Space Tourism: 5 Companies who can take you on a tour to Space.

Thinking of traveling to space for common citizens seems nearly impossible. but with the advancement of space travel in the near future, we might be spending our vacations in space looking at the sun, moons, planets, and other celestial bodies. The concept of space tourism is one of the most exciting emerging features of human space travel.

What is Space Tourism?

Space Tourism simply means humans traveling into space for recreational purposes. it offers a paid tour to space by some commercial companies like Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin which are developing spacecraft to take paying travelers beyond the earth's surface. The first space tourist was US millionaire Dennis Tito, who in 2001 paid $20 million to hitch a ride on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to visit the international space station and spent eight days there. space tourism covers spaceflights that are sub-orbital(reach lower space but are not powerful enough to enter Earth’s orbit), orbital(achieve orbital velocity in order to remain in the Earth’s orbit), and even beyond Earth orbit(seek to travel to the moon).

5 Companies Offering Space Tourism.

The concept of space tourism is growing in popularity all the time, and it finally became a reality. There are a growing number of businesses engaging in activities within the space tourism industry. These companies are either already selling seats to private customers, or soon will be. If you are anticipating spending your vacations in space then this company might help you with this.

• Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic is a British-American spaceflight company, operating in the United States founded by Richard Branson.  It is a developing commercial spacecraft that aims to provide suborbital space flights to space tourists. Its suborbital spacecraft is air-launched from a carrier airplane called White Knight Two. On July 11, 2021, Virgin Galactic made a giant leap toward commercial suborbital spaceflight. The company launched the first fully crewed flight of its SpaceShipTwo space plane Unity with a special passenger on board.

The ticket for the spaceplane has been priced at around $250,000 per ticket.

Virgin Galactic commercial suborbital spaceflight along with its crew.

• SpaceX

Unlike other space tourism companies running in the field, SpaceX is the only private rocket company to ever send a human into orbit. They’re also the only company now NASA-certified to send people to circle Earth. In 2017, the company’s founder, Elon Musk, announced his intentions to send two paying customers on a trip around the moon on an inaugural lunar tourism mission.

SpaceX has not yet revealed any pricing strategy or waiting list for lunar trips.

SpaceX Spacecraft

• Blue Origin

Blue Origin is billionaire Jeff Bezos' rocket company founded in 2000. Blue Origin is developing a variety of technologies, with a focus on rocket-powered vertical takeoff and vertical landing vehicles for access to suborbital and orbital space. The company's name refers to the blue planet, Earth, as the point of origin. Blue Origin is targeting July 20 2021 for its first suborbital sightseeing trip on its New Shepard spacecraft, launching company founder Jeff Bezos and three others into space a landmark moment in a competition to usher in a new era of private commercial space travel.

Reuters reported in 2018 that Bezos' Blue Origin was planning to charge passengers at least $200,000 for the ride

Bezos with Blue Origin Spacecraft

• Axiom Space

Axiom Space was founded in 2016 with the goal of creating the world's first commercial space station. Axiom Mission 1  is a planned SpaceX Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station (ISS), operated by SpaceX on behalf of Axiom Space. The flight will launch in January 2022 and send four people an American real estate investor, a Canadian investor, a professionally trained astronaut, and a former Israeli Air Force pilot to the ISS for an eight-day stay.

They are paying $55 million each to be part of the first fully private astronaut crew to journey to the International Space Station.

Axiom Private Space Station

• Boeing

When SpaceX launched NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station (ISS) in its “Dragon” capsule in May 2020’s “Launch America” it was heralded as a new era for human spaceflight. However, that was merely the first half of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, an attempt to use public-private partnerships to make space travel cheaper. All eyes will be on Orbital Flight Test-2 to see if Boeing can match SpaceX and, by the end of 2021, fly Starliner’s first crewed mission to the ISS. NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore, Nicole Mann, and Mike Fincke are penciled in for that one.

They’ve been quiet on this option, but NASA has said they’d accommodate passengers at a rate of $35,000 per night.

Trips today are infrequent and prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of people. However, a handful of innovative startups are working to reduce the costs so that space travel is more attainable for a broader swath of society in the coming years.