Economics, not the sky, is the limit for space tourism

There could not have been a better way to celebrate the 52nd anniversary of the first Moon landing than the series of space flights this month heralding a new era of space tourism. Virgin Galactic’s flamboyant owner Richard Branson and his crew — including Indian-American aeronautical engineer Sirisha Bandla — briefly got a taste of weightlessness and stunning views of Earth as their space-plane Unity rocketed 80 km above the New Mexico desert last Sunday.On Tuesday, another frontier technology was showcased as the world’s richest man Jeff Bezos blasted off into space from the west Texas desert in a crew capsule carried by a reusable rocket. The launcher, developed by his company Blue Origin, is named New Shepard after Alan Shepard, the first American in space who made his historic suborbital — reaching the ‘edge’ of the atmosphere, but lacking enough velocity to actually go into orbit — flight on May 5, 1961.The passengers in the capsule had spectacular Earth views and experienced weightlessness for a few minutes before strapping back into their seats for the re-entry plunge and a parachute-aided landing in the desert.Next week, Boeing flight-tests its unmanned Starliner, atop an Atlas booster, from Cape Canaveral. Unlike the suborbital hops of Unity and New Shepard, Starliner will reach low-Earth orbit (LEO), and dock with the International Space Station (ISS) to deliver supplies for Nasa. After a week, it undocks and returns to Earth, parachuting down on land. Boeing plans to fly the first crewed Starliner to the ISS later this year, offering Nasa an alternative to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and eventually for ferrying space tourists for a price to the ISS.Musk himself is planning several missions, including SpaceX’s first all- civilian flight in LEO later this year, a trip to the Moon with seven civilians in 2023, and a ‘Martian city’ by 2050.Be it Musk’s vision of interplanetary travel, Branson’s ambitious spaceliners, or Bezos’ aim of setting up cities in Earth’s orbit, these space entrepreneurs share a common goal: sell rocket rides to promote commercial space flight. Driven as much by mercantile instincts as by hubristic hopes of high adventure, this augurs well for space tourism, which was stagnating since the flight of the world’s first space tourist, American businessman Dennis Tito, on April 28, 2001.Commercial space travel will undoubtedly bolster economies of scale in the space industry, and ultimately create a viable space economy. But as companies gear up for multiple launches, the irony is that even the most advanced rockets today can hardly lift 4% of their launch weight into orbit — a ratio that hasn’t changed in 60 years of space flight.Even if cheaper air-breathing engines are developed to penetrate the atmosphere, it would still cost enormously to loft humans into orbit. So, heavy-lift capabilities along with reusable launch vehicles must be developed to ensure these dazzling achievements are not derailed by hidden costs. Wasn’t the supersonic airliner Concorde, arguably the best aircraft ever designed, undone by its high fuel consumption?Bad economics aside, the attendant risks of space travel cannot be overstated. Despite engineers leaving nothing to chance while designing spacecraft and launchers, rocketry is always unpredictable. This danger increases exponentially when companies manage risk in a hurry, to enable more and more people to head out to space.The prevailing thought is that the most important qualification to sightsee beyond the stratosphere is the willingness to spare a multimillion-dollar cheque and a few days’ training. But space tourists have to focus more on cardiovascular fitness than on healthy bank accounts, and be thoroughly screened and trained for space flight.The Americans and Russians invariably chose fighter pilots for their early space shots (as does China now), whose top physical shape helped cope with high gravitational forces during lift-off and re-entry into the atmosphere. Space travellers crossing the atmospheric threshold may be exposed to radiation spikes caused by solar flares, while the long-term effects of microgravity on space travellers are still unknown.Evocative names like Unity and Blue Origin notwithstanding, rockets cause critical environmental damage. Hybrid rocket fuels, for instance, produce black carbon that impacts the ozone layer and contribute to climate change. In the absence of legal regulation anywhere to ensure responsible standards and practices from private space companies, the sooner these issues are addressed the better, as bold entrepreneurism opens up the final frontier for space tourism.

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