What I think about space tourism

It’s Midsummer and it’s raining. It looks and feels like the start of winter already. Instead of sitting to contemplate how miserable I am feeling right now, I decided to read some news to find something worth complaining about? Why? I already told you why.

Today’s tech headlines look pretty much like this: some upcoming space tourism from from Blue Origin to new AR glasses just released that only make my eyes roll (again), some new wellness gadgets that promise to do what hundreds of companies have been doing for years and I have no more patience for copycats in the overly saturated wearables industry.

There is a promise to some “strategy AI” moves that make me question the state of humanity as a whole. Yes, I know. I was planning on not to write anything today because I had other plans. You can blame the weather for this.

As I am writing this, Jeff Bezos, you know who he is, don’t you. I will give you a clue: Amazon and Blue Origin. Now that you know … I was saying that Blue Origin is launching its 13th New Shepard (named after astronaut Alan Shepard) human flight today, and it will happen is about two hours or two and a half. Or less if writing this takes me forever. I’ll try not.

Well, the new space flight is launching in just a moment from West Texas, from wherever exactly the launch pad for this “mission” is. I think it launches from SpaceX, actually. I wondered about the passengers: entrepreneurs, attorneys, real estate developers, and philanthropists are going on the mini adventure this time. The flight will last approximately 10 minutes. Basically their flight will be shorter than my time in the shower. I am pondering if I should watch the livestream which will be publicly available. I’ll find the link in a minute in case you want to watch.

What can you do in ten minutes in space? Pretty much nothing. Look at the planet from above, take a selfie with your fellow passengers to post on your social media as soon as you land, and tell the world you went on a space holiday for 10 minutes and it cost you a little fortune. Of course, it means something different for Bezos, as you can imagine. He wants to push towards frequent, reliable, suborbital flights. Some time ago, I read he was planning on reaching weekly space tourism flights by the end of this year.

Bezos needs to keep Blue Origin moving because he has competition. There is Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic in the U.K., and others entertaining the space tourism market as well. What the next step is? To reach Orbital Reef space station and the New Glenn orbital rocket programme. For now, it’s only suborbital tourism: look at Earth from above, say cheese, take a selfie, come back. The end.

Proper space tourism will take a little while. At least 20 more years. I think Elon Musk said something like 10 years. Or was that the timeline for Mars colonisation. Would I like to go on one of Bezos’ 10-minute flights? Not really. But in 20 years’ time, I would like that. I would like to go on a space tourism flight when it’s properly done, when I can go somewhere, land, spend three days and back. Or not.

It’s exciting, though, to see the first steps of space tourism as it unfolds. I guess it was similar when people witnessed the first commercial flights, or even before when man was trying to fly like birds do.

I think I will watch the Blue Origin launch, after all. The livestream streams on Blue Origin’s website