Space tourism: A trip to moon
“WHERE there’s will, there’s a way” will perhaps be the best way to say it all. It was a wonder of sorts as investor and philanthropist Paul G. Allen, in association with Scaled Composites, flew in the first-ever private manned vehicle beyond the Earth’s orbit. Apart from being an individual rare achievement, this historic event is sure to throw open a whole new world of opportunities for private space tourism, a term virtually unheard of until a few years ago.
The spacecraft—SpaceShipOne—test-piloted by Mike Melvill on the 21st June 2004, reached a record-breaking altitude of 328,491 feet (approximately 62 miles or 100 km), thereby making him the first civilian to fly a spaceship out of the atmosphere as also the first private pilot to earn an astronaut’s wings.
On the successful completion of the mission, Scaled Composites founder and CEO Burt Rutan said: “Today’s flight marks a critical turning point in the history of aerospace,” adding that “we have redefined space travel as we know it”. And an overwhelmed Allen felt that Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites were part of a new generation of explorers, sparking the imagination of a huge number of people worldwide and ushering in the birth of a new industry of privately-funded manned space flight.
Indeed, without even a single penny’s help from the government, the duo have driven home the point well with the prospective entrepreneurs that manned space flights do not require mammoth government expenditures. The success of SpaceShipOne flight has the potential to put commercial space travel on the itinerary of more private space enthusiasts, thereby widening the scope of leisure travel far beyond the skies. And then, who knows, orbiting hotels and space retreats might no longer be fantasies?
It was in 2002 that millionaire Denis Tito had to pay a whopping price of $20mn to have a truly out-of-the-word experience. Besides, he had also to pay an exorbitant price to undergo a rigorous training at the Russian space centre before blasted off to reach theInternational Space Station. But in the given scenario, once suborbitals become operational, space holidays are sure to cease to be the preserve of the millionaires.
Added to this is the fact that participation by private entrepreneurs will also liberate the so-called final frontier from government monopoly. However, it was only within hours of the first private flight to outer space that NASA went on to declare that it might offer millions of dollars in prizes to encourage commercial missions to orbit the Earth or land on the moon. "What we're looking for is innovation like what Burt Rutan brought to the table today," said a top NASA official, Michael Lembeck. True, bucks follow the success.
THE HINDSIGHT: Eco Activists Oppose 'Space Tourism' Promotion
The success of SpaceShipOne flight has made the eco-activists sit up. They feel that holidaying in the space is bound to turn the solar system into a junkyard. The US government’s decision to issue licences for manned suborbital rockets is good only on the face of it, they insist, arguing that such licences will culminate in commercial space flights for private individuals in a decade or so.
This scepticism has its roots in the fact that opening up of space to tourism might lay to rest the delicate and hitherto unexplored “eco-space” — a virtual corollary of the numerous disasters on the Earth. To prove their point, the sceptics cite the example of Mount Everest. They say, when Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgeyscaled the mountain peak in 1953, it was breathtaking in its virgin beauty. But today, the magnitude of garbage and litter left behind by the tourists is good enough to take one’s breath away, thus rendering the Everest as the world’s highest junkyard.
The eco-conservationists maintain that in the recent years, theCaribbean, Indian Ocean and the Pacific have been promoted as ideal tourist destinations with abundant sun, sand and sea. But, according to UNEP, the level of plastic wastes on these islands has increased almost by five folds due to the tourist influx since nineties. Therefore, it can be safely said that space will also succumb to the habit of human beings to leave trash wherever they go.
However, the other lot of eco-activists opine that space tourism is not all that perilous. After all, space holidays are unlikely to become the ones as those on the beaches and the hill stations. Tourism threatens the environment only when the numbers become unmanageable. (From the Archives)
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