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The Simmons Voice

The Student News Site of Simmons University

The Simmons Voice

The Student News Site of Simmons University

The Simmons Voice

Spend your next vacation floating in space

Sarah Kinney
Staff Writer

In 1966, Neil Armstrong saw the Earth from space.

In 2013, Sandra Bullock saw the Earth from space in the film “Gravity.”

Soon, your neighbors might be showing you vacation pictures of it

World View Enterprises recently received Federal Aviation Administration approval for a near-space hot air balloon.

By 2016, six friends will be flown gently to the upper atmosphere and watch the Earth shrink to a ball of navy, tan, green, and white from one of the orb shaped windows in the cylindrical pod pulled upward by a 14 million cubic feet helium balloon.

With the retiring of NASA’s space shuttle fleet, commercial space flight has taken off.
Companies like Virginia Atlantic, Space Adventures, and SpaceX are among those trying to capitalize on space tourism.

While NASA was still be doing space research, with the next big projects of landing on an asteroid and sending a human to Mars, they are now partnering with companies to get there instead.

With the rise of commercial spaceflight, more people will be able to boldly go where no non-astronaut has gone before.

“Based on market studies, we expect to see this type of activity result in a $1 billion industry within the next 10 years,” George Nield, associate administrator for the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, testified before the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics last year.

From 2001 to 2009, Space Adventures has sent seven people to space aboard with Russian Soyuz space crafts. Charles Simonyi, head of the creation of Microsoft Office, has been twice, once in 2007 and again in 2009.

If you can’t decide between a vacation to every continent or renting the Royal Penthouse Suite at the Hotel President Wilson in Geneva for a year, you might be able to afford to travel to space. If your vacation budget is anything less than $20 million, you better look elsewhere.

At this point, the cost of space tourism does not make the trip affordable to the average person.

Virgin Galactic hopes to start launching their SpaceShip Two in late 2014. Seats on that are estimated to be about $250,000 for a two and a half hour round-trip flight, according to CNN.

Chris Hadfield, an astronaut who recently completed a six-month journey on the International Space Station, was contacted by Rick Brandon to give advice on the Virgin Galactic project.

“I’m all for the idea. I commend him for it. But it’s not much of a space flight,” said Hadfield. “They’re just going to go up and fall back down again. They’ll get a few minutes of weightlessness, and they’ll see the black of the universe. And they’ll see the curve of the Earth and the horizon, because they’ll be above the air. But whether that’ll be enough for the quarter-million-dollar price tag? I don’t know.”

World View’s helium-carried pod costs just $75,000 a seat for a trip that takes an hour and a half to reach elevation and two hours examining the view, before falling back to Earth, according to the Washington Post.

The trip is cheaper, in part because the altitude does not cross the Karman Line, the line defining space from Earth’s atmosphere, which is at 62 miles from the surface of Earth.

“It’s kind of like the early days of flight, right after the Wright Brothers,” XCOR’s Mike Massee said. “That’s the best way to describe it. It’s the beginning of our golden age of travel for space flight.”

The price of space flight is expected to drop as trips become more frequent. For comparison, the first passenger air flight in 1914 cost Abram Pheil $400 for a 23-minute jaunt. That was about a year’s wage in 1914 and is estimated to be about $9,300 in today’s buying power, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Having lots of money doesn’t guarantee a seat to space. Past space tourists have had to undergo physical examinations to assure their bodies can handle spaceflight.
“Everybody knows you can go to space if you are a perfect physical specimen and incredibly smart,” Simonyi told Wired Magazine. “But what if you are kind of normal?”
If you are a minor or have serious heart problems, coronary heart disease, major organ diseases, vertigo, or claustrophobia, among other conditions, you will not be allowed to travel in space.

Past space tourists have also had to complete up to eight months of training for space in “Star City,” Russia, though not as in depth as typical astronaut training.
In space, the lack of normal gravity makes normal functions like moving, washing, eating, and going to the bathroom difficult. Tourists on outer space adventures must train to adapt to these functions in space.

Many also learn other usual functions like how to steer and land the spacecraft and how to perform some cleaning and maintenance tasks onboard.

In the event of an emergency, space tourists have to be able to use Ham Radio and Orbital communications adaptor.

One of the largest deterrents to space tourism is the risk associated with trips to space. Even with training there are many dangers going to infinity and beyond.

“No aeroplane [sic] you’ve ever gotten into had less than thousands of flights before they took their first passenger. Thousands. Because vehicles are unsafe at first. We only flew the shuttle 135 times total. Every single flight was a radical test flight. With really high stakes,” said Hadfield. “Eventually they’ll crash one. Because it’s hard. They’re discovering how hard. They wanted to fly years ago and faced a lot of obstacles, but he’s [Branson] a brave entrepreneur and I hope he succeeds. The more people who can see the world this way, the better off we are.”

Two of the five U.S. space shuttles returned to Earth as flaming pieces of wreckage, the Columbia and the Challenger. A 40 percent failure rate is likely not very comforting to your typical tourist. Other space vehicles have had better odds, especially the Russian Soyuzes, but travel is still in its infancy.

The Federal Aviation Administration has started drafting requirements for flights with paying customers, but since the plans vary so greatly (short space jaunts to vacations on the moon), it is difficult to come up with concrete regulations.
With the money, training, and risks involved, space tourism is not for those looking to travel to space on a whim. For those who are willing to accept the challenges, the experience is out of this world.

“I want to see the bigness of it,” said Simmons junior Ashley Hatcher, whose life goal is to go to space. “It’s rare on Earth that we are ever in very vast spaces. I want to be surrounded by nothing, no ground, no sky, and know that the nothingness continues forever.”

And maybe one day, she will see Earth from space.

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