourism. The entire point of Virgin Galactic is space tourism.

The other SpaceX and Blue Origin's, they allow space tourism or they have short term space tourism goals like, we're gonna do space tourism now, but it's going to lead to something else in the future. They have very different long term goals. Like, the stated goal of SpaceX is to get us to Mars, and we need to talk about that. Feel free to ask. And the state of stated goal of Blue Origin is to develop industry off the Earth, and and we we also need to talk about that.

So feel free to ask. But whether it's stated goal, long term goal, short term goal, or just side hustle, All three of these companies have either directly or through various partnerships brought Taurus into space. And the big year for this was 2021. It it technically started in 2004 scaled composites, a company called scaled composites, which would eventually become and merge to become Virgin Galactic, achieved a suborbital flight just above the Von Karman line, which is an arbitrary line where we say space starts. It's a 100 kilometers up.

So that was technically private astronauts going into space. But then Virgin Galactic did it again with passengers just along for the ride in 2021. Also in 2021, we had the Inspiration 4 mission, which was funded by yet another billionaire, which spent 3 days in orbit on a SpaceX capsule. And in 2021, we had Blue Origin's New Shepard Rocket reach an altitude of 107 kilometers with 4 passengers. Four people who were just along for the ride.

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That's code spaceman5zero@factormeals.com/spaceman5zero to get 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month while your subscription is active. And so in 2021, all of a sudden, we have a whole bunch of people just paying their way to private companies to get into space. And that was 2 decades after Dennis Tito. And it really reignited this conversation about space tourism because now you don't have to negotiate with a government space agency to get your ticket. You just buy 1.

Like, you'd log in to your airline's website and pick up a couple tickets to visit grandma in Boise for the weekend, and you should totally visit grandma in Boise. Alright. She misses you. So now that the era of space tourism is here in a much more real way than it was with a handful of flights that happened in years decades prior, we have to grapple with it. It's happening.

It's probably going to keep happening, but is this happening a good thing? Should we keep doing this thing? Well, on the good side of space tourism, there's there's a long list. For example, some of the astronauts, not all of them, but some of these private astronauts and, yes, there's a whole side discussion about whether we even call these people astronauts or whether we call them commercial astronauts or we call them space flight participants. That's a whole separate discussion.

I'm not getting into that. Some of these astronauts, people going into space, are doing actual science experiments. They're looking at the effects of space flight on human health. They're looking at the effects of weightlessness on plant growth, the effects of 0 g on Patreon. That's patreon.com/pmstutter.

I don't personally have any great dreams of going into space. I would do it. Like, if if all of you Patreon subscribers pooled your money and bought me a $20,000,000 ticket, I would probably take it. But I'm not counting on that, and I'm just grateful for every single contribution you make, whether it gets me into space or not. That's patreon.com/pmsutter.

They are also looking at, various material science questions like the properties of microbubbles in 0 g, tensile strength, so on. Like like, there are a lot of experiments that can only be done in 0 g that can't be replicated in a laboratory on Earth and are essential for our future understanding of how to live and work in space. We need to know how 0 g affects biological systems, plant growth. Like, can we can we grow a tomato in space and it tastes good? And can can we digest it?

And can our body systems adapt to 0 g? Then can we build new materials, that can only be grown in 0 g or developed in 0 g, bring them back to Earth, and they're really useful. Or we keep them in space, and they're useful in space. There are, like, a million questions we need to answer about how to live and work in space, and there are experiments being done, by these space tourists to do exactly that. And the endeavor of space tourism is driving more commercial interest and money in space.

It's a legit business venture. Right? There are accountants and profit and loss statements and marketers and spreadsheets. Who doesn't love a good spreadsheet? I mean, this is a legit business.

And and one argument you can make about space is the more the merrier. The more people that are going into space, the more companies that are interested in space, the more organizations that are developing partnerships, technologies. It's just the more things that happen in space, the better for everyone. And it's an excuse to develop technologies that may have many other uses. Like, if you're gonna develop a rocket to send Taurus into space, well, then you end up with a rocket that can send other things into space.

Equipment, probes, missions, science experiments, people not going for tourism, but for industry to do other things. Like, we're just making that technology. And, hey, with all these companies developing space tourism, developing reusable rockets, developing clever ways to get into space, that makes access to space overall cheaper because you have more people competing, developing technologies, finding clever solutions that lessens the cost of getting into space overall. And who knows what you're going to get when you have cheap access to space. And you can argue that, space tourism is driving more public interest in space.

There's a lot of media coverage of whenever there's a private space launch, you know, the media gets interested because it's just folks going up. I mean, William Shatner went into space. How meta can you get? That's that's what you do. Lots of people talking about space, dreaming about space, thinking about space.

I'm literally talking about it, devoting an entire episode to space tourism, and we're having this conversation. People like to dream, especially about fancy expensive rich person stuff. Like, oh, man. If I had $20,000,000 spare sitting in my shoved in my couch cushions. Yeah.

I think I'd like to go to space, and that kind of dream can fuel creativity and careers. That's pretty awesome. And who knows what creative people will think of when they're sparked by thoughts of space. And then there's this overview effect, something that many many astronauts have talked about that once you remove yourself from the planet Earth and you see the how fragile we are, how small we are, how precious we are, and you don't see any lines drawn in the ground to separate one country from another. And all of our arguments and squabbles and and wars seems so small and insignificant and even petty.

And, like, there's an argument to be made that the more people we send to space, whether they're doing work or not or just going along for the ride, that they had come back to Earth with a sense of community and humanity and vulnerability, and they can spread this message to the rest of us. And more people feeling a sense of community and humanity vulnerability, is generally better for humanity in some intangible way. Okay. That's the good stuff. What about the downsides to space tourism?

Well, the vast majority of space tourists have not done any science experiments. By far, the most successful company in terms of number of human beings sent into space is Virgin Galactic, and these are quick suborbital hops lasting, like, 10, 20 minutes tops. They're not doing any science experiments. They're just along for the ride. They're enjoying the view, and they're coming back to Earth.

Only a small fraction of space tourists are conducting experiments. And those experiments aren't, I hate to say this, all that impressive. I'm not trying to dog the researchers who developed the experiments here. Obviously, any experiment is useful. Obviously, we do learn things.

Obviously, we do gain some understanding. But it's not like we're doing a ton of research with space tours. And the experiments we're doing, they're not exactly groundbreaking, and they're not exactly experiments that can't be done in other venues like the International Space Station. Yeah. There's only so many experiments we can do on the ISS.

That's for sure. And so the more venues we have, the better, but it's not exactly like a lot. We're not really changing the the future of experimentation, the few humanity in space angle with the handful of experiments we've been able to do. And I have a sneaking suspicion. This is just between you and me.

So NASA for a while had a program where you could get wings, astronaut wings that you could wear on your shirt or your backpack or whatever. And, I mean, if I had astronaut wings, I would wear them 247. Let's be honest. And part of the certification to get those wings is that you had to involve yourself in some sort of experiment that advanced our knowledge of human space flight. That program went away a couple years ago.

And so I wonder if now that you can't get your wings anymore, you're not gonna bother doing any experiments. So, that's just that's just curious speculation. We'll see where that goes. Or if space tourism just leans into, yeah, we're just here for the view, which is fine, but it's not exactly advancing our scientific understanding of human space flight. Another downside to it is, it's just a bunch of billionaires wasting money.

Like, you're building entire rockets, entire technology, entire companies from the ground up just so some ultra wealthy people can spend a few minutes in space and look down on us and then come back. Can't that money is that wise money? Is that money that could have been spent on, you know, literally anything else? This can create a sense of disillusionment. Like, great.

Rich people doing stupid rich things, that doesn't benefit us, and it can ironically make space feel even more distant. At least the astronauts were I mean, they were superhumans, and they they are superhumans, but they're regular folks. Right? They they live down the street. Your only qualification to be an astronaut is you have to be super smart and super physically fit with but, like, otherwise, you're a normal person.

You're not separated by wealth. And just having rich people go into space, it makes it feel like more of just a playground inaccessible, something we can't get to. Us normal folks will never go into space, so why bother? And so it's hard for the public to really see the value in what private space tourists are doing. Like, great.

I'm glad you're having a good time. In an image that comes to my mind, and I just have to roll my eyes every time, I'm very sorry, is when Jeff Bezos went in the the New Shepard Rocket suborbital flight for a while. They were weightless, and the videos come back of of the capsule, and they're sitting there. They're not looking out the windows. They're not contemplating the meaning of existence and the role of humanity.

They're, like, throwing candy at each other. And that kind of image is was personally very off putting, and I suspect off putting to a lot of people. Like, great. You spent how many 1,000,000,000 of dollars so that you could throw candy at each other? It's it it can leave a sour taste in some people's mouth, especially if the candy was, like, sour gummies or something.

And as for the overview effect, okay. Are any of the space tourists, like, better people? Maybe. Maybe not. Is there any solid evidence, especially among the billionaire class?

When a billionaire went into space, enjoyed the view, got the overview effect, did they did they come back a better person? I don't know. And it should be noted that the overview effect is not universal. William Shatner, when he went up, faced profound existential dread. He he he did not have a rosy picture of our place in the universe when he came back.

So it's not like everyone comes back with the same perspective. And space tourism is nice, but does it really advance human spaceflight and our spread into space and and and, industry in space, further exploration, potential, colonization of other worlds? Is it really leading to that, or is it a distraction? We're spending time, money, and resources on a niche business venture that only a tiny fraction of humanity gets to enjoy. And so we're spending time, money, and resources on a business venture that may go nowhere.

Yeah. There may be some technology side benefits and ways to advance overall human space flight as a byproduct of space tourism, maybe not. The directions we're taking in space tourism may not be transferable to other more useful avenues. And, you know, we can't ignore the pollution, the space junk. Every launch adds to the, you know, the overall carbon footprint, how adds to the overall c02.

You know, it it it's it's not for free. And then every launch, there's even the reusable stuff, there are some parts that are not reused. This is contributing to space junk, more bits and bolts, more crowding of low earth orbit with with all these people playing tourist. Yeah. It's not we don't get it for free.

Everything comes with a cost. But before I continue, I need to mention that this show is sponsored by BetterHelp. One of my favorite favorite things about doing this podcast is how much I get to learn. I mean, yes. I I I went to school.

I have a PhD. I I I I do research in physics, and I learned about things like solar bubbles and space tourism and and asteroids, but I didn't learn about them, if you catch my drift. And so by getting to do these episodes, by getting to answer your questions, I get to dig into these topics, and it just satisfies that thirst for new knowledge, that craving I constantly have. And I bet you have a craving for new knowledge, which is probably why you're listening to this show. Therapy can be a great way to help you reconnect with your sense of wonder.

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That's betterhelphelp.com/spaceman. Okay. So we've done the good side, the bad side. Now for the boring side. The truth is, it's hard.

Space tourism is hard. It's hard for companies to do it and succeed. The list of space tourism companies that failed is much much longer than the list of companies that have succeeded. Here are just a few. Space Adventures hasn't done much of anything since the end of the shuttle program.

There are companies like Armadillo Aerospace, XCOR Aerospace. I've never heard of these either before I started researching this episode. They were developing suborbital rockets that folded. Bigelow Aerospace had an idea for inflatable space hotels, even had a module attached to the ISS. The company folded.

Stuff is just sitting around. I've seen parts of it over at Goddard Space Flight Center. They're just there, not doing anything. There's the Inspiration Mars Foundation, which is founded by Dennis Tito, where volunteers would go to Mars that actually went nowhere. There was the Dear Moon project where, you know, some random billionaire is gonna take artists and influencers, and we're gonna orbit go around the moon and then come back, and that went nowhere.

It turns out that it's easy to develop an idea, and it's easy to announce that idea, but space itself is really, really hard. Most space tourism companies are not going to deliver on their promises. It's also personally hard, like on a physical level. Spaceflight spaceflight kinda sucks. The physical experience of it, the prep is physically demanding.

Your body gets all messed up. Weightlessness is actually very uncomfortable. You have to fight nausea, either bloating, you know, weird things happen to your sinuses. There might be permanent damage to your vision, to your bones, to your heart. Yeah.

It's not friendly on the human body, and it's rare. Space tourism is rare. So only what? Like, 60 space tourists total? Most of them vast majority of them have been suborbital.

The vast majority of them have only spent, you know, tens of minutes in space. Space tourism launches only happen a few times a year at most, and it will not get significantly more frequent over the coming years. So what's the verdict? After summarizing all these arguments, all these facets, all these angles, here's my take. Paul Sutter's personal hot take.

Are you ready? Meh. That's right. Meh. Hear me out.

Hear me out. To me, I'm speaking very personally here. After surveying all these angles myself, I find space tourism kinda interesting. To me, space tourism isn't moving the needle much in any direction. I sincerely doubt that I will ever get the chance to be a space tourist.

And, yeah, I would take the opportunity if I if it was presented to me, but I don't think I'll get the opportunity. I don't see the cost coming down all that much over the coming decades. I think it will remain a leisure activity for the ultra rich, which is fine, I guess. I mean, I'm not going to ask too many questions about how other people spend their money because I don't want too many questions asked about how I spend my money, mostly cheese. So whatever.

And yes, companies are developing the capabilities to do it, but most of these companies have failed. And the most successful one, Virgin Galactic, in terms of the number of ticketed passengers accessing space isn't all that much different than a high altitude balloon trip. And, yeah, experiments are being done, but not a lot and nothing that can't be done in other venues. And there is much more long term interest in other commercial aspects of space like mining asteroids or deploying mega constellations of communication satellites, which we need to talk about. Running theme in this episode, so just ask.

Companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX like SpaceX is by far the most successful private spaceflight company. Yes. They allow space tourism. People can buy seats on launches, on capsules, but that is not their primary goal. Their primary goal is industrial you know, putting stuff in space.

Blue origins has a short term goal of space tourism, and they've done some space tourism flights, but that's not their long term goal. And then Virgin Galactic, their stated goal is space tourism, and they just have quick suborbital flights that pop you into space, you know, get you above the Von Karman line so it counts, and then bring you back down like a giant roller coaster. There isn't actually much industry interest in space tourism. And so to me, space tourism isn't a game changer. It will continue to be a thing in space, but I don't think it will ever be the thing in space.

And after listening to all these arguments and back and forth, you may have your own hot take, and that's great. And you may think that I overemphasized some points or downplayed others, and that's great too. I think it's a worthy debate to have. I mean, ultimately, these super rich people are going to do whatever they want. They're gonna do super rich things, and they may spend 1,000,000,000 upon 1,000,000,000 upon 1,000,000,000 of dollars so that they can get a joyride into space, either just buying a ticket or developing the company from the ground up.

But and and and truth be told, there's not much we can do about, but we can make our approval known. We can make our disapproval known. We can make our apathy known. I would love it if more people got into space. I think overall, it would be a good thing.

But space tourism, I don't think is how we're going to do it, and I don't see it as a major component of humanity's future in space for the coming decades or even centuries. I think it will happen more, but I think it will happen as a byproduct of other things. The more we are in space, the more we explore space, the more things we do in space, the more tourists are gonna find ways to to hop along for the ride. And that's fine, but it's also just fine. And we can still wonder if we were given the chance how much we'd be willing to pay.

I still think about that. Thank you to at true atomic snails for the question that led to today's episode, and thank you to all your wonderful questions. Please keep those questions coming. That's askaspaceman@gmail.com, or you can visit the website, askaspaceman.com. There's a form there where you can also check out all the old episodes.

I can't thank you enough for all the questions. The questions are the lifeblood of this show. And and it is a joy to get your questions every single time. And I can't thank my Patreon supporters enough for keeping this show going. That's patreon.com/pmsutter.

I'd like to give a shout out to the top contributors this month. We've got Justin g, Chris l, Lothian 53, Barbara k, Alberto m, Duncan m, Corey d, Stargazer, Robert b, Tom g, Nyla, Bike Santa, Sam r, John s, Joshua, Scott, m, Rob, h, Lewis, m, John, w, Alexis, Gilbert, m, Rob, w, Valerie, h, Demetrius, j, Jules, r, Mike, g, Jim, l, Scott, j, David, s, Angelo, l, William, w, Scott, r, Dean, c, Miguel, b b g j 108, Briarley Wires, Heather, Mike s, Michelle r, Pete h, Steve s, Nathan, and Wat Wat Bird. Thank you so much. Please keep those questions coming. Please drop a review on iTunes.

That really helps the show visibility as always or however you get this podcast, and I will see you next time for more complete knowledge of time and space.

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