IN FOCUS
their first crewed spaceflights in the same month. Both billionaire-backed companies offer suborbital flights, with Virgin Galactic using two reusable rocket-powered spaceplanes, VSS Unity and VSS Imagine, to reach heights of 53 miles above sea level, and Blue Origin harnessing a reusable rocket, New Shepard, to fly above the 62-mile mark. Virgin Galactic completed its fifth
suborbital flight in May – the last test before commencing its planned commercial service this month. But with more than 800 people on the waitlist, it could still be a long while before prospective space tourists have their dreams fulfilled. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, meanwhile, is in
a league of its own. In September 2021, a three-day private space mission with four civilians completed several orbits around the Earth at an altitude of 363 miles. The company has four different vehicles for shipping humans and payloads to space, is exploring missions to both the moon and Mars, and, last month, unveiled plans to launch what is expected to be the world’s first commercial space station.
There’s a danger behind over-promising. Lots of adjustments need to happen before clients can experience what they’ve dreamt of
The excitement surrounding such brands has caused the wider space tourism market to skyrocket, and travellers can now tap into all manner of space-related experiences, from ultra-luxury balloon trips like Zephalto to astronaut training camps.
New frontier
With a variety of product on the market and an incredibly high price tag – seats
on Virgin Galactic are currently priced at $450,000, while a three-day jaunt to the International Space Station with SpaceX could set clients back $55 million – it’s no surprise consumers are turning to agents and operators to service their demands. The UK’s first travel agency dedicated
to space tourism, RocketBreaks, launched in June 2021, followed by Stellar Frontiers, a ‘space mission management company’ set up by Pelorus co-founder Geordie Mackay-Lewis. In 2022, luxury travel agency network
Virtuoso teamed up with Virgin Galactic to make a limited number of spaceflight seats available through Virtuoso advisors. More recently, Global Travel Collection (GTC), which has a network of more than 100 independent advisors in the UK, partnered with US-based carbon-neutral spaceflight company Space Perspective. Similar to Zephalto, Space Perspective
takes travellers to the edge of space in a climate-controlled, pressurised ‘spacecraft’ lifted into space by a giant, high- performance hydrogen balloon. Spaceship Neptune can seat eight passengers, and
28 ASPIRE JUNE 2023
aspiretravelclub.co.uk
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