Are you ready to boldly go where no man has gone before? To hop aboard the Enterprise and explore the depths of the universe?
To many of us, space travel seems like a faraway dream we’ll never realize. But the truth is, we’re well on our way to establishing the Milky Way as a staple tourist destination.
The super wealthy are already taking joy rides into space, and in the next 10 years, we can look forward to these trips getting cheaper and easier for more than just the top one percent.
Costs for commercial space travel might seem out of this world right now, but prices have already gone down. And as it gets less and less expensive, it will have astronomical impacts on the tourism industry as more people add “travel among the stars” to their bucket list.
For those of us who aren’t billionaires, suborbital travel will be the cheapest and quickest form of space tourism. Imagine an extended amusement park ride but instead of CGI, you’ll actually be in space. However, unlike riding Space Mountain, you’ll need to plan at least an extra five days at the beginning of your trip for space safety training.
While these quick trips may be a blast, leading companies in space exploration want people to get more than just a taste of space. If you go to space, you want to stay awhile!
The Above Space Exploration Corporation has two space hotels already in the works. Orbiting around the earth at a hotel in the sky, you can eat your free continental breakfast while looking out at the vast expanses of space.
Of course, while many people are excited about the future possibilities of space tourism, we have a lot of factors to consider before it can really take off. More rockets mean more carbon emissions. And if it’s as popular as some researchers anticipate, they’ll use even more resources to build even more rockets. And more spacecrafts mean more debris in orbit, increasing the dangers for all shuttles coming and going.
Despite these concerns, however, space tourism is something to be excited about! Of course, we can’t know for sure when regular people like you and me can actually expect to blast off to space. But if you want to boldly go where no man has gone before, you might want to start saving now.
And who knows what comes next! Hotels on the moon. Rocket cruises to Mars. The possibilities are endless, and this is just the beginning of a new and exciting tourist market.