The Future of Space Tourism

The Future of Space Tourism

Virgin Galactic, the self-styled ‘World’s First Commercial Spaceline’, will turn 20 a little later this year. It’s the youngest of the Musk, Bezos, Branson spaceline triumvirate, but not by much – Blue Origin kicked off in 2000 and SpaceX, a couple of years later.  It’s easy to forget that back then, many space industry and agency veterans viewed the idea of private companies building, owning and operating space launch vehicles (for payload, let alone passengers) as unlikely, and probably unwise. They had a point; the road to space for all three of the key contenders (and other smaller outfits too) has been long, treacherous and costly. Lives have been lost, fortunes spent and dreams, if not shattered, then certainly trimmed.

But against formidable odds, twenty years on, space tourism is for real. While ticket prices may be high, flight rates low and product choice limited, there are now a few dozen private individuals who have realised their long-held dreams of experiencing space for themselves, purely by purchasing a ticket.

This year also marks the 20^th anniversary of my becoming, somewhat accidently, Virgin Galactic’s very first employee. Although I was never in doubt about the quality of the experience we were building, it has been gratifying to speak to most of the company’s early group of private astronauts, post flight. Without exception, these brief but thrilling journeys to the black sky, and the stunning views they afford of our beautiful planet, have exceeded those customers’ expectations. In some cases, the long-awaited and much anticipated experiences have also been personally profound, even transformational.

I left Virgin Galactic in 2022. After occupying the ‘World’s Best Job’ spot for 18 years, it seemed only fair to let someone else have a go, particularly having finally got Richard Branson into space and the company into the relatively secure environs of the New York Stock Exchange. Stepping back from day-to-day spaceline business has enabled me to view this nascent industry’s achievements and prospects, with a degree of objectivity.

Overall, I’m very proud – just because we made it. Virgin Galactic and others shook up an old industry and in doing so, created a brand-new market for space. Enormous numbers of potential customers, more-or-less ignored by the original incumbents, now have a viable path to an experience many have dreamt of since childhood. And as this revitalised industry has taken shape, thousands of jobs have been created and supported, ground-breaking innovations and technologies have been designed and deployed, NASA is able once again to send its astronauts to the International Space Station from US soil, and world-first, world-class facilities like the breathtaking Foster + Partners designed Spaceport America, have risen up from the desert. But perhaps most importantly, the media and public excitement around the emergence of new spaceships for space tourists, which also promise to help transform the narrow pathway to space into a broad highway, have helped unlock a wall of private sector investment into other, new, space-based technologies; technologies which can transform our ability to sustain and improve life on our home planet in the coming decades.

So, the second space age is here and it’s here to stay; it’s both purposeful and important. But what about space tourism specifically?

Demand is strong and I believe is likely to stay that way. I have given many talks about the second space age over the years, and whether to a handful of CEOs in New York, a class of schoolchildren in New Zealand, or thousands of tech fans in London, it seems almost everyone would jump at the chance of getting to know our home planet better by viewing it from the outside. There is a fundamental appeal to space travel which is likely wrapped up in the deep, genetic, human desire to explore, discover and to expose ourselves to the promise of personal fulfilment. .Space travel is arguably the most potent mix of that heady cocktail currently on offer, so small wonder that viable space tourism companies have long lines of enthusiastic and hopeful customers knocking on their doors for tickets to ride.

Supply, on the other hand, may be more precarious. We have already seen a long hiatus in Blue Origin’s space tourism operations caused by a technical issue, while over at Virgin Galactic, the future seems sadly to be hanging in the balance. Having successfully demonstrated its operational and basic system capabilities with a handful of passenger flights, it’s now shutting up shop until it can figure out a way of flying without losing money. In the meantime, the general scarcity of flight opportunities and the basic costs of doing business, have resulted in ticket prices rocketing to altitudes beyond the reach of most.

It also seems reasonable to assume, in an age of AI and advanced robotics, that there will be a fast-diminishing need, in theory at least, for the huge added cost and risk of having humans-in-the-loop for space exploration and utilisation. Logically, autonomous space vehicles and technologies should offer a better chance of a better return to investors by removing that risk and cost. Such is the vastness of the scope for new markets and applications offered by better access to space, it is possible that space tourism could get dumped into the ‘just too difficult’ bucket, with any remaining human spaceflight activities returning to the preserve of government agencies – and perhaps the odd multi-billionaire with interplanetary ambitions! This is, after all, the commercial space age and economics will ultimately determine outcomes.

But despite all this, I believe the space tourism party and all its original promise, is far from over.  I see two (at least) very interesting and hopeful lights at opposite ends of the horizon. First is US start-up, Space Perspective, and the way it’s re-imagined the basic space tourism premise, taking it completely out of rocketry and into the simpler, cheaper, cleaner, more inclusive and less risky world of space-ballooning. Second is the mind-blowing scope and potential of SpaceX’s Starship. By transforming capacity and cost-per-seat economics, this extraordinary behemoth of a spaceship might just be to space tourism what the Boeing’s 747 was to terrestrial tourism – the great democratiser.

In my time at Virgin Galactic, I saw over and again a near universal response to the prospect of spaceflight. It excites and inspires and brings a sense of optimism for the future in a way that nothing else, in my experience, can. I have also witnessed the profound, cognitive shift – an adoption of a planetary perspective – from many of those lucky enough to have taken the trip. Those two reasons alone are enough to wish the industry well as it finds its feet and grows.

I’ll leave the last words to my previous boss, voiced as he floated happily in the black sky, high above Spaceport America in July 2021: “I was once a child with a dream looking up to the stars. Now I’m an adult in a spaceship looking down to our beautiful Earth. To the next generation of dreamers: if we can do this, just imagine what you can do”.