The Space Tourism Market Is Heating Up... But When Will It Happen?
It’s a moment I’ve been waiting years for: at least weekly – if not almost every day – there’s a new headline about space tourism. Virgin Galactic is shifting their executive team around to get ready for paid passengers. Blue Origin keeps quietly testing in the stratosphere above West Texas. Two new contests – Inspiration4 and #dearMoon – both promise the chance to win your spot on an out-of-this-worth adventure. A new space hotel is announced at least once per year. Oh, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX team keep drawing hundreds of thousands of eyeballs to livestreams documenting the steady march of progress for Starship – the craft that will eventually carry humans to Mars.
Space has never felt so close, yet so far away.
After dedicating myself to the space tourism industry back in 2017, I’ve been patiently waiting for actual space tourism – like so many of you. But it’s not hard to understand if your patience is wearing thin, especially when each new announcement comes with an overly ambitious timeline that will inevitably let us down.
This sentiment is not unique. Christian Davenport, an excellent space journalist from the Washington Post who wrote the book The Space Barons to document the stories of the billionaires funding the private sector in space, tweeted this in response to the announcement of the dearMoon project last week:
When the professionals covering this industry - among its most enthusiastic fans – are subtweeting the seemingly arbitrary timelines that make for thrilling headlines and earn tons of clicks, you know something’s off. (Admittedly, it’s hard to know exactly how long it will take SpaceX to prep for the dearMoon mission since it’s currently planned aboard the Starship).
“The #dearMoon mission is still advertising itself as happening in 2023. This will almost certainly not be the case. Starship is still in development and will need to achieve several successful uncrewed spaceflights before flying humans,” tweeted Laura Seward Forczyk, the founder of Astralytical, which offers space analysis and consulting.
“Companies should try to not overpromise. Hyping up unrealistic plans is a good way to create a cynical customer base,” said Seward Forczyk in a follow-up interview. “Instead, companies should be honest with customers and emphasize their focus on flying when it's safe.”
There are obviously several benefits to committing to a specific year, increased public interest and media exposure being chief among them. However, publishing overly ambitious – one might even say unrealistic – launch timelines can end up hurting the mission in the long run. Just think back on how many space hotels should have been launched by this point.
This recent editorial by A.J. Mackenzie for The Space Review says it well when discussing the Voyager Space Station, announced a few days ago: “The belief that any company or organization can build the world’s largest space station, able to host hundreds of people, in just six years boggles the mind,” Mackenzie writes. “Far smaller space projects have run into delays and cost overruns, [...] there’s no reason to believe this would be any exception.” (That article dives much deeper into the wild ideology and economics of ideas like this “space hotel” and is a worthy read if you’re nodding along.)
Obviously, we all get it: space is hard and you have to do it safely. But it’s a double-edged sword between hype that achieves its goal and which ends up leaving us – the someday potential customer base – disillusioned.
“History has shown us all space tourism date announcements have been overly optimistic. From the grand ambitious of space hotels to the cautious slow-moving Blue Origin, every space tourism timeline has slipped,” concludes Seward Forczyk. “Future predictions should only be trusted if both the space tourism company and the customers are ready.”
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