High Life. Wanna Trek to the Stars?

The world’s most affluent are willing to shell out $10,000 per km for this flight. And this is to travel in cramped cubicles with no champagne, flat beds or cabin crew to tuck them in. No, they are not out of their minds. This is the cost at which space tourism is being offered to those who are keen to, well, have an out-of-the-world experience.

Lift-off to weightlessness Venturing into space is no more a flight of fantasy, thanks to many private companies making great leaps in space aviation technology.

Space tourism, where non-astronauts are sent to space, started in 2001 with billionaire Dennis Tito reportedly paying $20 million for a trip to the International Space Station (ISS).

Over the last decade, these private companies have been gaining competence in launching satellites into Earth’s orbit. The key breakthrough is the development of what are called reusable launch vehicles, that can take off and land much like planes, thus saving on cost.

True outer-space experience for non-astronauts may take a few years. But you may be able to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and view the beauty of Planet Earth against the blackness of space on a ride on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo.

For $250,000, you can be one of the six passengers on a sub-orbital flight that takes you about 90 km above the Earth — technically below where space starts. The trip may only last 15 minutes. Over 700 people — reportedly including astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and singer Justin Bieber — have signed up.

Safety training While the first trip is not likely until mid-2015 due to clearances, trial runs are on now. As you may well imagine, travelling in a spaceship can be quite rigorous. You will experience the two extremes of gravity – extreme pull of gravity known as g-force and weightlessness. Travellers have to be physically fit and must also be trained to handle the wild ride.

That’s why the Virgin Galactic training programme requires a thorough medical examination. You will also go through high and low gravity training to acclimatise with the effect of the g-force and zero gravity. Floating weightlessly may seem like fun, but travellers have to ensure they can perform simple tasks and, importantly, not harm themselves while floating.

Beyond earth If this sounds like fun, but the price tag bothers you, there are other lower cost options. XCOR, a US-based company, promises a trip that costs $95,000 on its Lynx spaceship. The trip will last 30-50 minutes and reach a height of 100 km. Over 200 tickets have already been sold although the launch is expected only in 2016. If you are prepared to wait a year or more, you may be able to get the real deal — crossing the ‘final frontier’ of the Karman Line.

Right now, Russia’s Soyuz spaceship is the only one capable of transporting humans, but many others are working on making a human-ready spaceship. Among those vying for the pie-in-the-sky, SpaceX, founded by billionaire Elon Musk of Tesla, is probably the leader.

In April 2014, the company’s Dragon spacecraft carried 2,268 kg of food, supplies and material for 150 experiments including a miniature lettuce farm. Importantly, after a month, it brought back nearly two tonnes of science experiments and old equipment for NASA. SpaceX is hoping to transport astronauts by 2017.

Star accommodation Even more futuristic is the idea of setting up a space hotel. Bigelow Aerospace, founded by hotel baron Richard Bigelow, plans to put up weary space travellers in its ‘space modules’. The company licensed the multi-layer, expandable space module technology from NASA in the 1990s. NASA plans to attach a Bigelow module to the ISS space station.

Floating around without gravity can be fun, but for the comfort of those who stay longer, the space modules have a small gravitational pull. This helps the guests to function ‘normally’. Of course, you can opt for a ‘space walk’ anytime.

Bigelow expects guests to be accommodated once space travellers are ferried safely. In the meantime, you can ‘lease’ space for conducting any outer space experiments, much like the scientific studies done aboard the ISS.

Billionaires’ boost

What has helped the entry of many private players in space travel? The primary reason is that governments around the world have loosened their grip on this domain, where they held monopoly in the past. In the US, a new law — Launch Services Purchase Act — was signed in 1990 which required NASA to purchase services from commercial providers rather than develop it in-house. In Russia too, with the ‘star wars’ programme discontinued, the government encouraged private players.

Space research is, however, not cheap. For over a decade, NASA has been boosting the entrepreneurial space ventures through contracts which have funnelled $1.8 billion to companies that are developing private spacecraft and other hardware. Still, to jumpstart operations, many billionaires have chipped in with big money. This includes Microsoft’s Paul Allen, movie director James Cameron, Google’s Eric Schmidt, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Virgin’s Richard Branson and Tesla’s Elon Musk.

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