2021 in review: Space tourism begins –

for billionaires, anyway

A flurry of short flights aboard privately funded craft saw space tourism begin with a
bang for billionaires in 2021. Perhaps by the end of the decade, mere millionaires will
be able to join them

SPACE 15 December 2021

By Leah Crane

New Shepard’s first crew and capsule

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

THIS year, the extraordinarily wealthy flocked to space. After decades of deferred promises,
the space tourism industry got going in earnest, beginning with short flights aboard privately
funded craft.
Three different commercial ventures carried ultra-rich passengers into space in 2021. It began
with Richard Branson, who took a 90-minute suborbital flight aboard his Virgin Galactic
space plane, SpaceShipTwo, on 11 July. Whether or not the flight counts as having gone to
space, though, remains a contentious subject – the US government defines space as beginning
50 miles (or just over 80 kilometres) up, which was the altitude of Branson’s flight, but the
internationally held definition of space, the Kármán line, is 100 kilometres above Earth.

Following the US government definition, Branson was the first person to visit space on a
spacecraft made by his own company. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos came a close second on 20
July, when he rode his firm Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket on a suborbital flight past the
Kármán line. While he reached a higher altitude than Branson at 107 km, the flight was
shorter at 11 minutes, including 3 minutes of weightlessness. New Shepard flew again on 12
October with new passengers, including Star Trek actor William Shatner.

Meanwhile, in September, SpaceX pulled off the feat of sending a spacecraft into actual orbit
without any government-trained astronauts aboard. Paid for and commanded by billionaire
Jared Isaacman, this Crew Dragon flight, titled Inspiration4, was much longer than the other
private flights, with the four passengers circling Earth for three days.

Virgin Galactic’s craft

Virgin Galactic

These trips show that norms in space flight are changing. They aren’t the first examples of
space tourism: non-government astronauts flew in the early 1980s and several wealthy thrill
seekers have visited the International Space Station since then. However, the 2021 passengers
are the first on private craft instead of rockets built by government agencies. If the pledges
made by space flight firms are to be believed, there are many more of these flights to come.

“These billionaire space tourists are the first to fly aboard private spacecraft”

While the per-person costs of most of these journeys weren’t revealed, there is a reason that
each of them has been bankrolled by a billionaire. As of August, Virgin Galactic was
charging $450,000 per ticket for trips on SpaceShipTwo, and the going rate for a flight to
orbit is around $50 million. But many in the industry expect competition to start bringing
these costs down.

Still, the average person won’t be able to afford to look down on our world from space in the
next decade, but maybe mere millionaires will.

2021 in review

This was a year of tackling great challenges, from the covid-19 pandemic to climate
change. But 2021 was also rich in scientific discoveries and major advances.

 Billions of covid vaccinations given unequally

 CRISPR-edited food goes on sale to public
 AI firm DeepMind solves human protein structures
 Jian-Wei Pan leads China’s quantum computing successes
 When a brain blob in a dish grew a pair of ‘eyes’
 Three different missions land on Mars
 A helicopter flies on Mars for the first time
 Learning the pros and cons of working from home
 World’s first malaria vaccine is approved
 COP26 lays the groundwork for a decade of action
 Weather records aren’t just broken, they’re smashed
More on these topics:

 SPACE TOURISM

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25233652-100-2021-in-review-space-
tourism-begins-for-billionaires-anyway/#ixzz7FvMKB0Cq