Space tourism has a potential to be a multi-million dollar business in the next decades, and U.S. national space policy should be modified to support its development, according to a new study to be released in Washington Wednesday, SpaceCast has learned. The two year study, sponsored by NASA and conducted by the Space Transportation Association of Arlington, Va. indicates a host of new measures and research can be conducted by both government and the private sector to support space tourism development.
The study’s main recommendations include:
- Modification of U.S. national space policy to encourage the creation of a
large general public space travel and tourism business. - Focusing the U.S. Commerce Dept. on the coordination of space travel and
tourism matters with the federal government. - Urging NASA to continue the research and development of new generations
of reusable space vehicles, such as the X-33 and X-34 projects. - Move beyond the space station to determine design candidates for low
cost, affordable housing systems and space platforms. - Use the nation’s multi-billion $ per year space transportation budget “so
as to allow rapid, and confident amortization of the cost of acquiring a
first generation privately financed general public travel and tourism
vehicle fleet”. - Address longer term problems of launch site noise and atmospheric
pollution in anticipation of greater future launching rates. - Strike a balance between public safety issues and space travel operations
during early business development. - Institute a program to inform the nation on the steps being taken to open
up space to the general public. - The U.S. commercial space industry should support the development of
interest in developing new spacecraft that could accommodate tourism
activities.
The report predicts that a successful space tourism industry will have
been achieved when vehicles carrying 100,000 travelers to and from space
each year are in commercial operation, a prospect that the study suggests
is not decades into the future, but years, depending on how U.S. political
and business leaders respond to what the study writers suggest is a large
and pent up demand for the services.
