The recent influx of wealthy citizens going into space has been on the rise lately; wealthy entrepreneurs Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, among others, have paved the way for people to strive for space travel. With the heavy publication of these endeavors, many are curious as to when it will be widely available to the public and not only to a selected few. Who wouldn’t like to take a vacation in outer space?
The Price
Taking a trip up into space will probably never be an affordable feat for the average joe. The expenses just to launch alone costs thousands upon thousands of dollars. For this reason, this endeavor right now has only been widely available to the elites and insanely rich. Regardless of whether space exploration becomes widely available to the average consumer, which could bring prices down, it is the sheer expenses of launching that make this so horrendously expensive. You must pay a team of engineers to maintain the rocket frequently, then the staging team, and of course the people behind operating the mission. The complexity behind a single rocket launch is volumes of difference compared to commercial air flights.
Short-Lived Experience
Okay, let’s be honest here. These new-age “space tours” do not make you an astronaut. It’s not some wild adventure onboard the ISS. You are merely taking a joy ride above the earth’s atmosphere. Heck, even Jeff Bezos’s space flight was only eleven minutes long. The reason for such short flights is merely for expense purposes. To launch a rocket into space only to come back down is very expensive; to launch a rocket into orbit and then reenter the earth’s atmosphere costs millions.
The likelihood of space flights becoming widely available to the average consumer is very slim at the moment. The challenge is to make it an “affordable endeavor”. Unfortunately, nothing about space travel will ever be affordable for anyone with a minimum wage job. For most, flying is the closest thing we’ll ever have to space travel.