So yes, I would consider it, if it involved travel to the Moon.īut before I boarded a commercial spaceflight, I would do a lot of homework first. I’ve flown on four missions to space, but I’ve never been fortunate enough to be part of a lunar mission. The answer is I might have – if I had the financial means and had not already had my NASA spaceflight experiences. People often ask me if I would fly on these vehicles. Verifying the operability of these vessels remains, for now, the job of the companies themselves. Its role is significantly different from that in the commercial airline world.
The FAA does not certify these vehicles, however, as they do airplanes. The billionaires' space race is only just beginning In the US and for all US companies, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the regulatory body responsible for issuing launch and landing licenses, and for assessing environmental and public safety of vehicle operations. They use vehicles that were designed and built by commercial companies. The current suborbital offerings are different from the commercial orbital spacecraft. There are, however, the same uncomfortable questions that were raised in discussion about rescuing a submersible from the ocean floor: What is the plan if the spacecraft loses the ability to come home on its own? Who will foot the cost for a space rescue if something goes awry? Should taxpayers be expected to cover all or most of the expense? How rescue should be managed for commercial flights remains unclear. The rescue effort for the Titan submarine was vast and costly, involving assets and personnel from several countries and commercial companies.įor NASA and Russian missions, use of the International Space Station (ISS) as a safe haven is part of the contingency plan. Both types of space flights involve adventurous wealthy individuals, but bear no real similarity to the Titan excursions.Īs we saw with the Titan, perhaps the most challenging aspect of extreme travel – in space as well as in the depths of the ocean – is crew rescue. Several spaceflight participants, or non-professional flyers, have safely and successfully flown orbital missions aboard Russian Soyuz and Dragon spacecraft over the years.
Opinion: ‘I believe there was peace’ at the end of Titan’s doomed final voyage Visitors to suborbital space will also experience microgravity and the beautiful view of the Earth from space.įor the sake of clarity, I should also differentiate between the commercial suborbital spacecraft built and operated by Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, and the orbital spacecraft designed and built with NASA involvement, SpaceX’s Dragon and the upcoming Boeing Starliner.Īn undated photo of the OceanGate Titan submersible.
Trips aboard the submersible lasted multiple hours, while the space trips are over in minutes. There are important differences between a voyage to the depths of the ocean and travel to the edge of space. A ride aboard the Titan was said to have cost $250,000. Virgin Galactic has sold about 800 tickets, including 600 at prices up to $250,000 and another couple hundred at $450,000 per ticket. Both carry travelers aboard specially-designed vehicles into hostile physical environments, where living beings would otherwise not be able to survive.Īnd both cater to the curiosity of wealthy tourists, allowing them to travel to places they could never get to on their own and which most people may never have the financial wherewithal to visit. It can be tempting to compare underwater and space adventure excursions. Another company, Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, already has flown several paying customers to suborbital space. The spacecraft carried a crew of Italian scientists and engineers on a trip financed by the Italian Air Force. British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, for one, launched its inaugural commercial flight on Thursday, the first to fly passengers and crew to a point just past the 50-nautical-mile altitude mark, the official boundary of space as set by NASA.
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