The superrich are obsessed with the concept of space glamping. They’re in luck, because companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are making great strides in the space tourism industry.
Axiom/Virgin Galactic
It’s hard to impress Instagram followers. They seem to have seen it all, including every inch of the planet’s surface — every mountain’s summit, every crystal clear hot spring, every picture-perfect person posing from every perspective.That is, until now: Companies like Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and SpaceX are developing a new industry of space tourism.And space tourists wouldn’t be roughing it out there in space like regular astronauts. Soon, the superrich may be sharing selfies from their cushioned space hotel rooms, complete with Netflix, WiFi, and cocktails. Their space-cations may last anywhere from as little as a few minutes to as long as months and be powered by a variety of high-tech aerospace engineering.Here’s what it might be like to go to glamping in space — if you’re wealthy enough.Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
SpaceX is another driving force. The company is storming the launch industry with reusable rockets, which make space travel more affordable. As a result, startups are now popping up with renderings of their own plans for space tourism, which now seems poised for a boom.
A SpaceX launch.
SpaceX
Source: Business Insider
But space tourism isn’t the end goal for SpaceX, which tech mogul Elon Musk founded in 2002. Musk is obsessed with building cities on Mars and populating the planet with millions of people in cities complete with bars and pizza joints.
An illustration of SpaceX’s planned Starship rocket system lifting off from a Mars city and heading back to Earth.
SpaceX/YouTube
Sources: Business Insider (1, 2)
To get us there, SpaceX is trying to dramatically lower the cost of access to space. To that end, SpaceX successfully launched and landed a Falcon 9 booster — the largest and most expensive part of a rocket — for the first time in December 2015.
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at a launchpad.
SpaceX
Source: Business Insider
This trick has made it possible to send more into space for less money — be it cargo, astronauts, or private astronauts (also called space tourists or, per NASA, “spaceflight participants”).
An illustration of SpaceX’s planned Starship rocket flying past Saturn on a deep-space voyage.
SpaceX/Twitter
Source: Business Insider
Basically, it’s making space travel more affordable, though as of yet still only for the superrich: One seat may still cost tens of millions of dollars, according to a recent NASA presentation.
Crew Dragon interior.
SpaceX
Source: Business Insider
After SpaceX’s first successful rocket landing, Musk called for the inevitable — a new space race. He got his wish, as other companies are now working toward their own reusable rockets.
An illustration of United Launch Alliance’s next-generation Vulcan rocket in flight.
United Launch Alliance/YouTube
Source: Business Insider
Of all the other private space companies attempting to claim their spot in the race, Blue Origin — founded by Jeff Bezos in 1999 — is viewed as SpaceX’s most significant competitor.
Jeff Bezos shows off Blue Origin’s lunar lander concept, called Blue Moon, in Washington, DC, on May 9, 2019.
Dave Mosher/Business Insider
Source: Business Insider
Bezos, who is considered the richest person in the world, says he liquidates about $1 billion a year to fund his private spaceflight operation. Blue Origin’s ultimate goal is different from SpaceX’s; Bezos wants to colonize space itself rather than planets, like Mars.
An artist’s concept of an O’Neill space colony, which could theoretically emulate Earth-like living conditions in space.
Blue Origin
Source: Business Insider
Bezos plans for these floating colonies to have ideal, Hawaii-like weather all the time. This means no natural disasters and no bad weather days.
An artist’s concept of an O’Neill space colony, which could theoretically emulate Earth-like living conditions in space.
Blue Origin
Source: Business Insider
That’s a (very) long way off, though. For now, Blue Origin is working toward commercializing space with its own reusable rocket system.
Jeff Bezos is the founder of Blue Origin, a rocket company that’s trying to dramatically reduce the cost of access to space.
Alex Wong/Getty Images; Mark Wilson/Getty Images; Blue Origin; Samantha Lee/Business Insider
Source: Business Insider
Called New Glenn, it’s scheduled to debut in 2020.
An illustration of Blue Origin’s reusable New Glenn rocket launching toward space.
Blue Origin
Source: Business Insider
As currently envisioned, New Glenn rocket would be larger than SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and be reusable at least 24 times before it’d have to be retired.
A rendering of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket booster landing on a ship in the ocean.
Blue Origin via YouTube
Source: Business Insider
Bezos is confident about this because Blue Origin has mostly perfected a smaller reusable launch system called New Shepard. The company plans to fly its first paying passengers in a capsule on top of the rocket in 2020.
Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard suborbital rocket launches toward space in 2016.
Blue Origin
Source: Business Insider
Blue Origin’s space tours on New Shepard can’t reach orbit around Earth, and they’d last only about 11 minutes. But each flight would take patrons more than 60 miles above the planet’s surface and fly past the unofficial boundary of space in a capsule.
The final design of Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule for suborbital space tourists.
Blue Origin
Source: Business Insider
The capsule would detach from the rocket near the highest point of the trip, giving patrons about four minutes to experience weightlessness.
An illustration of Blur Origin’s New Shepard capsule detaching from the rocket.
Blue Origin
Source: Business Insider
They’d be able to unbuckle their seat belts and float around the cabin during this time. Outside of the capsule’s windows, they’d see the deep blackness of space and the curvature of Earth.
An illustration of the final design of Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule for suborbital space tourists.
Blue Origin
Source: Business Insider
But they’d soon have to buckle up in the capsule as the vessel starts falling back to the ground. Parachutes would eventually deploy and retro rockets would fire for a relatively cushy landing.
A Blue Origin dummy in a successfully landed capsule.
Blue Origin
Source: Business Insider
Business Insider previously estimated that each ticket to ride New Shepard may cost more than $200,000.
A sneak peek at the final design of Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule for suborbital space tourists.
Blue Origin
Source: Business Insider
Despite SpaceX’s ultimate goal of populating Mars, the company is also invested in space tourism. Its trips will be more expensive and last longer than Blue Origin’s, though …
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule.
SpaceX
Source: Business Insider
… and that’s because SpaceX’s flight is about more than the journey — it’s about the destination, too.
Crew Dragon’s interior.
SpaceX
Source: Business Insider
The company has developed a Crew Dragon capsule for NASA astronauts, but it will have plenty of room for private customers.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule.
SpaceX
Source: Business Insider
But SpaceX is developing a fully reusable rocket system called Starship to get you to space. It may be 100 to 1,000 times less expensive to operate and could also dramatically shorten long-distance travel.
An illustration of SpaceX’s planned Starship rocket system orbiting Earth.
SpaceX/YouTube
Source: Business Insider
If realized as Musk has envisioned it, Starship would briefly enter space during a long-distance flight — say from New York to Tokyo — and make what’s normally a day of travel less than an hour.
An illustration of SpaceX’s planned Super Heavy rocket booster landing at a pad in Boca Chica, Texas.
SpaceX/YouTube
Source: Business Insider
Virgin Galactic, another private space company, is also working towards taking tourists into space. And it, too, also wants to shorten point-to-point travel like SpaceX but with a small winged craft called SpaceShipTwo.
SpaceShipTwo, or VSS Unity, launches toward the edge of space on December 13, 2018.
Virgin Galactic; MarsScientific.com/Trumbull Studios
The ship starts out attached between two airplanes, drops off after reaching a high altitude, rockets toward space, and then glides back to a landing on a runway. In total each flight may last a couple of hours.
An illustration of a Virgin Galactic space flight.
Virgin Galactic
Source: Business Insider
But only four to five minutes of that time will be spent floating in space. The rest of the time will just be spent getting up to cruising altitude. So essentially, it’s a similar experience to what Blue Origin offers; it just takes longer.
A Virgin Galactic spaceship cockpit.
Virgin Galactic
Source: Business Insider
Regardless, people seem to be on board with the idea. According to Business Insider, Virgin Galactic has already sold at least 700 tickets for future flights priced around $250,000 each.
The cabin of a prototype Virgin Galactic spacecraft in 2007.
Getty Images
Source: Business Insider
Though a pilot died in 2014 during a SpaceShipTwo flight test, the company says it has resolved the issue that led to the accident. Company founder Richard Branson also said that he would ride in one of the first flights, in part to show that it’s safe.
Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo flight test crash in 2014.
REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
Sources: Business Insider, NBC
But one of the most jaw-dropping space tourism flights yet planned will be SpaceX’s flight around the moon in 2023.
The moon as seen from space.
NASA
Source: Business Insider
This flight would use the same Starship rocket system it plans to use for long-distance flights. But the trip will take about a week in total to skim past the moon, reach its farthest point, get pulled back to Earth, and land.
SpaceX’s rendering of a spaceship carrying a passenger around the moon.
SpaceX/Twitter
Source: Business Insider
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa bought the tickets for this voyage — all of them. Maezawa, who’s famous as an art collector, is hand-picking artists as crew members (and an astronaut or two) to make the trip and inspire out-of-this-world creation of new art.
Japanese billionaire and fashion mogul Yusaku Maezawa poses with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk in front of a printout of a Falcon 9 rocket on September 18, 2018.
Yusaku Maezawa/Twitter
Source: Business Insider
While these are the plans for space tourism in the near future, private space companies are also already working on renderings that future technology could allow for, like Axiom’s plans for space hotel rooms that look like this …
Each quarter would have a window with a view.
Axiom
Source: The New York Times
… or SpaceX’s plans for live in-flight entertainment, like this.
A rendering by SpaceX.
SpaceX
Source: Flickr
Reminiscent of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” The Gateway Foundation hopes to create the Von Braun Station and have it finished by 2025.
A rendering of Von Braun Station from The Gateway Foundation.
Gateway Foundation
Source: Business Insider
Supposedly, this will include the world’s first space hotel, and it’s supposed to be luxurious and complete with gravity.
A rendering of Von Braun Station from The Gateway Foundation.
Gateway Foundation
Source: Business Insider
The hotel portion of the station would (in theory) hold 100 guests per week with amenities like restaurants, movie screenings, low-gravity basketball, trampolining, and rock-climbing facilities.
A rendering of Von Braun Station from The Gateway Foundation.
Gateway Foundation
Source: Business Insider
Still, even luggage design companies hope to join the modern space race. Horizn Studios wants to make this suitcase specifically for space travel. It’d be lighter and more flexible than any other suitcase.
Horizn Studios
Source: Horizn Studios
It’s concept even has a smart screen for sharing experiences.
Horizn Studios
Source: Horizn Studios
But like most visions of space travel, much of these ideas are just that: ideas …
A night sky in Utah.
Joey Hadden/Business Insider
And even if they weren’t, many of us will not be able to afford them …
An illustration of the future of space travel by SpaceX.
spacex
… So for now, savor your selfies from airplane windows. That may be the closest to space nearly all of us will ever get.
A child taking a selfie on an airplane.
Tooga/Getty Images
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