Last week’s poll: the potential of space tourism

The commercialisation of space is taking different forms and one of the ways to keep costs down is to develop reusable platforms, be they for delivering satellites or tourists into sub-orbital space.

Whilst not alone in wanting to take fee-paying passengers into space, Virgin Galactic appears to be edging closer to this ambition with mothership VSS Unity reaching an altitude of 295,007ft (89,918 m) and a speed of Mach 3.04 (2,255 mph) during recent test flights.

As reported by The Engineer on February 25, 2019, the reusable spaceplane was launched from the Mojave Spaceport in California aboard the company’s giant composite carrier aircraft WhiteKnightTwo. It was released from the carrier craft at an altitude of 44,000 feet (13,411 metres) before being catapulted 55 miles above the Earth by VSS Unity’s hybrid rocket engine.

Blue Origin has designs on taking tourists into space aboard New Shepard but is leveraging its reusable launch vehicle for delivering commercial payloads. Similarly, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is focused on satellite launch and resupplying the International Space Station, prompting us to ask whether space tourism will help the development of space exploration.