Space tourism is space travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. A number of startup companies have sprung up in recent years, such as Virgin Galactic, hoping to create a space tourism industry. Orbital space tourism opportunities have been limited and expensive, with only the Russian Space Agency providing transport to date.
The publicized price for flights brokered by Space Adventures to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft have been US$2035 million, during the period 20012009. Some space tourists have signed contracts with third parties to conduct certain research activities while in orbit.
Russia halted orbital space tourism in 2010 due to the increase in the International Space Station crew size, using the seats for expedition crews that would be sold to paying spaceflight participants. However, tourist flights are tentatively planned to resume in 2013, when the number of single-use three-person Soyuz launches could rise to five a year.[1][2][3]
As an alternative term to "tourism", some organizations such as the Commercial Spaceflight Federation use the term "personal spaceflight". The Citizens in Space project uses the term "citizen space exploration".[4]
As of September 2012[update], multiple companies are offering sales of orbital and suborbital flights, with varying durations and creature comforts.[5]
After early successes in space, much of the public saw intensive space exploration as inevitable. Those aspirations are memorialized in science fiction including ArthurC. Clarke's AFall of Moondust and 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 the 2nd century AD 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. RobertA. Heinleins 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. In the 1960s, Pan Am established a waiting list for future flights to the Moon,[6] issuing free "First Moon Flights Club" membership cards to those who requested them.
The end of the Space Race, culminating in the Moon landings, decreased the emphasis placed on space exploration by national governments and therefore led to decreased demands for public funding of manned space flights.[7]
The Soviet space program was aggressive in broadening the pool of cosmonauts. The Soviet Intercosmos program included cosmonauts selected from Warsaw Pact members (from Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania) and later from allies of the USSR (Cuba, Mongolia, Vietnam) and non-aligned countries (India, Syria, Afghanistan). 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 (ESA) took advantage of the program as well.
The U.S. space shuttle program included payload specialist positions which were usually filled by representatives of companies or institutions managing a specific payload on that mission. These payload specialists did not receive the same training as professional NASA astronauts and were not employed by NASA. In 1983, Ulf Merbold from ESA and Byron Lichtenberg from MIT (engineer and Air Force fighter pilot) were the first payload specialists to fly on the Space Shuttle, on mission STS-9.[8][9]
In 1984, Charles D. Walker became the first non-government astronaut to fly, with his employer McDonnell Douglas paying $40,000 for his flight.[10]:7475 NASA was also eager to prove its capability to Congressional sponsors. Senator Jake Garn was flown on the Shuttle in 1985,[11] followed by Representative Bill Nelson in 1986.[12]
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