People say that the year 2022 is the year when space travel will become much more commercialized but unfortunately, I must present facts that say otherwise. Nonetheless it is true that this year space travel is becoming more popular by the day and more companies are trying to enter its market but for now we have the big three entertaining us all with their vision for the future of travel. They are Space X led by Elon Musk, Blue Origin founded by Jeff Bezos, and Virgin Galactic founded by Richard Branson and Burt Rutan.
Commercialized space travel began in the year 2021 with the first civilians in space. Elon Musks Space X program was the first to send 4 people into the atmosphere along with a Russian film crew to spend 12 days in orbit. During that time they were recording the first movie made in space. In addition, the owners of the other two space companies Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson were the first billionaires to go into the lower atmosphere to prove that their companies can perform just as well as Elon Musks Space X.
Of course, space travel, for now, is exclusive only for the richest people who can afford to spend a minimum of 250 thousand dollars on a 90 minute trip to space. Of course, the 250 thousand dollars is the cheapest flight available on the market right now and it is given by Blue Origin which compared to the other two companies tries to make their flights more affordable to everyone instead of just the richest members of society. Blue origin offers its customers custom seating adapted to their height and weight and a range of cameras for photos and recordings since there are no phones allowed on the flight.
Space X on the other hand offers a type of service more similar to a vacation instead of a trip. The program offers a 3-day experience with 3 other crew members aboard the SpaceX Dragon which will orbit the earth giving the customer a relaxing and very interesting scenery to relax for 3 days. The official price hasn’t been released yet but we can speculate that it will be around 55 million dollars for one place. Space X plans to offer an additional different program that will allow the customers to stay and live aboard the National Space Station for a week, the scheduled time for this offer is around 2023.
For now, space travel is a hobby only for the richest but who knows maybe in ten or twenty years everyone will be able to do it.
Opportunity to go to space seem very intriguing to me. Nevertheless, there is an ecological ascpect connected with that.
It’s good to see that we try to expand to the space as much as we can. The commercialization of it in my opinion will make the process of expanding to space faster as a lot of rich people will want to try it and they will bring a lot of money for space exploration companies.