![]() ![]() What these people have in common is that they all went to space this year without the assistance of government space agencies. For decades, commercial human spaceflight, aka space tourism, had promised to open up space for the wider public, not just professional astronauts. But the promise of space tourism had long been just that: something that remained just around the corner. ![]() The Ansari X Prize competition and the occasional tourist flying on a Soyuz in the early 2000s seemed like a false dawn. However, that changed in July when Virgin Galactic flew its founder, Richard Branson, to space on its SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane. Nine days later, Blue Origin flew its founder, Jeff Bezos, on its New Shepard suborbital vehicle. In September, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, already taking astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA, made its first commercial flight on the three-day Inspiration4 mission. New Shepard flew again in October at the same time a Russian actress and film director were in the middle of a 12-day stay on the ISS, filming scenes for a movie. The long-awaited emergence of private human spaceflight has led some to hail the “democratization” of space, but that’s not quite accurate. Unless you’re fortunate enough to be a contest winner or a guest of a company, you’ll have to pay large sums of money to fly. After flying Branson, Virgin Galactic raised its prices to $450,000 - and still managed to sell 100 tickets in a matter of months. What commercial human spaceflight has demonstrated is the diversification of space, with a much wider range of people able to go. Blue Origin’s first crewed flight set records for both the youngest person to go to space, 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, and the oldest, 82-year-old Wally Funk. Her record lasted less than two months, broken on the second crewed New Shepard flight by 90-year-old William Shatner, Star Trek’s Captain Kirk. Hayley Arceneaux, part of the Inspiration4 mission, survived bone cancer as a child and flew despite having a titanium prosthetic in her leg. The pace of private human spaceflight shows no sign of letting up. Blue Origin will fly again in December with a six-person crew while Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and an assistant to the ISS in a flight arranged by Space Adventures. In February, Axiom Space will send a four-person crew to the ISS on a Crew Dragon. It turns out that a lot of people have The Right Stuff. ![]()
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