Bournemouth Wire

By Sianade Kavanagh

Fifty years after Sputnik, is man finally brining tourism to space? The Wire gives you the full story about our next step's into the final frontier...

Picture this: It’s a warm evening and you’re flying off to your dream destination. But when you look out of the aircraft window instead of seeing a fluff y cloud and the distant shoreline of a foreign country, you see the curve of the Earth and the striking contrast where its blue surface meets the black expanse of outer space. Although this image seems like something out of a science fiction novel, 50 years on after the launch of Sputnik and the beginning of the space race, space tourism is finally on its way. All you need is cash.

The birth of space tourism began officially in 2001 when US businessman Dennis Tito parted with $20 million (£10m) to spend a total of seven days in space. After six months of training he jetted off to the International Space Station with UScompany Space Adventures.

Since then four others have followed in Tito’s footsteps, with South African Mark Shuttleworth doing the same in 2001, followed by Gregory Olsen in October 2005. Iranian-American Anousheh Ansari became the first female space tourist in September 2006, and Charles Simonyi, co-founder of Microsoft , became the world’s fifth space tourist in April of this year.

Scientist and entrepreneur, Gregory Olsen, decided to go on the journey that would make him the world’s fourth space tourist after having a childhood fascination with space, “I grew up with Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin both flying into space, it was an exciting time and I became intensely interested in the possibilities of space… Then, in June 2003, I was reading the New York Times in Starbucks Princeton, when I read about Space Adventures, and decided to try to go into space at age 60. Is it worth the money? Yeah of course, anyone who puts a price tag on life doesn’t really live.”

Now, with Virgin Galactic - the space branch of Richard Branson’s empire - offering Suborbital space flights scheduled in 2009 and for no less than $200,000 (just over £100,000), it seems we really are entering into a decade where space-for-all becomes a reality.

The company’s mission is to take 200 people up into suborbital space for a two-and-a-half-hour flight by 2009. The aircraft, Space-ShipTwo, will take clients to an altitude of 100 kilometres where they can experience five to ten minutes of weightlessness. Although the ship will not enter Earth’s orbit, it will ‘visit’ space before dropping back down again. On the company’s website Richard Branson assures customers it to be “the most intense and wonderful experience that our passengers have ever had.” Samuel Coniglio, Vice President of the Space Tourism Society, believes private space flights couldn’t come too soon: “The time has come for the rest of humanity to have the opportunity to see the earth and the universe from a new perspective. Space is not just for the military and scientists. It is for the human race.”

With the emergence of space tourism as a real possibility, the industry has come under increased scrutiny about the environmental impact it will have on the world. Richard Dyer from Friends of the

Earth has publicly criticised Richard Branson’s latest venture: “Virgin Galactic will be the ultimate in irresponsible elitist travel. There’s a strange irony in tourists looking back at our damaged earth as they are helping to warm it up”.

Media attention has also oft en been hostile, questioning whether the planet, already inundated with harmful emissions, needs more pollution from space vehicles that are merely giving rides to people with money to burn, for their own personal adventures. Virgin Galactic has hit back to criticism however, claiming it can get six people into space for an environmental effect less than a single business class ticket from London to New York. Jeff Gazzard from the Aviation Environment Federation agrees: “the impact of these launch systems, as they are currently proposed, is pretty minimal.”

Samuel Coniglio, argues though it could even be a good thing for the environment: “All the new rocket companies are using fuels that are environmentally clean, with steam as the main by-product. A lot of the products and services that need to be developed for space tourism will help the green movement here on Earth.”

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