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Space tourism is the recent phenomenon of space travel by individuals for the purpose of personal pleasure. As of 2006, space tourism is only affordable to wealthy individuals and corporations, with the Russian space program providing transport. Some are beginning to favour the term "personal spaceflight" instead, as in the case of the Personal Spaceflight Federation. Among the primary attractions of space tourism are the uniqueness of the experience, the thrill and awe of looking at Earth from space (described by astronauts as extremely intense and mind-boggling), the experience's notion as an exclusivist status symbol, and various advantages of weightlessness. The space tourism industry is being targeted by spaceports in numerous locations, including California, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Florida, Virginia, Alaska and Wisconsin, as well as Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.• Early dreams After initial successes in space, many people saw intensive space exploration as inevitable. In the minds of many people, such exploration was symbolised by wide public access to space, mostly in the form of space tourism. Those aspirations are best remembered in science fiction works (and one children's book), such as Arthur C. Clarke's A Fall of Moondust and also 2001: A Space Odyssey, Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, Joanna Russ's 1968 novel Picnic on Paradise, and Larry Niven's Known Space stories. Lucian in 2 A.D. in his book True History examines the idea of a crew of men whose ship travels to the Moon during a storm. Jules Verne also took up the theme of lunar visits in his books, From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon. Robert A. Heinlein’s short story The Menace from Earth, published in 1957, was one of the first to incorporate elements of a developed space tourism industry within its framework. During the 1960s and 1970s, it was common belief that space hotels would be launched by 2000. Many futurologists around the middle of the 20th century speculated that the average family of the early 21st century would be able to enjoy a holiday on the Moon. The end of the space race, however, signified by the Moon landing, decreased the importance of space exploration and led to decreased importance of manned space flight. Precedents The Soviet space program was aggressive in broadening the pool of cosmonauts from the very beginning. Many Westerners believed that Valentina Tereshkova was less qualified than other cosmonauts of the era and as such was a kind of space tourist. The Soviet program also included cosmonauts selected from Warsaw Pact members and later from allies of the USSR and non-aligned countries. Most of these cosmonauts received full training for their missions and were treated as equals, but especially after the Mir program began, were generally given shorter flights than Soviet cosmonauts. The European Space Agency took advantage of the program as well. The Space Shuttle program included payload specialist positions which were usually filled by representatives of companies or institutions managing a payload delivery. These astronauts did not receive the same training as professional NASA astronauts and were not employed by NASA, so they were essentially private astronauts. NASA was also eager to prove its capability to Congressional sponsors, and Senators Jake Garn and Bill Nelson were both given opportunities to fly on board a shuttle. As the shuttle program expanded, the Teacher in Space program was developed as a way to expand publicity and educational opportunities for NASA. Christa McAuliffe was the first Teacher in Space, but after she was killed in the Challenger disaster, the program was eliminated. Eventually, her backup in the program would train as a full-fledge NASA astronaut. During the same period a Journalist in Space program was frequently discussed, with individuals such as Walter Cronkite and Miles O'Brien considered front-runners, but no formal program was ever developed. With the realities of the post-Perestroika economy in Russia, the space industry was especially starved for cash. It was decided to allow Toyohiro Akiyama, a reporter for Japanese television company Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS), to fly in 1990 to Mir with the eighth crew and return a week later with the seventh crew, for a price of $28m. Akiyama gave a daily TV-broadcast from orbit and also performed scientific experiments for Russian and Japanese companies. However the cost of the flight was paid by his company, which makes Akiyama a sort of business traveller rather than a tourist. In 1991, British chemist Helen Sharman was selected from a pool of public applicants to be the first Briton in space. As the United Kingdom had no space program, the arrangement was by a consortium of private companies who contracted with the Russian space program. Sharman was also in a sense a private space traveler, but she was a working cosmonaut with a full training regimen. Private space tourism While it is sometimes jokingly argued that John Glenn was essentially a tourist on his 1998 shuttle flight (STS-95), space tourism did not resume for another three years. MirCorp, a private venture by then in charge of the space station, began seeking potential space tourists to visit Mir in order to offset some of its maintenance costs. Dennis Tito, an American businessman and former JPL scientist, became their first candidate. When the decision to dismantle Mir was made, Tito opted to book a trip to the International Space Station through U.S.-based Space Adventures, Ltd., which remains the only company to have sent paying passengers to space. On April 28, 2001, Dennis Tito became the first "fee-paying" space tourist when he visited the International Space Station (ISS) for seven days. He was followed in 2002 by South African computer millionaire Mark Shuttleworth. The third was Gregory Olsen in 2005, who is trained as a scientist and whose company produces specialist high-sensitivity cameras. Olsen planned to use his time on the ISS to conduct a number of experiments, in part to test his company's products. Olsen had planned an earlier flight, but had to cancel for health reasons. Other individuals interested in making the trip include boy band singer Lance Bass * and AstroMom Lori Garver who had to cancel a planned flight due to funding problems. After the Columbia disaster, space tourism on the Russian Soyuz program was temporarily put on hold, because Soyuz vehicles became the only available transport to the ISS. In conjunction with the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation and Rocket and Space Corporation Energia, Space Adventures facilitated the flights for the world's first private space explorers: Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Greg Olsen, Anousheh Ansari and the future missions of Daisuke Enomoto and Charles Simonyi. The first three participants paid in excess of $20 million (USD) each for their 10-day visit to the ISS. However, with the retirement of the Shuttle in 2010, the ISS expedition crew should be transferred exclusively by the Soyuz till Orion is available in 2014 or later, leading to an interruption of the availability of tourist seats on board Soyuz for a few years. NASA Public Affairs has used the term Spaceflight Participant to designate space tourists. Tito, Shuttleworth and Olsen have been designated as such during their respective space flights. List of flown spaceflight participants All four spaceflight participants flew to and from the International Space Station on Soyuz spacecraft Future spaceflight participants The following people have been named as future commercial passengers on Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS. Commercial space flights and space bus The more affordable suborbital space tourism is viewed as a money-making proposition by several companies, including the European "Project Enterprise" *, Space Adventures, Virgin Galactic, Starchaser, Blue Origin, Armadillo Aerospace, XCOR Aerospace, Rocketplane Limited, and others. Most are proposing vehicles that make suborbital flights peaking at an altitude of 100-160 kilometres. Passengers would experience three to six minutes of weightlessness, a view of a twinkle-free starfield, and a vista of the curved Earth below. Projected costs are expected to be in the range of $100,000-$200,000 per passenger, with costs dropping over time to $20,000 or less. In December of 2005, the U.S. Government released a set of proposed rules for space tourism. Under current US law, any company proposing to launch paying passengers from American soil on a suborbital rocket must receive a license from the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation (FAA/AST). The licensing process focuses on public safety and safety of property, and the details can be found in the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 14, Chapter III. * Constellation Services International (CSI) is working on a project to send manned spacecraft on commercial circumlunar missions. Their offer would include a week-long stay at the ISS, as well as a week-long trip around the Moon. They expect to be operational by 2008, according to their best case scenario. Space Adventures Ltd. have also announced that they are working on circumlunar missions, also possibly in 2008 or 2009 (see DSE-Alpha). More information about the future of Space Tourism can be found at www.robert-goehlich.de Space Tourism Lecture, which is a free online Space Tourism Lecture handout collection. Since 2003 Dr. Robert A. Goehlich teaches the world's first and only Space Tourism class at Keio University, Yokohama, Japan. Spacebus is vehicle for transporting tourists and supplies to and from space hotels. Commercial space stations and space hotels American motel tycoon Robert Bigelow has acquired the designs for inflatable space habitats from the Transhab program abandoned by NASA. His company, Bigelow Aerospace already launched the first inflatable habitat module named Genesis I in 2006 and is currently planning to launch a prototype space station module by late 2008, and plans to officially launch the first commercial space station by 2010 (tagged Nautilus) which will have 330 cubic meters (almost as big as the ISS's 425 cubic meters of usable volume)*. Bigelow Aerospace is currently offering the America's Space Prize, a $50 million prize to the first US company to create a reusable spacecraft capable of carrying passengers to a Nautilus space station. Other companies have also expressed interest in constructing "space hotels". For example, Virgin's Richard Branson has expressed his hope for the construction of a space hotel within his lifetime. Hilton International announced the Space Islands Project, a plan to connect together used Space Shuttle fuel tanks, each the diameter of a Boeing 747 aircraft; British Airways has expressed interest in the venture. Objection to "Space Tourist" Dennis Tito, Gregory Olsen and Anousheh Ansari have all expressed their disapproval of the term, "space tourist", on the basis that all three carried out scientific experiments as part of their journey. Tito has asked to be known as an "independent researcher"• while Ansari prefers the term, "private space explorer".• Hoax The UK reality show Space Cadets purported to have fooled its participants into thinking that they were Britain's first space tourists, using a decommissioned military base, Russian actors and a fake space craft fixed to a hydraulically moving platform. See also | |||||||
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