Again, this technology will be re-used in orbital tourist vehicles to come. Additionally, it is apparent that a great deal of energy has been expended by Blue Origin to make New Shepard reliable and safe for humans to fly in. The BE3 engine powering New Shepard will directly see usage in the second stage of New Glenn, and perhaps in other vehicles yet to be built, including those that fly only in space. The New Shepard sports a highly reusable liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen engine (the BE3) that will eventually replace the Space Shuttle main engines as the most reliable engine of its type. Here the Blue Origin New Shepard holds out the greater promise compared to Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo. This will allow a far larger audience to connect personally to space, and there will be real value in the technology developed to make it happen. But right now, suborbital tourism is at a price point far less than orbital tourism. It is easy to look at SpaceShipTwo and New Shepard, and point out how technically insignificant these vehicles are compared to the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and the still in development Starship/Superheavy. Suborbital Tourism Will Benefit Orbital Space Tourism The real benefit of space tourism comes when it has driven down launch costs to the point that inexpensive clean energy from space is available pollution-free everywhere on Earth. Space tourism holds out the same promise, but more so, since as space tourism drives down launch costs, all space resources become more potentially available to a mass market. These industries employ large numbers doing real, well paid, honest work, e.g., building yachts. Space tourism has all the real benefits of any other industry that caters mainly to the rich, such as yacht construction and operation. ![]() In fact, the truth is quite the opposite. Those people with their hair on fire over Branson’s ride to space often claim that there is something particularly pointless and even evil about space tourism as a way to spend money. Space Tourism is a Great Way for Billionaires to Spend Their Money Just the possibility of a future in which most Americans could vacation in space will allow the average person to connect to space in a much more personal way than is currently the case. At that point anyone in the middle class of a developed country could afford a vacation in an orbital hotel. There is no fundamental physics or engineering reason that the cost of orbit should be much different than the cost of flying to Australia from New York. Second, as the volume of space tourists increase, and the cost of going to space drops, the price of a ticket to orbit will drop as well. First, the current tiny group of government trained and paid professional astronauts is far more elite than the population of “rich tourists.” An ordinary person is far more likely to make a few million than to become a NASA astronaut. ![]() This kind of reasoning ignores two key facts. Some voices now are opining that space tourism is only for an elite of “billionaires and millionaires,” which is certainly true for the moment. ![]() Space Tourism Connects People to Space in a Personal Way It is now starting to look like LEO Mega-constellations may be another application that is price-elastic with regard to launch costs, but the more the merrier to drive down launch costs as fast as possible. At some point launch costs get low enough that large scale space development and settlement can begin in earnest. In this virtuous circle, a given level of tourist traffic to space would justify additional investment in reduced launch costs, which in turn would lead to more tourist traffic to space, which would drive further reductions in launch cost, and so on. Space tourism has long held out the promise that the volume of tourists launched could increase at least linearly as prices dropped, leading to a virtuous circle. Many space applications have the unfortunate characteristic that a 10% drop in launch costs does not translate to a 10% increase in mass launched to space (for example, geosynchronous communication satellites). Space Tourism is Price-Elastic with Regard to Launch Costs Although the virtues of space tourism can seem self-evident to the seasoned space advocate, they bear repetition. But after Richard Branson’s flight on SpaceShipTwo July 11, 2021, and Jeff Bezos’s New Shepard suborbital jaunt July 20th, the boos, hisses, and catcalls from the various directions assault our senses when we venture forth into the unmoderated Internet. The age of space tourism at long last dawns for a second time (the first dawn consisting of those orbital tourists launched by the Russians a while back). Opinion by Dale Skran, NSS COO Image: Blue Origin team after the July 20 successful flight.
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