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Spaceplanes, Space Tourism and Private Space Habitats
Abstract
Spaceplanes carrying celebrities, sports figures, movie stars and royalty will soon be the rage for the next few years – barring a serious accident. Sir Richard Branson has done well to book not only millionaires but media idols to promote his space adventures business known as Virgin Galactic. His VSS Unity spaceplane is now set to carry would-be citizen astronauts up 120 kilometers into space. Jeff Bezos, with his increasingly successful Blue Origin suborbital flights will apparently soon follow suit. In what is not always friendly rivalry with Musk and Branson, Bezos’s company will also be booking big names to capture headlines and promote his suborbital launch service as well.
... This is demonstrated by the latest Global Exploration Roadmap study by 20 country space agencies [1]. It outlines a strategy for increasing space activity and sets the goal of populating Mars by 2050 in addition to conducting frequent manned spaceflights [2]. This is despite the knowledge that microgravity, exposure to radiation, isolation and confinement may lead to an imbalance in physiological reactions, as well as dysbiosis of the gut microbiota, leading to a negative impact on an astronaut's health and performance, and space travel may trigger a variety of stressors [3]. ...
It is proposed that gut microbiome of species like cockroaches may offer a potential source of novel mechanisms/molecules that can be translated into humans to safeguard astronauts against stressors of the space environment during deep space exploration missions.
... Since 1961, hundreds of astronauts have ventured into space, and there is much interest in future prolonged space missions. This is evidenced by the recent report by 20 national space agencies denoted as the Global Exploration Roadmap [8], which details an approach to upsurge in activity in the space, as well as the aim of colonizing Mars by 2050, in addition to undertaking regular spaceflights by visitors [9]. This is despite the fact that space flights can instigate a plethora of stressors leading to negative health effects associated with exposure to radiation, microgravity, and the imbalance in physiological responses of the human body, along with dysbiosis of the gut microbiome, thus affecting overall astronaut health and performance [10]. ...
For thousands of years, the notion that human health and performance are concomitant with the health and diversity of the microbiome has been deliberated upon [...]
... In the first and final phase, a ticket would cost $1 million and $10,000, respectively [67]. Since cost and safety are primary concerns -there is a proposal for spaceflight to be initially limited to about 120 km from Earth [28]. On the downside, there is no industry consensus to support the 120 km demarcation line. ...
Human spaceflight without change to International Space Law will remain very much the same. The Outer Space Treaty, the Liability Convention and Rescue Agreement remain an essential element to all space activities. Luckily, the application of these treaties was considered to allow some form of the evolutionary process in their interpretation. This paper will discuss the use of these treaties to the question of human spaceflight; what obstacles may be produced; and how humanity at an international level can adhere to the law, while forming a mutually cooperative approach to space governance. As the United Nations has stood the test of time, this paper will assume that the UN elements of space governance will remain. This paper will argue that with the delegation of activities to an international body, such as UNOOSA, spaceflight and sustainable living on celestial bodies may be possible. The approach of this paper will be to focus on the national and multinational agencies such as NASA and ESA, which are proactive and holding their weight in space governances. This paper will, therefore, examine the international view, with a more focused approach on corporations and multinational agencies. Space colonization is the forefront of visionaries such as Elon Musk, who view Mars as their destination. At today's rate, the likelihood of closer platforms such as the Moon and larger habitable stations such as the ISS may be afforded as more reasonable as a first stage colonization experiment before Mars. This paper will consider the positive approach to living in closer proximity to Earth and what is needed to fuel such a drive to live in a sustainable environment on the Moon and in orbit. The future element of Mars will be hypothesis-based humanity being able to agree and focus on these 'forward stations' in the first attempt of colonization. It is therefore proposed that this paper will consider all the above with a focus on space governance, technology advancement and nearby space colonization with the forward concept of widespread expansion for the betterment of humanity.
Purpose
This paper sets out to identify when, how and why tourism has changed from 1946 to 2020 using historical and future turning points.
Design/methodology/approach
Using the evolutionary paradigm from future studies and the authors’ expertise, this paper aims to provide a focussed review of the history of tourism to identify turning points drawing upon examples from Tourism Review that have transformed or will be of significance in the evolution of tourism.
Findings
This paper identifies three historical turning points which are mobility, Fordism and mass tourism and a modern-day leisure class. Three future turning points are identified including the political importance of tourism, footprint and transformational technologies.
Originality/value
By undertaking a historical analysis of the tourism literature, we can determine that Hobsbawm’s (1995, p. 46) proposition that “the future is a replication of the past” is true, as many of the debates about tourism from the past are relevant today and will be in the future. Thus, this paper identifies six turning points that are of significance to historians and futurists in understanding the evolution of tourism from 1946 to 2095.
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