Hello! Could your next vacation be out of this world? Maybe — if you have a million-dollar budget and are willing to risk a likelihood of death some 685x greater than going on an airplane. This week, we're exploring space tourism: who's winning, losing, and how America feels about potentially exploring the final frontier themselves.

Moonshots

‍After NASA’s founding in 1958, the elusive idea of “the future” looked to many like robot cleaners, flying cars, and taking in the vistas of outer space on your commute. Just 11 years later, one giant leap towards that vision was taken — when man first visited the moon — but, for many decades after the lunar expeditions, progress in space was more small steps than giant leaps.

Recently, however, space travel has been blasting back into the headlines, as private enterprise has taken up the mantle of exploration, with trips to space, zero-gravity experiences, and even a space hotel just some of the projects underway. At the forefront of space tourism are billionaires Bezos, Musk and Branson, with ‘cosmic one-upmanship’ peaking in 2021 amidst competing launches, massive PR pushes, and celebrity-packed flight crews.

‍Cosmic capitalism

‍These endeavors promise a bright future for humans in space, with commercial and scientific interests briefly aligning, upending the government-funded model that defined the previous century. But, much like the US government discovered in the 1960s… space travel requires almost infinitely deep pockets — and some billionaires have had enough of pouring their capital into a black hole.

Feeling the weight

‍Indeed, only a month after laying off 18% of its workforce, Sir Richard Branson announced last week that Virgin Group will no longer be investing in Virgin Galactic. That was a big blow to the company which had finally flown its first commercial customers in June; a launch that took 3 tourists, including a mother-daughter duo, to the edge of space, where they experienced a few minutes of weightlessness.

Branson’s pullback sent Virgin Galactic shares tumbling on Monday, and although they've since recovered some of that fall, the stock remains down 44% in the last 6 months, and a whopping 96% from its peak in 2021. Even at $450k per ticket, Virgin Galactic has a very long mission to making any kind of profit.

To put it simply, Branson’s rivals in the billionaire space race — Bezos’s BlueOrigin and Musk’s SpaceX — simply have a lot more cash, with Musk’s personal $200bn+ hoard often gaining or losing Branson’s entire net worth (~$3bn) in a single day, depending on what Tesla’s stock is doing.

Space tourism... and beyond

‍Indeed, SpaceX, which has a wide-ranging set of commercial interests beyond taking tourists to the edge of space, continues to move forward — with a tender offer reported last week that could value it at $175bn. Plans for thousands of internet satellites, commercial travel to the moon, a base on the lunar surface and even loftier goals to turn the human race into an interplanetary species by colonizing other planets, are all ambitions of the California-based company.

SpaceX has catalyzed much of the excitement about space tourism. The company’s two-stage Falcon 9 rocket is able to launch a kilogram into low-Earth orbit for just ~$1,500, a 10-20x decrease in cost in roughly as many years. That's due to its (partial) reusability — a breakthrough that’s helped SpaceX dominate commercial launchpads in the US. Indeed, FAA data reveals that SpaceX has completed 281 licensed launches since 2000 — 9x as many as Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic have managed between them.

‍Up

‍Of course, even if you re-use some of the rocket, burning hundreds of tonnes of CO2 in the pursuit of tourism for rich people is always going to be controversial. But, not all space tourism ventures see themselves blasting into the final frontier. A French startup, Zephalto, is looking to make its first ascent in late 2024, carrying 6 passengers in a pressurized cabin with comfy couches attached to a giant eco-friendly balloon, offering passengers Michelin-starred catering while they look at the Earth’s curves. Needless to say, Zephalto’s vision remains more of a concept for tourists, than a reality, for now.

These ventures all beg perhaps the most important question of all: does anyone want to go to space anyway?

Spaced out

‍Ever since Yuri Gagarin became the first human to go into outer space in 1961, orbiting the Earth in 108 minutes, people have been having would-you-wouldn’t-you conversations about leaving Earth.

As we’ve moved towards a future where space tourism seems less like science fiction and more like a folly for the monied few — people’s extra-terrestrial ambitions have become more achievable. As of Nov 2023, nearly 700 people had journeyed to space over all time; of these, 69 were private astronauts from commercial space flights, all of which occurred in the past 3 years.

Down-to-earth

‍Even though space tourism has become more likely, the majority of Americans still aren’t showing a huge desire to leave the planet. In fact, many are less convinced than they were 5 years ago.

A Pew Research survey from July found that only 35% of all US adults said they would “definitely/probably” be interested in orbiting the Earth in a spacecraft — 7% less than in 2018, with the same trend observable across all ages and sexes.

Interestingly, American women were much less interested in outer space travel than men, with just 25% of women reporting being intrigued by the opportunity to orbit Earth, compared to 46% of men. Older cohorts were also less likely than the young to want to take on interstellar travel. Of course, it was only a century ago that people felt the same way about commercial airlines: too expensive and too scary.

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