ISS-02 Soyuz TM-32 Taxi crewmembers in the Zvezda Service Module

Space tourism is human space travel for recreational purposes. There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital and lunar space tourism. During the period from 2001 to 2009, seven space tourists made eight space flights aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ( ...

, brokered by

Space Adventures Space Adventures, Inc. is an American space tourism company founded in 1998 by Eric C. Anderson. Its offerings include zero-gravity atmospheric flights, orbital spaceflights (with the option to participate in a spacewalk), and other spacefl ...

in conjunction with

Roscosmos The State Space Corporation "Roscosmos" (russian: Государственная корпорация по космической деятельности «Роскосмос»), commonly known simply as Roscosmos (russian: Роскосмос) ...

and

RSC Energia PAO S. P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia (russian: Ракетно-космическая корпорация «Энергия» им. С. П. Королёва, Raketno-kosmicheskaya korporatsiya "Energiya" im. S. P. Korolyov ...

. The publicized price was in the range of US$20–25 million per trip. Some space tourists have signed contracts with third parties to conduct certain research activities while in orbit. By 2007, space tourism was thought to be one of the earliest markets that would emerge for commercial spaceflight. Russia halted orbital space tourism in 2010 due to the increase in the International Space Station crew size, using the seats for expedition crews that would previously have been sold to paying spaceflight participants. Orbital tourist flights were set to resume in 2015 but the planned flight was postponed indefinitely. Russian orbital tourism eventually resumed with the launch of Soyuz MS-20 in 2021. On June 7, 2019,

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

announced that starting in 2020, the organization aims to start allowing private astronauts to go on the International Space Station, with the use of the SpaceX

Crew Dragon Dragon 2 is a class of partially reusable spacecraft developed and manufactured by American aerospace manufacturer SpaceX, primarily for flights to the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX has also launched private missions such as Ins ...

spacecraft and the

Boeing Starliner The Boeing CST-100 Starliner
is a class of two partially

spacecraft for public astronauts, which is planned to be priced at 35,000

USD The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

per day for one astronaut, and an estimated 50 million

for the ride there and back. Work also continues towards developing suborbital space tourism vehicles. This is being done by aerospace companies like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. SpaceX announced in 2018 that they are planning on sending space tourists, including

Yusaku Maezawa is a Japanese billionaire entrepreneur and art collector. He founded Start Today in 1998 and launched the online fashion retail website Zozotown in 2004, now Japan's largest. Most recently, Maezawa introduced a custom-fit apparel brand ZOZO and ...

, on a free-return trajectory around the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

on the Starship.

Precursors

The

Soviet space program The Soviet space program (russian: Космическая программа СССР, Kosmicheskaya programma SSSR) was the national space program of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), active from 1955 until the dissoluti ...

was successful in broadening the pool of cosmonauts. The Soviet Intercosmos program included cosmonauts selected from

Warsaw Pact The Warsaw Pact (WP) or Treaty of Warsaw, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist repub ...

member countries (

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

, Poland, East Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania) and later from allies of the USSR (Cuba, Mongolia, Vietnam) and non-aligned countries (India, Syria, Afghanistan). Most of these cosmonauts received full training for their missions and were treated as equals, but were generally given shorter flights than Soviet cosmonauts. The European Space Agency (ESA) also took advantage of the program. The US Space Shuttle program included payload specialist positions which were usually filled by representatives of companies or institutions managing a specific payload on that mission. These payload specialists did not receive the same training as professional

astronauts and were not employed by NASA. In 1983,

Ulf Merbold Ulf Dietrich Merbold (born June 20, 1941) is a German physicist and astronaut who flew to space three times, becoming the first West German citizen in space and the first non-American to fly on a NASA spacecraft. Merbold flew on two Space Shu ...

from the ESA and

Byron Lichtenberg Byron Kurt Lichtenberg, Sc. D. (born February 19, 1948) is an American engineer and fighter pilot who flew aboard two NASA Space Shuttle missions as a Payload Specialist. In 1983, he and Ulf Merbold became the STS-9, first Payload Specialists to f ...

from

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

(engineer and

Air Force An air force – in the broadest sense – is the national military branch that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an ...

fighter pilot) were the first payload specialists to fly on the

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program ...

, on mission STS-9. In 1984, Charles D. Walker became the first non-government astronaut to fly, with his employer

McDonnell Douglas McDonnell Douglas was a major American aerospace manufacturing corporation and defense contractor, formed by the merger of McDonnell Aircraft and the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1967. Between then and its own merger with Boeing in 1997, it pro ...

paying US$40,000 () for his flight. During the 1970s, Shuttle prime contractor

Rockwell International Rockwell International was a major American manufacturing conglomerate involved in aircraft, the space industry, defense and commercial electronics, components in the automotive industry, printing presses, avionics and industrial products. R ...

studied a $200–300 million removable cabin that could fit into the Shuttle's cargo bay. The cabin could carry up to 74 passengers into orbit for up to three days. Space Habitation Design Associates proposed, in 1983, a cabin for 72 passengers in the bay. Passengers were located in six sections, each with windows and its own loading ramp, and with seats in different configurations for launch and landing. Another proposal was based on the Spacelab habitation modules, which provided 32 seats in the payload bay in addition to those in the cockpit area. A 1985 presentation to the National Space Society stated that, although flying tourists in the cabin would cost $1 million to $1.5 million per passenger without government subsidy, within 15 years, 30,000 people a year would pay US$25,000 () each to fly in space on new spacecraft. The presentation also forecast flights to lunar orbit within 30 years and visits to the lunar surface within 50 years. As the shuttle program expanded in the early 1980s, NASA began a Space Flight Participant program to allow citizens without scientific or governmental roles to fly. Christa McAuliffe was chosen as the first Teacher in Space in July 1985 from 11,400 applicants. 1,700 applied for the Journalist in Space program. An Artist in Space program was considered, and NASA expected that after McAuliffe's flight two to three civilians a year would fly on the shuttle. After McAuliffe was killed in the ''Challenger'' disaster in January 1986, the programs were canceled. McAuliffe's backup,

Barbara Morgan Barbara Radding Morgan (born November 28, 1951) is an American teacher and a former NASA astronaut. She participated in the Teacher in Space program as backup to Christa McAuliffe for the 1986 ill-fated STS-51-L mission of the Space Shuttle ...

, eventually got hired in 1998 as a professional astronaut and flew on

STS-118 STS-118 was a Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS) flown by the orbiter '' Endeavour''. STS-118 lifted off on 8 August 2007 from launch pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Florida and landed at the Shuttle Landing Fac ...

as a mission specialist. A second journalist-in-space program, in which NASA green-lighted Miles O'Brien to fly on the Space Shuttle, was scheduled to be announced in 2003. That program was canceled in the wake of the ''Columbia'' disaster on

STS-107 STS-107 was the 113th flight of the Space Shuttle program, and the 28th and final flight of Space Shuttle ''Columbia''. The mission launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on January 16, 2003, and during its 15 days, 22 hours, 20 minutes ...

and subsequent emphasis on finishing the International Space Station before retiring the Space Shuttle. Initially, senior figures at NASA strongly opposed space tourism on principle; from the beginning of the ISS expeditions, NASA stated it was not interested in accommodating paying guests. The Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics Committee on Science of the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...

held in June 2001 revealed the shifting attitude of NASA towards paying space tourists wanting to travel to the ISS in its statement on the hearing's purpose:

"Review the issues and opportunities for flying nonprofessional astronauts in space, the appropriate government role for supporting the nascent space tourism industry, use of the Shuttle and Space Station for Tourism, safety and training criteria for space tourists, and the potential commercial market for space tourism."

The subcommittee report was interested in evaluating

Dennis Tito Dennis Anthony Tito (born August 8, 1940) is an American engineer and entrepreneur. In mid-2001, he became the first space tourist to fund his own trip into space, when he spent nearly eight days in orbit as a crew member of ISS EP-1, a visitin ...

's extensive training and his experience in space as a nonprofessional astronaut. With the realities of the post- Perestroika economy in Russia, its space industry was especially starved for cash. The

Tokyo Broadcasting System formerly is a Japanese media and licensed broadcasting holding company. It is the parent company of the television network and radio network . It has a 28-affiliate television network called JNN (Japan News Network), as well as a 34-affili ...

(TBS) offered to pay for one of its reporters to fly on a mission.

Toyohiro Akiyama is a retired Japanese TV journalist and professor at Kyoto University of Art and Design. In December 1990, he spent seven days aboard the Mir space station. He became the first person of Japanese nationality to fly in space, and his space mi ...

was flown in 1990 to ''

Mir ''Mir'' (russian: Мир, ; ) was a space station that operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, operated by the Soviet Union and later by Russia. ''Mir'' was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to&n ...

'' with the eighth crew and returned a week later with the seventh crew. Cost estimates vary from $10 million up to $37 million. Akiyama gave a daily TV broadcast from orbit and also performed scientific experiments for Russian and Japanese companies. In 1991, British chemist

Helen Sharman Helen Patricia Sharman, CMG, OBE, HonFRSC (born 30 May 1963) is a British chemist and cosmonaut who became the first British person, first Western European woman and first privately funded woman in space, as well as the first woman to visit ...

was selected from a pool of 13,000 applicants to be the first Briton in space. The program was known as

Project Juno Project Juno was a privately funded campaign which selected Helen Sharman to be the first Briton in space. As the United Kingdom did not, at that time, have a human spaceflight programme (until the UK joined the human spaceflight elements of ...

and was a cooperative arrangement between the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

and a group of British companies. The Project Juno consortium failed to raise the funds required, and the program was almost canceled. Reportedly Mikhail Gorbachev ordered it to proceed under Soviet expense in the interests of international relations, but in the absence of Western underwriting, less expensive experiments were substituted for those in the original plans. Sharman flew aboard Soyuz TM-12 to ''Mir'' and returned aboard

Soyuz TM-11 Soyuz TM-11 was the eleventh expedition to the Russian Space Station Mir, using a Soyuz-TM crew transport vessel. The mission notably carried a Japanese television reporter from Tokyo Broadcasting System.The mission report is available here: htt ...

Sub-orbital space tourism

Successful projects

Scaled Composites Scaled Composites (often called simply Scaled) is an American aerospace company founded by Burt Rutan and currently owned by Northrop Grumman. It is located at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California, United States. Founded to deve ...

won the $10 million X Prize in October 2004 with SpaceShipOne, as the first private company to reach and surpass an altitude of twice within two weeks. The altitude is beyond the Kármán Line, the arbitrarily-defined boundary of space. The first flight was flown by Michael Melvill in June 2004, to a height of , making him the first commercial astronaut. The prize-winning flight was flown by

Brian Binnie William Brian Binnie (April 26, 1953 – September 15, 2022) was a United States Navy officer and one of the test pilots for SpaceShipOne, the experimental spaceplane developed by Scaled Composites and flown from 2003 to 2004. Early life ...

, which reached a height of , breaking the

X-15 The North American X-15 is a hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft. It was operated by the United States Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as part of the X-plane series of experimental aircraft. The X-15 set spee ...

record. There were no space tourists on the flights even though the vehicle has seats for three passengers. Instead there was additional weight to make up for the weight of passengers. * In 2005, Virgin Galactic was founded as a joint venture between Scaled Composites and Richard Branson's Virgin Group. Eventually Virgin Group owned the entire project. Virgin Galactic began building SpaceShipTwo-class spaceplanes. The first of these spaceplanes, VSS ''Enterprise'', was intended to commence its first commercial flights in 2015, and tickets were on sale at a price of $200,000 (later raised to $250,000). However, the company suffered a considerable setback when the ''Enterprise'' broke up over the

Mojave Desert The Mojave Desert ( ; mov, Hayikwiir Mat'aar; es, Desierto de Mojave) is a desert in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada mountains in the Southwestern United States. It is named for the indigenous Mojave people. It is located primarily ...

during a test flight in October 2014. Over 700 tickets had been sold prior to the accident. A second spaceplane, VSS ''Unity'', completed a successful test flight with four passengers on July 11, 2021 to an altitude of nearly 90 km (56 mi). * Blue Origin developed the

New Shepard New Shepard is a fully reusable suborbital launch vehicle developed by Blue Origin for space tourism. The vehicle is named after Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut in space. The vehicle is capable of vertical takeoff and vertical lan ...

reusable suborbital launch system specifically to enable short-duration space tourism. Blue Origin plans to ferry a maximum of six persons on a brief journey to space on board the New Shepard. The capsule is attached to the top portion of an 18-meter (59-foot) rocket. The rocket successfully launched with four passengers on July 20, 2021, and reached an altitude of .

Canceled projects

Armadillo Aerospace Armadillo Aerospace was an aerospace startup company based in Mesquite, Texas. Its initial goal was to build a crewed suborbital spacecraft capable of space tourism, and it had also stated long-term ambitions of orbital spaceflight. The company ...

was developing a two-seat vertical takeoff and landing ( VTOL) rocket called Hyperion, which will be marketed by Space Adventures. Hyperion uses a capsule similar in shape to the Gemini capsule. The vehicle will use a parachute for descent but will probably use

retrorocket A retrorocket (short for ''retrograde rocket'') is a rocket engine providing thrust opposing the motion of a vehicle, thereby causing it to decelerate. They have mostly been used in spacecraft, with more limited use in short-runway aircraft land ...

s for final touchdown, according to remarks made by Armadillo Aerospace at the Next Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference in February 2012. The assets of Armadillo Aerospace were sold to

Exos Aerospace Exos Aerospace Systems & Technologies is an aerospace manufacturer and developer of reusable launch systems intended to support uncrewed orbital spaceflight launches, and is based in Caddo Mills, Texas. Foundation Exos Aerospace is based on both ...

and while SARGE is continuing to be developed, it is unclear whether Hyperion is still being developed. *

XCOR Aerospace XCOR Aerospace was an American private spaceflight and rocket engine development company based at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California, Midland International Air and Space Port, Midland International Air and Spaceport in Midland, T ...

was developing a suborbital vehicle called Lynx until development was halted in May 2016. The Lynx would take off from a runway under rocket power. Unlike SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo, Lynx would not require a mothership. Lynx was designed for rapid turnaround, which would enable it to fly up to four times per day. Because of this rapid flight rate, Lynx had fewer seats than SpaceShipTwo, carrying only one pilot and one spaceflight participant on each flight. XCOR expected to roll out the first Lynx prototype and begin flight tests in 2015, but as of late 2017, XCOR was unable to complete their prototype development and filed for bankruptcy. ** Citizens in Space, formerly the Teacher in Space Project, is a project of the United States Rocket Academy. Citizens in Space combines citizen science with citizen space exploration. The goal is to fly citizen-science experiments and citizen explorers (who travel free) who will act as payload operators on suborbital space missions. By 2012, Citizens in Space had acquired a contract for 10 suborbital flights with XCOR Aerospace and expected to acquire additional flights from XCOR and other suborbital spaceflight providers in the future. In 2012, Citizens in Space reported they had begun training three citizen astronaut candidates and would select seven additional candidates over the next 12 to 14 months. ** Space Expedition Corporation was preparing to use the Lynx for " Space Expedition Curaçao", a commercial flight from Hato Airport on Curaçao, and planned to start commercial flights in 2014. The costs were $95,000 each. ** Axe Apollo Space Academy promotion by

Unilever Unilever plc is a British multinational consumer goods company with headquarters in London, England. Unilever products include food, condiments, bottled water, baby food, soft drink, ice cream, instant coffee, cleaning agents, energy dri ...

which planned to provide 23 people suborbital spaceflights on board the Lynx. *

EADS Astrium Astrium was an aerospace manufacturer subsidiary of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) that provided civil and military space systems and services from 2006 to 2013. In 2012, Astrium had a turnover of €5.8 billion and 1 ...

, a subsidiary of European aerospace giant EADS, announced its space tourism project in June 2007.

Orbital space tourism

As of 2021, Space Adventures and SpaceX are the only companies to have coordinated tourism flights to Earth's orbit. Virginia-based Space Adventures has worked with Russia to use its Soyuz spacecraft to fly ultra-wealthy individuals to the International Space Station. The tourists included entrepreneur and space investor Anousheh Ansari and Cirque du Soleil co-founder Guy Laliberté. Those missions were priced at around $20 million each. The space industry could soon be headed for a tourism revolution if SpaceX and Boeing make good on their plans to take tourists to orbit.

Successful projects

At the end of the 1990s, MirCorp, a private venture that was by then in charge of the space station, began seeking potential space tourists to visit ''Mir'' in order to offset some of its maintenance costs.

, an American businessman and former JPL scientist, became their first candidate. When the decision was made to de-orbit ''Mir'', Tito managed to switch his trip to the

(ISS) aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft through a deal between MirCorp and US-based

, Ltd. Dennis Tito visited the ISS for seven days in April–May 2001, becoming the world's first "fee-paying" space tourist. Tito paid a reported $20 million for his trip. Tito was followed in April 2002 by South African Mark Shuttleworth ( Soyuz TM-34). The third was Gregory Olsen in October 2005 ( Soyuz TMA-7). In February 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard. After this disaster, space tourism on the Russian

Soyuz program The Soyuz programme ( , ; russian: link=no, Союз , meaning "Union") is a human spaceflight programme initiated by the Soviet Union in the early 1960s. The Soyuz spacecraft was originally part of a Moon landing project intended to put a So ...

was temporarily put on hold, because Soyuz vehicles became the only available transport to the ISS. After the Shuttle's return to service in July 2005, space tourism was resumed. In September 2006, an Iranian American businesswoman named Anousheh Ansari became the fourth space tourist ( Soyuz TMA-9).) In April 2007, Charles Simonyi, an American businessman of Hungarian descent, joined their ranks (

Soyuz TMA-10 Soyuz TMA-10 was a human spaceflight mission using a Soyuz-TMA spacecraft to transport personnel to and from the International Space Station (ISS). The mission began at 17:31:09 UTC on April 7, 2007 when the spacecraft was launched from the Ba ...

). Simonyi became the first repeat space tourist, paying again to fly on

Soyuz TMA-14 The Soyuz TMA-14 (russian: Союз ТМА-14, ''Union TMA-14'') was a Soyuz flight to the International Space Station, which launched on 26 March 2009. It transported two members of the Expedition 19 crew as well as spaceflight participant Char ...

in March 2009.

British-American British American usually refers to Americans whose ancestral origin originates wholly or partly in the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Cornwall, Orkney, and the Isle of Man). It is primarily a demographic or histor ...

Richard Garriott Richard Allen Garriott de Cayeux (''né'' Garriott; born July 4, 1961) is an American video game developer, entrepreneur and private astronaut. Although both his parents were American, he maintains dual British and American citizenship by birth. ...

became the next space tourist in October 2008 aboard

Soyuz TMA-13 Soyuz TMA-13 (russian: Союз ТМА-13, ''Union TMA-13'') was a Soyuz mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The spacecraft was launched by a Soyuz-FG rocket at 07:01 GMT on 12 October 2008. It undocked at 02:55 GMT on 8 April 20 ...

. Canadian Guy Laliberté visited the ISS in September 2009 aboard Soyuz TMA-16, becoming the last visiting tourist until December 2021. Originally the third member aboard

Soyuz TMA-18M Soyuz TMA-18M was a 2015 Soyuz (spacecraft), Soyuz spaceflight to the International Space Station. It provided the two twelve-months occupants (Scott Kelly (astronaut), Scott Kelly and Mikhail Korniyenko) at the International Space Station with a ...

should have been the British singer Sarah Brightman as a space tourist, but on May 13, 2015, she announced she had withdrawn from training. Since the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011, Soyuz once again became the only means of accessing the ISS, and so tourism was once again put on hold. On June 7, 2019, NASA announced a plan to open the ISS to space tourism again. On September 16, 2021, the Inspiration4 mission launched from the

Kennedy Space Center The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC, originally known as the NASA Launch Operations Center), located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten field centers. Since December 1968 ...

on a SpaceX

Falcon 9 Falcon 9 is a partially reusable medium lift launch vehicle that can carry cargo and crew into Earth orbit, produced by American aerospace company SpaceX. The rocket has two stages. The first (booster) stage carries the second stage and pay ...

and spent almost three days in orbit aboard the

'' Resilience'', becoming the first all-civilian crew to fly an orbital space mission. On April 8, 2022, SpaceX launched

Axiom Mission 1 Axiom Mission 1 (or Ax-1) was a privately funded and operated crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The mission was operated by Axiom Space out of Axiom's Mission Control Center MCC-A in Houston, Texas. The flight launched ...

(Ax-1) for

Axiom Space Axiom Space, Inc., also known as Axiom, is an American privately funded space infrastructure developer headquartered in Houston, Texas. Founded in 2016 by Michael T. Suffredini and Kam Ghaffarian, the company first flew a spaceflight in 2 ...

, sending three space tourists and retired NASA astronaut

Michael López-Alegría Michael López-Alegría (born Miguel Eladio López Alegría on May 30, 1958) is an astronaut, test pilot and commercial astronaut with dual nationality, American and Spanish; a veteran of three Space Shuttle missions and one International Space ...

to the International Space Station on a

spacecraft. Ax-1 was the first mission to send multiple space tourists to the ISS. The mission also marked the first of NASA's officially-sanctioned Private Astronaut Missions (PAMs) to the ISS. Through these missions, NASA hopes to create a non-NASA market for human spaceflight to enable cost-sharing on future commercial space stations.

Ongoing projects

* The

Boeing Starliner The Boeing CST-100 Starliner
is a class of two partially

capsule is being developed as part of the NASA's

Commercial Crew Program The Commercial Crew Program (CCP) provides commercially-operated crew transportation service to and from the International Space Station (ISS) under contract to NASA, conducting crew rotations between the expeditions of the International S ...

. Part of the agreement with NASA allows Boeing to sell seats for space tourists. Boeing proposed including one seat per flight for a

spaceflight participant Spaceflight participant (russian: участник космического полета, translit=uchastnik kosmicheskogo polyota) is the term used by NASA, Roscosmos, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for people who travel into space, ...

at a price that would be competitive with what Roscosmos charges tourists. * Future Axiom missions:

and SpaceX plan to launch the second Axiom mission Ax-2 in 2023 Q1. Missions up to Ax-4 have been contracted with SpaceX. * The Polaris Program: The commander and financier of the Inspiration4 mission, Jared Isaacman, announced plans for a three-mission program called Polaris in February 2022. The first mission, Polaris Dawn, will launch four private astronauts in a

spacecraft to earth orbit. Polaris Dawn will be a free-flyer mission in which the spacecraft will not perform any rendezvous maneuvers, instead aiming to surpass the all-time earth orbit altitude record of 1,373 kilometres set by Gemini XI. Polaris Dawn also seeks to include the first private

Extravehicular activity Extravehicular activity (EVA) is any activity done by an astronaut in outer space outside a spacecraft. In the absence of a breathable Earthlike atmosphere, the astronaut is completely reliant on a space suit for environmental support. EVA inc ...

(EVA). The last Polaris program mission is planned to be the first crewed flight of the in-development Starship launch system.

Canceled projects

* In 2004,

Bigelow Aerospace Bigelow Aerospace is an American aeronautics and outer space technology company which manufactures and develops expandable space station modules. Bigelow Aerospace was founded by Robert Bigelow in 1998, and is based in North Las Vegas, Nevada. ...

established a competition called America's Space Prize, which offered a $50 million prize to the first US company to create a reusable spacecraft capable of carrying passengers to a Nautilus space station. The prize expired in January 2010 without anyone making a serious effort to win it. * The Space Island Group proposed having 20,000 people on their "space island" by 2020. * A United States startup firm, Orion Span announced during the early part of 2018 that it planned to launch and position a luxury space hotel in orbit within several years. Aurora Space Station, the name of the hotel, would have offered guests (at most six individuals) 12 days of staying in a pill-shaped space hotel for $9.5 million. The hotel's cabins would have measured approximately 12.9 metres (43 feet) by 4.8 metres (14 feet) in width. * Space Adventures Crew Dragon mission:

and SpaceX planned to send up to four tourists to low Earth orbit for a few days in late 2021 or early 2022. In October 2021, Space Adventures stated that the mission contract had expired, though the possibility of a future partnership with SpaceX was left open. * Galactic Suite Design * Orbital Technologies Commercial Space Station *

Space Industries Incorporated Space Industries Incorporated was a company formed in the 1980s for the purpose of building a privately owned space station, which was to be called the Industrial Space Facility (ISF). At the time, the idea of private spaceflight, private Space expl ...

* Space Islands

Tourism beyond Earth orbit

SpaceX Mars tourism poster for Phobos and Deimos

Ongoing projects

* In February 2017, Elon Musk announced that substantial deposits from two individuals had been received by SpaceX for a Moon loop flight using a

free return trajectory In orbital mechanics, a free-return trajectory is a trajectory of a spacecraft traveling away from a primary body (for example, the Earth) where gravity due to a secondary body (for example, the Moon) causes the spacecraft to return to the primar ...

and that this could happen as soon as late 2018. Musk said that the cost of the mission would be "comparable" to that of sending an astronaut to the International Space Station, about US$70 million in 2017. In February 2018, Musk announced that the Falcon Heavy rocket would not be used for crewed missions. The proposal changed in 2018 to use the Starship launch system instead. In September 2018, Musk revealed the passenger for the trip,

during a livestream. Yusaku Maezawa described the plan for his trip in further detail, dubbed the #

dearMoon project The ''dearMoon'' project is a lunar tourism mission and art project conceived and financed by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. It will make use of a SpaceX Starship spacecraft on a private spaceflight flying a single circumlunar trajectory ...

, intending to take 6–8 artists with him on the journey to inspire the artists to create new art. *

Ltd. have announced that they are working on DSE-Alpha, a circumlunar mission to the Moon, with the price per passenger being $100,000,000.

Cancelled projects

Excalibur Almaz Excalibur Almaz was a private spaceflight company which planned to provide a variety of deep space crewed exploration missions, micro-gravity science, and payload delivery. EA also aimed to offer Low Earth Orbit cargo and crew delivery and retu ...

proposed to take three tourists in a flyby around the Moon, using modified Almaz space station modules, in a low-energy trajectory flyby around the Moon. The trip would last around 6 months. However, their equipment was never launched and is to be converted into an educational exhibit. * The Golden Spike Company was an American

space transport Spaceflight (or space flight) is an application of astronautics to fly spacecraft into or through outer space, either with or without humans on board. Most spaceflight is uncrewed and conducted mainly with spacecraft such as satellites in o ...

startup active from 2010 to 2013. The company held the objective to offer private commercial space transportation services to the surface of the Moon. The company's website was quietly taken offline in September 2015. * The Inspiration Mars Foundation is an American nonprofit organization founded by

that proposed to launch a crewed mission to flyby

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin at ...

in January 2018, or 2021 if they missed the first deadline. Their website became defunct by late 2015 but it is archived by the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

. The Foundation's future plans are unclear. *

planned to extend their successes with the ''Genesis'' modules by launching the

B330 The B330 (previously known as the Nautilus space complex module and BA 330) was an inflatable space habitat being privately developed by Bigelow Aerospace from 2010 until 2020. The design was evolved from NASA's TransHab habitat concept. B330 ...

, an expandable habitation module with 330 cubic meters of internal space, aboard a Vulcan rocket. The Vulcan was contracted to boost BA 330 to low lunar orbit by the end of 2022.

Legality

Under the

Outer Space Treaty russian: link=yes, Договор о космосе es, link=yes, Tratado sobre el espacio ultraterrestre , long_name = Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moo ...

signed in 1967, the launch operator's nationality and the launch site's location determine which country is responsible for any damages occurred from a launch. After valuable resources were detected on the Moon, private companies began to formulate methods to extract the resources. Article II of the

dictates that "outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means". However, countries have the right to freely explore the Moon and any resources collected are property of that country when they return.

United States

In December 2005, the US government released a set of proposed rules for space tourism. These included screening procedures and training for emergency situations, but not health requirements. Under current US law, any company proposing to launch paying passengers from American soil on a suborbital rocket must receive a license from the Federal Aviation Administration's

Office of Commercial Space Transportation The Office of Commercial Space Transportation (generally referred to as FAA/AST or simply AST) is the branch of the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that approves any commercial rocket launch operations — that is, any laun ...

(FAA/AST). The licensing process focuses on public safety and safety of property, and the details can be found in the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 14, Chapter III. This is in accordance with the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act passed by Congress in 2004. In March 2010, the New Mexico legislature passed the Spaceflight Informed Consent Act. The SICA gives legal protection to companies who provide private space flights in the case of accidental harm or death to individuals. Participants sign an Informed Consent waiver, dictating that spaceflight operators cannot be held liable in the "death of a participant resulting from the inherent risks of space flight activities". Operators are however not covered in the case of gross negligence or willful misconduct.

List of space tourism trips

The following list notes each trip taken by an individual for whom a fee was paid (by themselves or another party) to go above the Kármán Line, the internationally recognized boundary of space. It also includes future trips which are paid for and scheduled.

Criticism of the term ''space tourist''

Many private space travelers have objected to the term ''space tourist'', often pointing out that their role went beyond that of an observer, since they also carried out scientific experiments in the course of their journey.

additionally emphasized that his training was identical to the requirements of non-Russian Soyuz crew members, and that teachers and other non-professional astronauts chosen to fly with NASA are called astronauts. He has said that if the distinction has to be made, he would rather be called "private astronaut" than "tourist". Mark Shuttleworth described himself as a "pioneer of commercial space travel". Gregory Olsen prefers "private researcher", and Anousheh Ansari prefers the term "private space explorer". Other space enthusiasts object to the term on similar grounds. Rick Tumlinson of the

Space Frontier Foundation The Space Frontier Foundation is an American space advocacy nonprofit corporation organized to promote the interests of increased involvement of the private sector, in collaboration with government, in the exploration and development of space. I ...

, for example, has said: "I hate the word tourist, and I always will ... 'Tourist' is somebody in a flowered shirt with three cameras around his neck." Russian cosmonaut

Maksim Surayev Maksim Viktorovich Surayev (russian: Максим Викторович Сураев, born 24 May 1972) is a retired Russian cosmonaut and politician. He served in the State Duma between 2016 and 2021. Personal Surayev was born in Chelyabinsk. D ...

told the press in 2009 not to describe Guy Laliberté as a tourist: "It's become fashionable to speak of space tourists. He is not a tourist but a participant in the mission." "

Spaceflight participant Spaceflight participant (russian: участник космического полета, translit=uchastnik kosmicheskogo polyota) is the term used by NASA, Roscosmos, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for people who travel into space, ...

" is the official term used by NASA and the Russian Federal Space Agency to distinguish between private space travelers and career astronauts. Tito, Shuttleworth, Olsen, Ansari, and Simonyi were designated as such during their respective space flights. NASA also lists Christa McAuliffe as a spaceflight participant (although she did not pay a fee), apparently due to her non-technical duties aboard the STS-51-L flight. The US Federal Aviation Administration awards the title of "

commercial astronaut A commercial astronaut is a person who has commanded, piloted, or served as an active crew member of a privately funded spacecraft. This is distinct from an otherwise non-government astronaut, for example Charlie Walker, who flies while represe ...

" to trained crew members of privately funded spacecraft. The only people currently holding this title are

Mike Melvill Michael Winston Melvill (born November 30, 1940 in Johannesburg, South Africa) is a world-record-breaking pilot and one of the test pilots for SpaceShipOne, the experimental spaceplane developed by Scaled Composites. Melvill piloted SpaceShip ...

and

, the pilots of SpaceShipOne in 2004; pilots Mark P. Stucky and Frederick W. Sturckow in 2018, and pilots Dave Mackay, Michael Masucci, and trainer

Beth Moses Beth Moses is Chief Astronaut Instructor and Interiors Program Manager for Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo program, and is a Commercial Astronaut, as classified by the Federal Aviation Administration. She was the first woman to make a spaceflight ...

in 2019 aboard SpaceShipTwo on two separate missions.

Attitudes towards space tourism

A 2018 survey from the PEW Research Center identifies the top three motivations for a customer to purchase a flight into space as: * To experience something unique ( e.g. pioneering, one of a kind) * To see the view of Earth from space * To learn more about the world The PEW study also found that only 43% of Americans would be definitely or probably interested in going into space. A web-based survey suggested that over 70% of those surveyed wanted less than or equal to 2 weeks in space; in addition, 88% wanted to spacewalk, of whom 14% would pay a 50% premium for the experience, and 21% wanted a hotel or space station. The concept has met with some criticism;

Günter Verheugen Günter Verheugen (born 28 April 1944) is a German politician who served as European Commissioner for Enlargement from 1999 to 2004, and then as European Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry from 2004 to 2010. He was also one of five vice pr ...

, vice-president of the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...

, said of the EADS Astrium Space Tourism Project: "It's only for the super-rich, which is against my social convictions". On 14 October 2021, Prince William suggested that entrepreneurs should focus on saving

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

rather than engaging in space tourism and also warned about a rise in "climate anxiety" among younger generations.

Environmental effects

Modelled influence of a decade of contemporary rocket launch and re-entry heating emissions on stratospheric chemical composition

A 2010 study published in ''

Geophysical Research Letters ''Geophysical Research Letters'' is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal of geoscience published by the American Geophysical Union that was established in 1974. The editor-in-chief is Harihar Rajaram. Aims and scope The journal aims for rap ...

'' raised concerns that the growing commercial spaceflight industry could accelerate global warming. The study, funded by NASA and The Aerospace Corporation, simulated the impact of 1,000 suborbital launches of

hybrid rocket A hybrid-propellant rocket is a rocket with a rocket motor that uses rocket propellants in two different phases: one solid and the other either gas or liquid. The hybrid rocket concept can be traced back to the early 1930s. Hybrid rockets avo ...

s from a single location, calculating that this would release a total of 600 tonnes of black carbon into the stratosphere. They found that the resultant layer of soot particles remained relatively localized, with only 20% of the carbon straying into the southern hemisphere, thus creating a strong hemispherical asymmetry. This unbalance would cause the temperature to decrease by about in the tropics and subtropics, whereas the temperature at the poles would increase by between . The ozone layer would also be affected, with the tropics losing up to 1.7% of ozone cover, and the polar regions gaining 5–6%. The researchers stressed that these results should not be taken as "a precise forecast of the climate response to a specific launch rate of a specific rocket type", but as a demonstration of the sensitivity of the atmosphere to the large-scale disruption that commercial space tourism could bring. A 2022 study estimated the

air pollution Air pollution is the contamination of air due to the presence of substances in the atmosphere that are harmful to the health of humans and other living beings, or cause damage to the climate or to materials. There are many different typ ...

impacts on climate change and the ozone layer from rocket launches and re-entry of reusable components and

debris Debris (, ) is rubble, wreckage, ruins, litter and discarded garbage/refuse/trash, scattered remains of something destroyed, or, as in geology, large rock fragments left by a melting glacier, etc. Depending on context, ''debris'' can refer to ...

in 2019 and from a theoretical future

space industry Space industry refers to economic activities related to manufacturing components that go into Earth's orbit or beyond, delivering them to those regions, and related services. Owing to the prominence of the satellite-related activities, some sour ...

extrapolated from the " billionaire space race". It concludes that substantial effects from routine space tourism should "motivate

regulation Regulation is the management of complex systems according to a set of rules and trends. In systems theory, these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society, but the term has slightly different meanings according to context. Fo ...

Education and advocacy

Several organizations have been formed to promote the space tourism industry, including the Space Tourism Society, Space Future, and HobbySpace. ''UniGalactic Space Travel Magazine'' is a bi-monthly educational publication covering space tourism and space exploration developments in companies like SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, Virgin Galactic and organizations like NASA. Classes in space tourism are currently taught at the

Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is a private research university in the town of Henrietta in the Rochester, New York, metropolitan area. The university offers undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional ...

in New York, and Keio University in Japan.

Economic potential

A 2010 report from the

Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic ...

, titled "The Economic Impact of Commercial Space Transportation on the U.S. Economy in 2009", cites studies done by Futron, an aerospace and technology-consulting firm, which predict that space tourism could become a billion-dollar market within 20 years. Eight tourists reached orbit between 2001 and 2009. In 2011 Space Adventures suggested that this number could reach 140 by 2020, but with commercial crewed rockets only just beginning to enter service, such numbers have yet to be achieved.

References

External links

*
''Space Tourists''
a documentary film by Christian Frei
''Space Tourism Society''
a non-profit research and advocacy group {{DEFAULTSORT:Space Tourism American inventions Russian inventions Types of tourism 2001 introductions

Precursors

Sub-orbital space tourism

Successful projects

Canceled projects

Orbital space tourism

Successful projects

Ongoing projects

Canceled projects

Tourism beyond Earth orbit

Ongoing projects

Cancelled projects

Legality

United States

List of space tourism trips

Criticism of the term ''space tourist''

Attitudes towards space tourism

Environmental effects

Education and advocacy

Economic potential

See also

References

Further reading

External links