Tourists In Spaaaaace!

held down the fort admirably. I went to c e S, which it was cool, but it did really immediately made me wish that I could take a vacation because it's a lot of work to cover c e S and uh, you know, I like exotic vacations. And that's where this whole space thing sort of popped into mind, this idea of let me really really get away from it all.

Although I'm kind of curious here, I mean, because you you may have expressed a few, um frustrations with the amount of preparation that you had to do to go to ce ES and the amount of preparation to go to space is like six months of training. Yeah, but

you know I can sleep through that. That's easy enough. So, yeah, we wanted to talk about space tourism, this idea of regular human beings going up into space, people who are not necessarily dedicating a significant portion of their lives to the study of space or the exploration of space, people who just want to have a chance to experience that for themselves. You know, I can imagine back in the sixties when people were watching the Apollo program on TV.

There was probably this sense among children at the time that like, oh man, the doors, yeah, they're just flying open. In a few years, I'm going to be going to space. We're going to go there on vacation. It'll be fun. It'll be like a day trip. You know, you can just go up and look at the curve of the Earth at the window. Wouldn't that be cool? Well, particularly once we started landing people on the Moon, and at that point I really thinking, okay, so now now this

is the future. This is it from here on out. We're not going to have a time where we're not going to the moon. And that time came pretty quickly. Then we never went back, unless you believe that Apollo eighteen movie. I have seen that Apollo eighteen movie. Don't watch it. I'll save you. Uh. It's terrible, is absolutely terrible, not not even a little bit. What's it about like moon spiders or about Moon rock spiders or rock moon

spider episode to ask conspiracy stuff about? But yeah, yeah right, yeah, Well okay, so we never we didn't go back to the Moon. We're still going to space some Yeah, we've got the International Space Station. We've got some telescopes up there and a couple that are well one in particular that's getting ready for the big launch. So we keep talking about that wacky like Mars one kind of thing. Yeah, we'll talk more about that too. Yeah. But but I think I think that I s S right now is

pretty much the inspiration. I mean, kids like Chris Hadfield being up there and and you know, singing space audity and getting people excited about the entire thing all over again. You know, it's He's very much I think our generations answered to those terrific Apollo videos. Yeah, it's great to be a space enthusiast. But if you are not somebody who works at NASSA, if you're not like a test pilot or an astronaut of some kind, how are you going to get there? Well, I mean, until fairly recently,

you could get there by dropping a tunnel cash. Yeah yeah, okay, so this requires a little bit of explanation. So, uh, a little bit more than a decade ago, you know, about fourteen years ago or so, the world was in a space where the Russian Space Agency in general in general was really strapped for cash. In fact, Russia in general was really strapped for cash, right, and uh, you know, the Russians have a space an actual space industry, just

like the United States does. And then a lot of the US space industry depends heavily on the Russians at this point for their various rockets and some of the other equipment they make as well, and of course their

their partners aboard the International Space Station. So back at that time there was a company called Mere Core m I R c O r P. So they were in charge at that time of private company in charge of the Mere Space Station, and they were looking at perhaps offsetting some of the maintenance costs of the Mirror by offering up the chance for private citizens to spend a hefty lump of cash in order to go up and visit the mirror, uh space station. This was great while

the Mirror was still you know, in orbit. Yeah, so a couple of things happened. Well. For first, there were some companies that took advantage of being able to send people up into space. But they're not space tourists, right.

These were companies that sent along a specialist who was someone who would oversee the payload of like something that wasn the Space Shuttle or in one case, there was a reporter for the Tokyo Broadcast System called toyo Hiro Akiyama who went up to the Mere Space Station once this program was offered, and it was actually the Tokyo Broadcasting System that paid the twenty eight million dollars US to the Russian space industry for Akayama to go up

there and broadcast. And Akayama actually performed science experiments broadcast every single day. So this was a working trip. It was not a vacation, right, So so we don't really count that as a space tourist, but it's sort of opening up the doors for what immediately followed. So there's a guy named Dennis Tito. He was yeah, American businessman, um really wealthy investor and um he is officially the

first person to pay a fee to go up into space. Now, initially his plan was also to go up and visit Mirror. But like you were alluding to, Lauren, mir did not stay up in orbit forever. They Russian Space Agency actually decided to de orbit Mirror. De orbit means let it

crash into, yeah, onto Earth. So he began to Actually what happened was a Mirror Corps began to partner with another company, a company that becomes really big in space tourism, company called this U space company called Space Adventures Limited, which I thought was like a laser tag company until I looked more into this, But no, it's this. This is actually the organization that coordinates with say, the Russian Space Agency to make sure people can go up into space.

I kind of want them to also do laser tag. That might be part of the training. I don't know. You never know, you might run into space aliens and you have to make sure your accuracy is really high moon spiders and spiders. Am I correct in saying that all of the people, all of the space tourists so far who have been up there, have been with Space Adventures if you don't count Akayama, absolutely, and and we shouldn't count Ocama because again that was a business trip,

not us. So yes, you are correct and so and also we should say that all of these trips so far are orbital trips. You're reaching orbital velocity, you're actually orbiting the Earth, as opposed to suborbital, which we'll talk about a little bit later. So Tito goes up there, spends probably Space Adventures does not share how much money each person spent in order to get there, and the amount of money changes depending upon when and how the

person goes up and how long they go up. But people like to speculate on how much these trips costs. So the the estimation is roughly around twenty million dollars US to go up there. And he went up for a week essentially. And uh, and what happened with Space Adventures was able to when I say up there, I don't think I've actually mentioned where he went. The International

Space Station is where he went. So because mirror was no longer an option, the I S S became the the one location and you could go to, and Space Adventures was able to secure that. At the time, NASA not so thrilled with this option. They felt that the I S S was really a scientific facility and that to bring tourists in would jeopardize actual legitimate science, not to mention devalue the whole concept of what the I S S was. They were also not at the US

and Russia. We're not really having the best of relations right that very momentary that they had just had that espionage scandal, and uh, the US had kicked a bunch of foreign dignitaries out of out of our country, and Russia had, in exchange kicked a bunch of our dignitaries and their country. Everyone was pretty pretty upset with everybody else. Russia was threatening to defund their portion of the I S S entirely. Yeah, it was. It was kind of a you know, I'm not gonna lie, a little shaky time.

It was. But I actually think that this tourism thing might have brought everyone together with the promise of money could have So yeah, he went up and spent a week there and then came back down and uh and and set the president. And since then, um, I believe six other people have gone up. I can tell you their names actually, so there's there's Mark Shuttleworth was the next one. He was a businessman from South Africa, paid

also probably around twenty million dollars. He went up in two thousand two, spent eleven days up on the I S S. Gregory Olsen paid about twenty million in two thousand five from October one to October eleven. Then you had Annoche and and sorry, she paid around twenty million and two thousand six for a little over a week in September. She was an Iranian American who who is a telecommunications entrepreneur and the first woman to to go up as a space tourist. And she she blogged all

of her experiences about it. And the blog is still up and it gives me so many feelings. I highly recommend that everyone go check that out. I'll see if I can remember to link it on social. Next, we have Charles Simoni, who went twice. He liked it so much he went a secon at time. He went in two thousand seven for fifteen days, and in two thousand

nine he went up again for fourteen days. And estimates say they paid around twenty five million for the first privilege and around thirty five million for the second one. And you might wonder, hey, how's this dude to afford all these crazy vacations. Well, he's the guy who essentially oversaw the production of a little uh software suite called Microsoft Office. Oh yeah, so no big And so if you've ever used word or excel or in power Point,

this is the guy using it twice. Yeah. So he's worth around a billion dollars so that, you know, not insignificant sum of money, but he could afford it. Next is the guy who I actually know who went to the International Space Station, Richard Garriott. Richard Garriott a k a. Lord British. He's the guy who created the ultimate series of computer role playing games. Uh and someone I met when I was a kid and stayed in contact with him for quite a few years. I've lost touch with him.

I have not really talked about his experiences in space. He's a busy man, so I don't have any firsthand or even secondhand information to give you. Someday we are going to do a text up episode about him. But the final person we've got on here he Lallaberte. He's a Canadian, so it's probably actually guy at this point. I guess it all depends on whether or not you're in Quebec. But La Liberty Thank You went up in

two thousand nine. He paid probably right around forty million dollars to do so, and uh, he comes from he got his money from a little show, got a little bit of popularities, particularly if you've been to say, Las Vegas recently starked to La where I think every show in Vegas has now starked to lay. So did he

get to do acrobatics and eat fire and space? I would say no to the fire, and you're kind of have to do acrobatics when you're up there, because yeah, walking is would be an amazing trick up in space. So I bet he did it. He probably did, He probably did. Those were the the that's officially the list of people who have been to space as quote unquote tourists, although I should say that most of them hate that word because they actually did stuff up there as opposed

to just going on a vacation. I think the technical term might be private astronaut, private astronaized what some of them like, Yeah, there were a couple, there were some one one person said something like uh uh, private space traveler. Like it was just there were all these different little variations on it, because no one really wanted it to just be tourist, doctor space love doctor, doctor space guy. Yeah, yeah,

it would just be the last one. And sorry also pointed out that, you know, she was like, I spent like six months training for this guy's It's not It's not like I was just like, oh, hey, space trip,

Like I didn't book an all inclusive package, you know, yeah, exactly. So, Uh, you know, the trips are pretty serious stuff, right, I mean you have to go through lots of a Now, granted it depends upon which agency are looking at, you know, how they do this, but you know, they had to do training to learn everything from how the various systems work so they could operate any given system. They had to know how to react in the case of an emergency.

They had to seem at least healthy enough that they could take that trip without either causing themselves injury or making someone else sick. Okay, well, let's talk about the different kinds of private space travel that are available. First of all, like, what technically counts his space? How high do you have to go? Well, the United States says that you have to go about eighty kilometers up or fifty miles, but that's not that it's also not the

only definition. I mean, the the Federation Aeronautique INTERNATIONALE sets the altitude at one kilometers, which is around sixty two miles high. It's just because it's a round number in the metrics system. What do they know? Whereas whereas the fifty miles is a round number and the see we that okay, I see all right, size America? Um okay, So yeah, space it doesn't have a there's not like a specific border, right that you can just point out and say, on this side you are not in space,

and on this side you are in space. It's kind of more of a it's kind of a more of a wibbly wobbly spectrum thing. Yeah, so it all depends upon your point of view. I guess. Also another thing we should point out is, you know, like I said that these are all orbital space trips. You know, they were in orbit around the Earth. You're talking as a tourist who have already gone. That's the only thing that had been available was orbital. There were no suborbital specific

missions for for space tourism. Okay, well, let's talk about let's sort of go from the bottom to the top. So suborbital is less than what these people who already went did. What is it? Okay, suborbital. It's it's not necessarily an altitude thing. It's more of a speed thing. Okay, So in order to be in orbit, you have to

attain orbital velocity. That means you're going at a speed where you are constantly uh, the your fall towards the Earth is at the same same rate as the curvature of the Earth, in the sense that you're always falling just beyond where the Earth is. You're staying in that same relative point um. Not necessarily in geosynchronous or geostationary orbit, but you know that's you're you're going at this incredible speed, so you have to maintain that speed in order to

maintain orbit. If you drop below that speed, then you're going to start falling toward the surface of the Earth. That's what's a suborbital trip. So if you were to go fast enough so that you got up to the altitude where more or less you argue that, yes, I'm in space, I'm a h kilometers up or I'm you know, eighty kilometers up, depending upon whose definition you're following. Uh, But your speed is not so much that you're going

to stay in orbit. That would be suborbital. So again it's not so much an altitude thing as is a speed thing. It does mean that it's slightly I hesitate to use the word easy, but it's something that's more achievable if you are able to design the right kind

of aircraft for it. Um And that's really what a lot of the space tourism companies out there are looking at is the suborbital orbital option also would mean that the uh, the cost of putting someone up there would be lower, so you would see lower price tags attached to those tickets than say twenty to fifty million dollars per pop, which I think we mostly can argue is not within the grasp of your average tourist, right, most

consumers can't really drop that kind of cash. And we'll cover more of that in another episode about the costs of space travel and how could this actually come into the grasp of the average traveler. So when we talk about suborbital right now, we have to talk about all right, who who? Who is offering up a suborbital travel plan? Richie Branson? Right, Well, eventually to two companies are have solid plans in place. Yeah, So that that's something we

definitely need to stress though. Is that no one's doing it yet. But when you say solid, what you mean is like you can go to their website and start booking right now. Sure, I could also book lots of trips to fictional places. I'm not going to get there anytime soon. You can, And well, I mean, I think that the way that I'm defining it is that they are capable of doing at least a test flight with

the equipment that they currently had right there. In fact, there was a test flight of Virgin Galactics aircraft that they're planning on using for suborbital trips just a few days before the recording of this podcast. We're recording this on January four, two thousand and fourteen, and on January tenth, they held a test flight and it was really to

check out the rocket control system. So this was the first time they had had an actual, live human pilot behind the controls to test this to make sure it worked, and everything worked perfectly, So it's a great story. However, you should also remember the first time Richard Brentson talked about Virgin Galactic was back in two thousand four and at the time he was projecting out to have the first flights taking travelers to a suborbital pathway to be

in two thousand seven. So you know, we've gone a decade since he announced this essentially more or less, and we have not yet hit that first flight. And it's you know, it tells you a couple of things that these these tasks are way more complex and uh and more expensive than people had anticipated when they first started thinking about it. Getting into space is not a trivial matter.

So um, it's not to say that this is impossible or we shouldn't pursue it, but rather that by by seeing how far off we were from the projections, we have to keep that in mind. And I've actually seen some people suggest that fourteen might be the make or break year if we don't see uh, some some um market success from these these unit these different companies that are trying to have this, that it might end up pulling some of the enthusiasm out. We're going to start

getting disillusion right. Um yeah, Okay, So let's take a look at these companies like Virgin Galactic and SpaceX who want to offer suborbital flights. What does this flight actually

look like? What happens on it while you go up into the again, depending upon what the altitude is you go up into space, but again at a speed, at a speed where you are not going to go into orbit, but you will have at least a few minutes of weightlessness as well as the opportunity to view stars without any sort of twinkling, because you're not gonna have any atmosphere in the way, So you're gonna see the stars as they would appear if you were out even further

into space. Uh, you're gonna have a great view of the Earth. You can be able to see the curvature exactly. Yeah, you'll be able to see the curvature of the Earth. And Uh. Also, because you would be traveling in a fully pressurized cabin, you would not necessarily have to wear a full space suit. Um, this would be something where you might be wearing a jumpsuit, but not a full space suit. The whole trip would last ninety minutes from take off to landing, so only a few minutes of

those would be spent in quote unquote space. But you would have that opportunity to be in an environment that relatively few people have experienced. Yeah, so you get a pretty unique and amazing view. You get to experience some weightlessness, yep. There's a lot of other companies working on this besides Virgin Galactic and space X. Two that are kind of interesting are Blue Origin, which is a fairly secretive company. That one was founded by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.

So if you figure out what to deal with them is uh, well, they're looking at vertical takeoff and landing rockets that can be used over and over again, so it's a slightly different approach. A lot of these other spacecraft are craft that would be launched from another aircraft, so they kind of piggyback onto an aircraft and then launch while they're already in the air so that they've are he got that initial boost going, um but in

this case it would be a rocket. Blue Origins looking at rockets that would take off from the service of the Earth and then returned to the service of the Earth. Um. So, but they're pretty quiet about the whole thing. And then there's x Core Aerospace, which is also looking into spacecraft. There a lot of their early work was mostly in rockets, actually building the rockets that would take a spacecraft up into space, but they're now working on the craft itself.

I love that Virgin Galactics is called the enterprise. That's great V S S enterprise. It's based off Spaceship two, which in term was based off Spaceship one. You might guys might remember that was the spaceship that actually won the d Sorry X prize for achieving suborbital flight. It was unmanned, but it achieved the flight, won the ten million dollars and was immediately retired. And Sorry X, by the way, being funded by our our friend and sorry who was one of the six who went up into space.

She has also been really excited and she and her husband, I suppose it's more fair to say, or one of her family members. I'm not sure if it's her husband or not. Right, she obviously had a life changing experience going up to the I S. S and wanted to uh to encourage the privatization of space exploration space travel, which could in theory bring that closer to a large

a much larger audience. Right, right, So, so how much are we looking at for this kind of space Well, Originally in two thousand four, a ticket a reservation for the Virgin Galactic flight would cost you about two hundred thousand dollars. Now it's more like two hundred fifty thousand dollars.

I guess if you adjust for inflation, it's probably not a whole lot of movement there, um, but it's you know, it's not it's still not cheap, but two or fifty dollars is is much less expensive than that twenty to fifty million dollar price tag of going to the I

S s uh. So that's your suborbital plan if you want to experience what it's like to go up into space, but not go all the way out into orbit and usit as space station somewhere and hang out there for a few days and to pay some millions upon millions dis right, so that that brings us up to orbital flights. So this is where this is what we've seen before. However, yeah,

right at least all the way out into orbit. Um, we can go even further in a little bit, but going all the way on the orbit right now is not viable in the sense that Space Adventures cannot book a flight for you right off to the s S. They're still advertising them, yeah basically, but they just SS isn't putting anybody up at the moment right as of what happened was there were plans to ramp up activity aboard the International Space Station, which essentially meant that there

was no room for uh people in Hawaiian shirts and flip flops to come up there and muck around with all the science and whatnot. So the the Space Adventures folks and the folks that the Russian Space Agency essentially said for the time being, this is on hold. Will

tell you when you can go again. Originally they were looking at possibly starting up again in twenty thirteen, saying, hey, you know, now we're no longer sending so many cosmonauts up to the I s S each time we've got more flights, we can actually book a person every now and then. But that turned out not to happen. You know, it just didn't work out properly, So you still can't

go there right now. The earliest they're saying that they'll probably be allowed to send people back up will be And again that's mostly because of the Russian space program and the fact that you know, there's limited space. That's the sayers, capsules can only hold a few cosmonauts, and if those cosmonauts are needed for specific mission, then there's no space to bring anybody else, right, And since we don't have a any NASA shuttles, right, Yeah, that's that's

the only way up there right now. That's the only way you're getting up there. So some companies are working on alternatives. Yeah, yep, SpaceX might offer private flights up to the I S S in the future. They have already demonstrated that they were able to dock a dragon capsule that was unmanned, but they were able to dock

it with the I S S perfectly fine. Um, so that was kind of a proof of concept that once they have proven, you know, to everyone that the Dragon capsule is safe, that's going to support life, it's gonna have all the features in there that's necessary to keep people from from perishing in space, because as we've established before, space is trying to kill you. It's all about perishing.

Once they once they get to a point where they're able to so cheerful, once they're able to get to a point where they're able to prove that all of that is perfectly fine, then there's the potential to actually transport private citizens up there. There's as far as they know, there's nothing specific where you can actually reserve anything or

even say, you know, semi more information about this. It's more like they have the potential to do it, but I don't know that they have commented publicly about actually doing that as a business um, But it's certainly something that they could they could have the capacity to do once they prove the technical aspect um. Also, they have

Boeing who's working on the CST. CST stands for Crew Space Transportation and it's part of NASA's Commercial Crew Development Program or cc DEV, and so this was another opportunity for NASA to reach out to the private industry and say, can you guys help us bridge this gap that we

have because we don't have that program anymore. We can't we don't have a spacecraft that can do this, and you know, while we might have something in development, it may take us a decade or longer to get it to finish, whereas you guys could start working on it

right away. So Boeing did work on that. There were some things that were holding it up, mostly they were money, but that you know, they've they've received funding a couple of different rounds of funding on it, and it worked on that that that could also potentially dock with both the I S s and uh if anyone were to actually build a private space station, something that's privately owned by a corporation or individual who has a ridiculous amount of money, um, then it could also dock with that.

And in fact, Boeing's business plan was more or less saying, all right, well, for this to make sense for us, we need to have this much funding up front, and I forget what the number was is huge. It had way too many commas in it. And then they said, and we need there to be essentially to space stations because that would make it feasible for us to to operate this. So right now there's only the one, but you know that that might that might change sometime in

the future. Do you guys want to talk about some of those private space stations that have been in planning? Sure? Y, you know, I didn't really want to brag, but I got a little d i y project going on in my garage. I took one of those little fabric dog bad things. And that's going to ask how your dog was involved. But that's but that's good, Okay, he's he's he's got ambitions. You got a steel drum garbage can, right right. I've written rocket on the side of it.

That's important. No, Okay, so what a bunch of M A D s we're joking around. But as it turns out, there there actually there is a company that is working on building, uh building actual space station stuff for private use, and in fact has launched two prototypes already. Right so, when you think about space tourism, um, suborbital flights seem

like they could be really cool. But if you want to get that full space experience, you are going to be depending on some kind of permanently orbiting module, right um, And the I S S is kind of busy right now, like Space Adventures still says, we we hope we get back there, but yeah, we don't know. The earliest we can say. What might be a really good option if you want to travel to space, go around the Earth in orbit is just to have a dedicated space lodging

where you can stay. Now. The company that has built a couple of prototypes that and they are in orbit right now is called Bigelow Aerospace. Now they go so far as on their website to say they are not building a space hotel. That is not what they're doing. However, what they are doing is they're building their building space these expandable space habitats that could potentially be put to any sort of use you can imagine, which could include

actual space tourism. If a company wanted to end up essentially kind of leasing this from Bigelow and then turning it around and selling space to space tourists, that is entirely possible, right. Essentially, what they've said is that they anticipate that their primary customers, at least early on, are

going to be countries, um or major yeah, or major corporations. Right, So, a major corporation that needs to do some sort of scientific study that will only work in a low gravity or zero G environment, you know, your options are pretty slim here on Earth. So this would this would open up options because again, it's also difficult to make sure that you can get that same sort of work done aboard the I S S. They have their own agenda

that is pretty full. So if you had an alternate, like you could go to this other space station and be able to do that work there, that would be huge. Yeah, But there are two ways this might pertain to space tourism. One is that, well, okay, let's say a company that just wants to lease it out as a space lodging is the company that leases it from Bigelow, and so they're they're running it now and that's what they decided they want to use it for. Or a similar technology

could be used to build another space station. Yeah, um, and well let's talk about what the technolog How do these things work? So they are expandable, also you could call them inflatable. They have fabric and metal joints that no one was really sure if they were going to be able to hold up to the rigors of space. But in fact that like I said, they've launched two prototypes, the Gemini one or I'm sorry, not Gemini Genesis, the Genesis one and Genesis to uh, I don't know how

I got that mixed up. I mean Star Trek two. Come on. So the Genesis prototypes have been launched successfully into orbit and are continuously gathering information for Bigelow that they're taking scientific measurements. They have cameras all over them. Those don't have any people, and they do not they are they are not meant to be habitable. They are meant to be kind of like orbiting science stations that are really to gather more information so that Bigelow can

continue to innovate and create habitable environments. In fact, they're working on one called the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module or being Yeah, they're working with NASA on that one, yep, Because again NASA's looking at the private industry to help pick up some of the I hate to use the word slack, but you know, to help help them out financial slacks. Certainly. Sure, so, they were looking at creating BEAM as a potential module that would add on to

the International Space Station. It would effectively expand the I S S. It's kind of like, you know, building an extension to your house in a way, except this particular extension is inflatable, it's expandable, um and uh, it would really only be there for a couple of years, just

as sort of a proof of concept. It wouldn't necessarily become like it wouldn't be the new living quarters for the crew aboard the I S S. It's more to make sure to test that this concept is in fact viable and could end up creating a modular space station that could be adjusted multiple times while in orbit. Yeah. Beyond that, they've got another proposed model called the B A three thirty or the or just the Alpha station for short. I believe I think A is for Alpha

in there somewhere right. Yeah, it's the proposed larger habitat, and it's going to provide three and thirty cubic meters of usable internal space, which is quite roomy when it comes to space. Um. But the modules can be linked together, so you can create more expansive space stations just by addition they chain them together. Yeah. And so Biglow claims this habitat is going to provide better protection the I S S in terms of radiation and ballistic impact. We

don't know if that's true, but that's what they say. Um. And then also it will have four and aft propulsion, so it'll be sort of self regulating in terms of its position and and orbit speed. UH. Solar panels for independent electric power, and four large viewing windows so you can look at the Earth, of the stars and everything in between. George Clooney flying by Yeah, oh no. UM. For for this experience, they're estimating flight rates of between

twenty six million, depending on what flight carrier you choose. UM. I didn't imagine the miles you'd you'd rack up, like you bean medallion immediately um. And that's just for the flight, and then for the exclusive use in control of a third of that cubic meter space um, that would be an additional million. That's a yeah. So you know on those flights you still only get one bag of peanuts. Don't open a bag of peanuts and low gravity environment.

Just trust me on this one. All right, Well, let's talk a little bit about let's let's say that let's say that we've gone into the future by about let's say fifteen years, and now space tourism like this is I mean, this is what everybody does, right suborbital if you if you if you want to be on a budget or you know, you can go up to orbital if you've got a little extra money. All the kids are going like dad, I don't want to go to space again. Orbit is boring. So what could be the

next step? The Moon? That's a that's another step. Yeah, the Sun. Bad idea, bad idea. I'll tell you what I'll I'll let you do. Uh, I'll let you do a quick trip to Death Valley and you can just experience that and it'll be as close as we want you to get to the Sun. Hey, death valleys cool. I respect our national parks, but anyway, it's actually warm the moon. The moon would be a cool place to go. And this is my logic. Hundreds of people have been to space, not many people have been to the moon,

but twelve not not about twelve twelve people. Twelve people have stepped on the unless you believe apolloweighteen is truly a documentary, in which case will knock that up to fourteen. Or if you believe Apollo eleven was fake. Okay, yeah, but then now you're gonna just get punched by an astronaut. We've already seen that happen before. Not you specifically, but in general, you deserve it. Okay, who's saying they're going

to go to the moon. There's a company called Golden Spike company Golden Spike obviously, well yeah, and and of course their their name is giving homage to the Transcontinental Railroad, that fine old Golden railway Spike. Um. But uh, their their plan is to have a system where they would have a ship take you all the way to the moon, you'd land on the moon, you would actually be on the moon itself, then return home because you know, just going to the Moon and leaving you there apparently is

not such a crazy vacation. Um, it's the last one you'll ever take, would be terrible, So it's it's Um, it's a little bit of a wallet buster, as they're currently projecting it out to be at seven hundred and fifty million dollars per passenger and a required to passenger uh minimum minimum. Yea. Well, so you either pay seven million dollars and get a friend to go with you, right, or you pay one point five billion young stretch out

your legs. Yeah, exactly. Uh So the lot the craft would allow for three people, right, you'd have a pilot and then two passengers, and so if it were just you, you'd have to end up spending the extra money in lieu of a second passenger. Very much as if you were taking a cruise. You know you're going on a cruise,

but you're just going by yourself. Well, you got a book a room based on double occupancy, even though it's just you going The same sort of thing, although I don't think they'd have as many bands playing Jimmy Buffett hits on the Lunar Lander Fingers crossed. Um, they are partially serious about it. It's serious enough anyway to have contracted Northrop Gremman for a new lunar lander design. Yep, and they company that's known for its engineering, so you

know that's pretty serious. Space Adventures also has talked about trips to the Moon, however, not not getting out though, Yeah, what what's said? Not not walking on the moon? No, no, get like getting out of what the orbit? No, no, just look up there and they'll pay me a hundred bucks. These are quite different experience. Yeah, no, I was going to get to that. Yeah. Space Adventures approach is not landing on the Moon at all. It's to go do

one an orbit around the Moon and then return to Earth. So, in other words, you would travel out to the Moon. You would travel around the far side of the Moon. We don't say dark side people, There is no real dark side of the Moon in the sense that you know, the dark side is whatever side happens to be facing away from the sun at that moment, but all sides of the Moon eventually gets sun exposure. Um, it would be the far side of the moon, so you get to see the far side and then you'd come back.

It looks weird, it's totally covered in craters, and yeah, it's essentially doesn't look like the moon. We know you can because we never see that side, and there's a side that's always facing the Earth. But there that side is not the one that always gets the sunlight. So why I go crazy when I hear people talk about the dark side of the moon. But yeah, you get to see the far side. Not a lot of people have done that, so you get out there and back.

That would be far less expensive than softy million dollars, only a paltry hundred million. Yeah that way. Yeah, so the you know, again, we're talking about in incredibly expensive trips that only a tiny portion of the population could go on. Okay, I've got my hand raised. Yeah, I've got a question. What was it, Joe. Somebody's got to be talking about Mars, right, A lot of people talk about Mars. Who is anybody actually saying I will take

private astronauts to Mars for for space tourism. There David Bowie did, but don't think he was being serious. I've read about one the Inspiration Mars Foundation that was planning a privately funded Mars fly by for eighteen um, and that would be a two person flight using existing commercially available space equipment um lasting five and one days around trip.

Do they look legit? Uh? There have been no contracts or anything like that announced, which either means that they're serious about it, but no one else believes them um or or it's just smoke. Yeah, and it's hard to say that this Martian smoke. And I don't knowen is soon. It's planned for specif because the orbits of Earth and Mars are going to be such that we could have that kind of short trip. But yeah, so I don't know, I don't know. That's a that's an awfully short deadline.

That's pretty that is pretty tight. And then of course there's the Mars one project, which is not so much about tourism as it is relocation. Uh that you could say, I guess those are technically private astronauts, right, Yeah, those are private astronauts, yea, Because I mean they were talking about the whole uh you know, reality television show aspect where people are essentially competing for the ability to be one of these early settlers of Mars because you wouldn't

be coming back. It's like a vacation in that like Gilligan's Island was a vacation. Yeah, just giving three more coconuts and I we'll get us back to Earth. Yeah. So so again, not really space tourism in that sense, but it's the sort of thing that if it were to work out. And by the way, we should point out that we pointed out before on this show. But I'd say that the majority of folks out there who are in the space industry are at best skeptical of the Mars One plan. The more that I hear about

Mars One, the more skeptical I am in fact. Yeah. But but but if something like that worked, whether it's on the timeline that they have proposed or one that actually is what people would consider to be more realistic, whatever, if that were to work, that would at least lay the ground for the potential for space tourism down the road. It's one of those things where you know, this has to happen first before we ever get to a point of you know, when are we going to go there

for fun? If no one had landed on the Moon yet, we wouldn't really be talking about space tourism trips that could potentially go to the Moon. Okay, I've noticed two things. All these trips have in common one. They sound really cool too, I can't afford them. Yeah, we'll tell you what. What we're gonna do is, we're gonna have another discussion about space tourism in our next episode, where we talk about what are the barriers, why is it so expensive

to go into space? And are there any proposals that could make it less expensive. So that's gonna be all an entirely different conversation, but we look forward to having it. We hope you guys enjoy listening to it. In the meantime, if you've enjoyed this episode, make sure you go to f W thinking dot com. That's our website where we've got all the videos, we've got the blog post, we've got podcasts, lots of cool information there. Follow us on

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