Space tourism

"Space travel is life-enhancing, and anything that's life-enhancing is
worth doing. It makes you want to live forever."
~ Ray Bradbury, science fiction author

Many long years ago, I became interested in a career in space tourism. It has long been my personal ambition to build a hotel on the Moon and go dancing there every evening. When the opportunity presented itself in 1990, I formed Space Travel Services with some friends. We obtained a contract to put an American on the Mir space station for a week. We also did some research into the market for space tourism.

At the time, we were able to obtain a survey conducted on behalf of Rockwell International which had been a major contractor for the deadly space shuttle system. In it, several thousand people were surveyed, and there was considerable attention to methodology. The number one freely offered answer to the question, “What would you like to do about space?” was “I would like to take a trip into space.” This answer was not selected out of multiple choices, but was given in various phrasing by people with two empty lines in which to answer. In other words, it was extraordinary to the survey company that about 80% of adults wanted to take a trip into space.

Based on some demographics analysis and other data we concluded that in 1990 the market for space tourism was about 400 million people. Most of them could not afford the price available at the time, but we anticipated the price coming down over the ensuing decades. It hasn’t. Also in the ensuing decades, the number of people interested in flying in space when affordable trips become available now exceeds 800 million.

Cheap access to space

A long time ago there was a group called the L5 Society. I am acquainted with and currently in communication with Keith Henson who founded it. In recent years I have corresponded with Carolyn Meinel who was a co-founder. I’ve also worked directly with Gregg Maryniak who arguably opposed the existence of the L5 Society and with Mark Hopkins who conspired to destroy it - in neither case in any very cordial way. As the chairman of the 1988 and 1989 chapters assembly meetings, I met with and was known by nearly all the prominent chapter leaders in the L5 Society before its demise

When it was clearly gone, three prominent space activists, Rick Tumlinson, James Muncy, and Bob Werb, founded the Space Frontier Foundation. One of the key objectives of that foundation was “cheap access to space,” which they abbreviated CATS because let’s face it, that’s what people in the space business do - they make up acronyms.

Prelude to freedom

Moving out into the space frontier has been a dream for mankind for a long time. I don’t know that all of my readers are familiar with some of the people who have shared the dream of flying in space. So let’s take a few minutes and go over some of them and mention a few things they’ve said.

In Italy there was a fellow named Galileo. He pointed his telescope at the sky and found out that there are spots on the Sun, mountains on the Moon, and natural satellites orbiting Jupiter. He also noticed that if you give up on the Ptolemy model of epicycles and set the Sun at the centre of the orbits, the mathematics works better. He wrote up these findings in some books, got in trouble with the Jesuits of the Inquisition, and spent his final years more or less under house arrest.

In Germany there was a guy named Johannes Kepler. In 1610, he wrote a letter to Galileo saying, “Create ships and sails capable of navigating the celestial atmosphere and you will find men to man them, men not afraid of the vast emptiness of space.” Kepler made extensive use of the database of star charts and planetary ephemerides of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (who worked without a telescope) and concluded that the mathematics mentioned by Galileo work really well if the planets travel not on circular paths but along elliptical paths. Kepler was far enough away from the Jesuits of the Inquisition that he was able to publish extensively on his findings, and preceded by a considerable number of decades the laws of motion findings of Newton as regards to certain aspects of planetary orbits.

In France there was a dude name Jules Verne. He wrote thoroughly analysed and carefully scoped science fiction novels about travelling from the Earth to the Moon, including one setting the launch point near what is now Cape Canaveral in Southern Florida. He also posited an advanced power system for a large submersible, the Nautilus, of his novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. That power system was a sort of atomic power.

In Russia there was a scholar named Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. Among the space settlement community he is well known for his early work in rocketry, interest in dirigibles, and for many forward-looking articles and essays. He once said, “Earth has been the cradle of mankind, but you do not live forever in the cradle.” Of course, he said it in Russian so it has some variations of translation.

Three fairly prominent Germans were interested in space travel in the first few decades of the 20th Century. These men were Hermann Oberth, Willy Ley, and Werner von Braun. My family has a copy of Ley’s famous book, Rockets and Missiles in Space.

In England there was a group called the British Interplanetary Society. My dad joined the group and I used to keep his copies of their journal with the other library materials of the Houston Space Society until some years back when one of the two bad Roberts took all the money for his personal use, the treasurer refused to pay out of his own pocket for rent on our storage facility, and everything was lost. But in the 1930s, the British Interplanetary Society was famous for having designed a “step rocket” concept for putting a lander with people in it onto the surface of the Moon and bringing those people back to Earth. Much of their thinking went into informing the actual Apollo missions to the Moon, although their step rocket had far too many stages to be practical.

(The rule of thumb is that risk of failure increases by the exponent of the number of stages. So the risk of a two-stage system failing is roughly the square of the risk of a single stage to orbit system. The British Interplanetary Society concept was for a six stage rocket, which would have been single-stage risk to the power of 6 comparatively risky. A fun topic for rocket technologists.)

Prominent English-speaking space enthusiasts of the 20th Century included liquid propellant rocket pioneer Robert Goddard and inventor of the geosynchronous orbit for communications satellites, Arthur C. Clarke.

Nationalists Against Space Tourism

I’ve spent a long time in what might be called “activism for the human settlement of space.” I was one of those who answered the call to write letters to congress critters on behalf of the Viking probes getting continued funding to be listened to during their ongoing mission on Mars. I wrote enough letters to candidates and congress critters that I was given the opportunity to write the policy positions about national space policy for a winning congressional candidate, only to hear him botch their presentation the one time he bothered to utter a word on the topic. To describe me as jaded after decades in the trenches fighting for better and more free market policies would be understatement. I moved from scepticism to jadedness to jaundiced hostility toward the system so long ago it is sometimes hard to remember holding any other view.

For example in 1988, I worked with others to get congress to re-write the national aeronautics and space administration’s charter to require them not only to favour the human settlement of space in their activities, but to write a report to congress every session about the work they were doing to open space to human settlement. In 1991, I looked for their reports, found none, and brought this fact to the attention of a prominent colleague in congress who then held up nasa funding until they issued one report for one year. I don’t know of any other such report since.

How did it all go so wrong? How did a country which had a policy of putting man on the Moon within a decade and returning him safely to earth in 1962, and which landed unmanned and manned vehicles in a noteworthy pentagonal pattern on the face of the Moon, defining a territory, get to the point where all its national agencies were working against space tourism as a possibility, to the point of deliberately murdering 14 astronauts on two different shuttle missions? Well, the answer is: the deep state murdered JFK and their hench man, LBJ, hated the space programme.

So they bargained away any possibility of private property ownership in space, forever, with the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. I’ve written about this topic elsewhere on this ‘stack. As a result of his perfidy, people he and his associates chose for the national aeronautics and space administration were very destructive toward Arthur Kantrowitz’s laser launch systems, Max Faget’s flyback booster concepts, the air force NERVA nuclear rocket technology, and other ground-breaking ways to reach space because it was nasa’s job to be the door to space and keep itself firmly closed to innovation and cost effectiveness.

Subsequent to LBJ a certain number of nationalists got involved in space policy. One of them in particular, Glenn Reynolds, did quite a bit of harm as the head of the nationalist space society’s legislation committee pursuing a dumping claim against the People’s Republic of China for daring to offer cheap access to space to an Arabsat launch. That would have been in the Spring of 1990, and it was quite odd to be on the board of directors of the nationalist space society, at their annual meeting that year, and not be consulted about the dumping attack against both the Saudis and the Chinese. As a result of being sandbagged in this way, I resigned in protest, and so did Jim Muncy. But the nationalist socialists of Werner von Braun’s legacy nationalist space institute didn’t ever care, because they have always hated humanity and wanted to enslave mankind.

Which is why space tourism has been the stepchild of space exploration and development for a very long time. Only in recent years has it begun to reach public perception that it is not only possible, but desirable, for a lot of people to fly in space.

Competitors

Today there are several competitors who have the kind of rocket engines needed for low cost access to space. Those of us who were around for the DC-X project understood at the time that single stage to orbit completely re-usable launch systems were a great idea, though in practice somewhat out of reach. The development and subsequent sabotage of the DC-X project led to the adoption of reusable space launch systems for Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Firefly, and other companies.

The SpaceShip design for Virgin Galactic uses a hybrid propulsion system provided in part by SpaceDev. A hybrid rocket engine uses a solid, rubbery propellant which is oxidised by a liquid propellant, in this case liquid oxygen. For the suborbital tourism vehicle SpaceShip One and its immediate successors, the case, throat, and nozzle subsystem are replaced after each flight, but the liquid oxygen tank is refuelled for each flight. It is possible that too much of this engine is disposable, making for limited economic effectiveness. Scaled Composites provides a carrier aircraft, the White Knight, for the suborbital SpaceShip vehicles, which enhances cost effectiveness.

SpaceDev, founded by Jim Benson with whom I corresponded quite a bit last century, is the successor in interest to the hybrid rocket technology of American Rocket Company, founded by George Koopman with whom I worked directly at the nationalist space society until he was murdered by the deep state. SpaceDev has an expendable launch vehicle, the Streaker, which uses hybrid propulsion expendable engines including nitrous oxide for the oxidiser. It arguably puts 1,102 pounds into orbit for on the order of $5 million or a little more than $4500/pound. SpaceDev began development in 2004 of a Dream Chaser small shuttle flyback vehicle which has continued under the aegis of Sierra Space. It is launched with a Vulcan Centaur giant expendable rocket system, which is a derivative of the old General Dynamics Atlas Centaur expendable launch system, though with a somewhat arcane tech development path that included Atlas V that flew using a Russian rocket system. The current instance Vulcan Centaur uses a Blue Origin developed rocket, the BE-4 with liquid oxygen and liquefied natural gas propellants.

SpaceX uses a flyback booster and a two-stage to orbit concept for its Falcon Heavy and Starship rocket systems. The engines for Falcon rockets are named after the merlin, a raptor of the falco genus. The SpaceX Starship vehicle uses a more powerful Raptor engine. The Merlin rocket, now in version Merlin 1-D in both air-boost and vacuum versions, uses RP1 which is highly refined kerosene and liquid oxygen. The Raptor engine uses cryogenic liquid methane and liquid oxygen. These are re-startable engines, which allows for their use both on launch and re-entry. Being able to fire the same engine multiple times potentially reduces the number of stages needed for high orbit insertion.

SpaceX has also developed a man-rated Dragon capsule for use with various space launch systems, and has a man-rated version of the Starship upper stage. The Starship upper stage is expected to provide flight accommodations for up to 100 passengers, not only for orbital and interplanetary destinations, but also for point to point travel at rocket velocities here on Earth - one hour to anywhere you want to travel. If successful, the Starship rocket travel concept makes the Concorde supersonic transport look like ancient technology. Robert Heinlein previously conceived of “antipodes rocket planes” for a similar Earth suborbital travel system, mentioned in stories in his The Green Hills of Earth anthology.

Blue Origin is a space launch company that has developed technology for their New Shepard suborbital space tourism system and for their New Glenn orbital launch system. In addition to rocket systems for their own vehicles they also make rocket engines for the nationalist-corporatist United Space Alliance. Blue Origin is also involved in Blue Reef, an orbiting platform for refuelling and re-equipping space systems, and Orbital Reef, a larger orbit facility. They are also working on Blue Moon as consortium leader with other aerospace companies to develop and deploy lunar landers.

New Shepard is a 60 foot high fully reusable suborbital launch system powered by one Blue Origin BE3 engine. The BE3 uses liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants. It is a re-lightable engine, which is an important capability for launch and recovery of the vehicle.

New Glenn is two-stage orbital vehicle standing 322 feet tall using seven BE4 liquid methane liquid oxygen engines for the first stage and two BE3U liquid hydrogen liquid oxygen engines for the second stage. The first stage has always been conceived as fully reusable and the second stage, under a project named for Greg Jarvis (murdered by nasa on Challenger) is being upgraded to fully reusable. New Glenn’s first launch is anticipated for the 9th month of 2024 carrying a nasa payload to Mars orbit.

Firefly Aerospace is a launch vehicle and lunar lander systems developer. They are currently operating the Firefly Alpha launch vehicle and the Blue Ghost lunar lander. Their first Firefly Alpha flew successfully in 2022 with a fully successful mission completed in 2023. Alpha is a two-stage expendable launch system using four of the company’s Reaver 1 kerosene and liquid oxygen engines for the first stage and one Lightning 1 kerosene and liquid oxygen engine for the second stage. The company also has developed Miranda and Vacuum-rated Miranda (Viranda or Vira) rocket engines. The company’s engines use the combustion tap off cycle which, while more complex, provides higher specific impulse. The Vira has re-start capability for missions requiring multiple upper stage burns.

Two Blue Ghost missions have been funded. Firefly is the mission coordinator for each mission, the first to a near side Mare Crisium landing site and the second to a far side landing location.

Rocket Lab is the first Southern hemisphere company to reach orbit. Their Electron launch system includes an upgrade from expendable to partly re-useable. They make Rutherford and Curie rocket engines and Electron and Neutron rocket launch systems. Electron first flew in 2017 with a fully successful mission in 2018. They recently completed their 40th flight from their New Zealand rocket base on the Mahia Peninsula. Neutron is intended to launch in 2025 and is a fully reuseable system. The Rocket Lab Rutherford engine uses kerosene and liquid oxygen. Their innovative Curie upper stage engine uses a thixotropic monopropellant that seems to consist of an ammonium based oxidiser (such as ammonium perchlorate) and a metallic thermic agent such as aluminium or magnesium. The company also has a Photon satellite bus system.

Stoke Space is a company developing fully reusable space launch vehicles based on its Nova and Hopper technology systems. Stoke Space's reusable second-stage uses a single engine with 30 thrust chambers around the circumference of the vehicle, along with a center passive bleed to create an aerospike engine-like effect. Additionally, the center bleed acts as a heat shield during re-entry, which would be a significant improvement over ablative heat shield concepts.

Relativity Space is developing a partially reusable Terran R two-stage orbital vehicle powered by its own Aeon engine systems, using 13 on the first stage and one on the second. The company uses 3D printing, including of metals, to improve the cost effectiveness of its launch systems. They have a “Stargate” 3D metal fab system that is reputed to be the largest in the world. Relativity Space previously launched a smaller orbital vehicle, the Terran 1, which experienced an upper stage failure in 2023.

Axiom Space is a mission integrator that has put together several private commercial space missions on man-rated systems such as SpaceX’s Dragon capsule. The company has also developed orbital elements for mating with the internationalist socialist space station (ISS) system. They are currently in line to be funded by nasa for the development of next generation space suits.

Ariane Next, Soyuz 7, and Long March 12 are government launch systems under development by the European Union’s Arianespace, by the Roscosmos state corporation in Russia, and by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology in China. They have various development schedules and plans, and might one day launch some people into space. Meanwhile these outfits have other man-rated rocket technologies.

Space Travel Services

Space Travel Services is back. We are planning a series of projects to provide tourism services to space facilities here on Earth, and to purchase and re-sell seats on suborbital and orbital flights provided by other companies. Our intention is to cooperate with other companies to develop a series of orbiting hotels and hotel operations on the Moon at various lunar bases of different nation states.

We have long had the view that luxury accommodations at space launch, space technology, and space training facilities and luxury training services for prospective space tourists represent a ground-based entry opportunity for us to get into the space tourism business. We also have found that there is considerable interest in raffle or sweepstakes offers for rides into space. Given our 1991 difficulties we will, of course, be engaging significant legal support and making use of jurisdictional arbitrage to, in effect, keep the sweepstakes part of our business away from the evil and demented people running the USA government and its deep state counterparts.

How big is the market? For travel to ground-based space facilities about 800 million people worldwide would be able to afford a one-week travel vacation at $8,000 giving a total industry revenue projection of $6.4 trillion. For travel to Earth orbit, about 40,000 people a year could afford a three-day vacation at $180,000 for an industry revenue projection of $7.2 billion a year. Serving this market should be profitable enough to attract competitors.

If you are interested in space tourism for yourself or other people you know, please let me know in the comments. I can also be contacted by email at EldarCapital.com user jim.

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That’s all I’ve got for today. Come back next time when I have something new. Or old.