By Ben Mills (CLV Phoenix Lead Editor)
Where have you been on holiday before? Spain? Mexico? Greece? Whatever your idea of a holiday, chances are it’s at least somewhere on this planet. But in 2018, SpaceX is among one of the companies hoping to launch tourists...into space.
What is SpaceX?
Space X is a company set up with the goal to develop technology capable of sending not just cargo, but people into outer space. Its team of fantastic scientists have been working hard since the company’s founding in 2002 to reach this target. The man behind it is businessman and inventor Elon Musk. SpaceX is just one of his many visionary ideas - others include Hyperloop, where a levitating pod (achieved through the use of an electromagnetic field) will travel through a network of tunnels at speeds of 670 mph, and Tesla, a brand of self - driving cars.
Last year, it was announced that two private citizens had bought tickets to fly around the moon on SpaceX’s Dragon 2 spacecraft, a vehicle the size of a lift, with a maximum capacity of 7. But the timeline of the SpaceX project surely has to be one of his most ambitious plans; Dragon 2 and the craft due to launch it, Falcon Heavy, have never operated a manned flight before.
If Musk succeeds, though, a 2018 launch date would mark the 50th anniversary of Apollo 8, the first manned moon mission, and would carry tourists deeper into space than any other mission in the last 46 years. The crew of the craft are due to make the first manned flight in Dragon 2 in the late spring/early summer of this year, with the paying passengers scheduled to launch sometime in the later months of 2018, following months of training and health checks which were supposed to have started last year.
Is it safe?
As safe as a rocket leaving the Earth’s atmosphere, completing a 300,000 - 400,000 round trip to the moon and re-entering the atmosphere, a notoriously dangerous manoeuvre, can be. Sure, the spaceships have undergone extensive testing and Dragon 2 has made routine, unmanned cargo trips to the International Space Station. But this is no ISS cargo mission. These are real people, paying real money, and Musk is not going to want this to go wrong. However, he has admitted that while the company are doing “everything [they] can do to minimise the risk”, the passengers “are entering this with their eyes open, knowing that there is some risk here”.
Will I be able to go to space this year, then?
No. At least, not unless you have a lot of cash to spare. A manned mission to outer space costs a lot of money, and it is a feat so far only governments have been able to achieve. Although Elon Musk did not disclose either the identities of the passengers nor the price they paid for their tickets, saying only they paid a “significant deposit”, it is likely that whoever these mystery people are, they are very rich. Besides, there are currently only two seats, two seats that have already been taken.
So how long will it be?
Nobody really knows, although the general consensus between the experts is that affordable space travel will become readily accessible in the next few years, once technology has developed more. Here in the UK, government legislation is due to be introduced over the next two years which will help pave the way for the UK (and Europe’s) first ever “Spaceport”, a specialised aerodrome specifically designed for the departure and arrival of commercial spaceflights. What’s more, SpaceX isn’t the only company investing in space travel; you may have been to London on a Virgin East Coast train, or across to the USA with Virgin Atlantic, but Sir Richard Branson is now hoping to transport ordinary people into space with his new venture, Virgin Galactic. The 2 ½ hour suborbital voyage would cost $250,000 per seat, with celebrities such as Katy Perry, Stephen Hawkings and Justin Bieber rumoured to have reserved their seats onboard. But despite Branson himself declaring he’d be able to fly on one of his craft within the next 6 months back in October last year, a number of setbacks including a major crash in 2014 and many push-backs of the timescale has led to doubts that this idea will take off any time soon.
Hopefully, space travel will soon become the norm, but currently we don’t even know if even Musk can pull off his 2018 launch. So while extraordinary science is helping to propel forward efforts by companies like SpaceX and Virgin to send humans back into space, following the massive dip in cosmic exploration seen in the past few decades, it doesn’t seem likely that we can plan to substitute the Mediterranean sun for a glimpse of it outside the atmosphere very soon.
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