We are so actively exploring space that it no longer seems as inaccessible as it used to be. He still harbors mysteries, but now you can "visit" him — become a space tourist and visit places where only professionals could have been before.
Space is still available to few — the ticket is expensive, and even then you will have to wait for your turn. During the XX century, the study of space was mainly carried out by states. In the 2000s, there were companies created by private entrepreneurs who are still developing technologies in the industry - Elon Musk's SpaceX, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic.
It is believed that the beginning of the era of space tourism was laid by the flight in 2001 of American businessman Dennis Tito. He joined the crew of the Russian Soyuz TM-32 spacecraft together with Russian and Kazakh cosmonauts Yuri Baturin and Talgat Musabayev. The flight lasted a little more than a week — from April 28 to May 6.
A significant difference in prices for such flights is related to the types of flights: they can be orbital and suborbital. In simple words: in the first case, the ship is "thrown" into the orbit of an artificial satellite of the Earth, where it flies around the planet due to maintaining high cosmic velocity. In the second case, the ship is flying along a ballistic trajectory at a speed insufficient to enter orbit: you can look at the cosmic views from the porthole and return to the surface of the earth in a few minutes.
The first space tourist Tito gave $20 million for his flight. Blue Origin has not published official pricing data, but it is known that the first "ticket" for the New Shepard ship cost $28 million — this is the result of the auction. In 2021, the cost of a flight on the Soyuz spacecraft, according to Sergey Kostenko, head of the Russian representative office of the space tourism operator Space Adventures, was "like everywhere else, in the region of $50 million."
Three entrepreneurs from the USA, Canada and Israel paid $55 million each last year to go to the ISS on the first charter of SpaceX.
Last year, Virgin Galactic revealed the fixed cost of a suborbital flight for a space tourist — $ 450 thousand, for $ 150 thousand a place can be booked. The average price of a flight for a space tourist is now in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The average annual growth rate of the global space tourism market from 2022 to 2030, according to analysts, will average 36.7%. By the end of the decade, the volume of the industry will reach $8.67 billion.
The Virgin Galactic spacecraft in 2021, during the first flight, rose to an altitude of about 53 miles (85.3 km), while Blue Origin — above the mark of 62 miles (99.8 km).
By mid-2021, 600 people were in line to fly on the Virgin Galactic ship.
A suborbital flight performed by space tourists can last 10-15 minutes: first, ascent to a height of 100 km, then weightlessness, and then descent with landing at the launch site. The first 8 flights of tourists were carried out on Soyuz ships: each lasted from 8 days to 2 weeks.
