Lift-Off for Space Tourism

Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic passed a test milestone last week, advancing the prospects of a space tourism industry that could hit $700 million by 2020

By Stephen Foley

It is nine years since a US rocket scientist-turned-investment manager called Dennis Tito blasted into space aboard a Soyuz rocket for a seven-day stay at the international space station, becoming the first paying customer of the space tourism industry.

He was a passenger of the Russian space agency, and paid an eight-figure sum that some reports put as high as $20m for the privilege. What with the cost being that high – and the number of free seats being few and far between – it is hardly surprising that just six tourists had followed in his zero-gravity footsteps by the end of the decade.

This decade, however, could be a very different story: there are predictions floating around that space tourism could be a $700m industry by 2020, flying thousands of passengers a year as far as zero gravity and back, for the thrill ride of their lives. Tickets are on sale now, at $200,000 a pop, from the ballooning billionaire Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Galactic company passed another important milestone in its testing regime last week. Meanwhile, a range of other entrepreneurs are also piling into this new space race, for the first time convinced there might actually be some money to be made.

"People grow up just fascinated by space travel," says Will Pomerantz, of the X Prize Foundation, which organises competitions to encourage commercial space travel. "There are primitive emotions and instincts that drive people to it. It's loud, it's sexy, and it is in some senses dangerous, so it gets a lot of people excited. But the people who got into this as a hobby are starting to realise that it needn't just be that."

Virgin Galactic has already taken around $45m (£30m) in deposits for spaceflight reservations from over 330 people wanting to get into suborbital space, to see the curvature of the earth and feel the effects of zero gravity. The Hollywood director Brian Singer and the former Dallas star Victoria Principal are among the famous faces that plan to be on the first flights.

Sir Richard's six-passenger spacecraft, which he's calling the VSS (for Virgin SpaceShips) Enterprise, is the most advanced and apparently best-funded of the space tourism ventures in development. It has been developed by Burt Rutan, winner of a 2004 X Prize with a prototype that became the first craft to complete two consecutive trips into suborbital space carrying the weight of at least three people.

The VSS Enterprise will be carried to a height of 50,000 ft attached to a mothership, and then launch the rest of the way into space. On Monday both mothership and Enterprise flew up to that height together in a maiden test flight. "Seeing the finished spaceship in December was a major day for us but watching VSS Enterprise fly for the first time really brings home what beautiful, ground-breaking vehicles Burt and his team have developed for us," Sir Richard said. "It comes as no surprise that the flight went so well, the team is uniquely qualified to bring this important and incredible dream to reality."

When Sir Richard first teamed up with Mr Rutan, the hope was that the first passenger journeys might begin in 2008; that they are now pencilled in for next year, or maybe 2012, is a reminder that many space dreams take longer to come to fruition than hoped – if they come true at all. Sir Richard's boasts of being four or five years ahead of the competition may not amount to statistical significance in this complex, technical area.

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