PARIS, 23 June 2004 — Government monopoly on space flight may have been tested by the sub-orbital loop by the pioneering craft SpaceShipOne, but would-be tourist groups should not start packing their bags straight away.
Supporters of the world’s first privately financed spaceship hope market forces will slash the cost of a space flight to as little as $10,000 by the end of the decade.
But experts say that even if this happens, no one should expect there to be walk-on flights for a spot of sightseeing beyond the stratosphere.
The size of one’s wallet, they say, matters far less than excellent cardiovascular fitness and an unflappable character, and both have to be reinforced by training.
“It’s never going to be a ‘Kuoni Space Flight’ proposition,” Michael Rennie, a professor of clinical physiology at Britain’s Nottingham University, said. Kuoni is a large European firm that sells package tours.
“They will still be pretty rigorous about who will go, and the insurance companies will demand this anyway.”
European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Jean-Francois Clairvoye of France said “anything that helps to open up space to everyone is valuable, but it has to be done seriously and the rules of flight preparation have to be closely observed.”
As they raced in the late 1950s to be the first to put a man in space, the United States and the Soviet Union selected fighter pilots to be their champions, an approach mimicked last year by China in its maiden manned flight.
The reason is that military pilots are youthful people in top physical shape, whose heart and lungs can cope with the stress of high gravitational forces.
And they are psychologically attuned to confined spaces and having faith in their instruments and controllers.
By the mid-1980s, that tight definition began to loosen somewhat as more was understood about the demands of space flight and how training could help condition civilians for the mission. Scientists and even non-scientists began to fly aboard NASA’s space shuttle.
Age, too, was quietly dropped as a barrier, provided the candidates were primed to be in excellent condition.
John Glenn, who in 1962 became the first American in orbit, flew again aboard the shuttle in 1998 at the age of 77. The first space tourist, American businessman Dennis Tito, was taken aloft at the age of 60 by the Russians in April 2001. And Mike Melville, who piloted SpaceShipOne on Monday to beyond 100 kilometers (62 miles) to the fringes of space, is aged 62.
For a flight aboard a Soyuz space ship and a stay aboard the International Space Station, Russia demands a cheque for $20 million and a training program of between eight and 10 months.
SpaceShipOne is different, though. It is launched from a plane, which thus eases some of the G stress of a ground launch by rocket, and a sub-orbital flight lasts only minutes, rather than a prolonged mission of up to 10 days on the ISS.
Even so, a passenger would still experience a force of up to 4G when its rocket motor kicks in, as well as sharp transition to weightlessness.
And he or should would still have to cope with tiny confines, the strangeness of space and the stress of return — and that’s assuming no emergency happens.
“The risks at blastoff and landing mean that you would have to be in excellent cardiovascular control, the same cardiovascular fitness as a miler [a long-distance runner],” said Rennie.
“And you have to have the right psychological profile. Don’t forget, space tourists are not in control. It might even be worse for them compared with the pilot, to feel, ‘Jeez, here I am in this tiny place, I feel no control over my own fate.’ You have people on planes, don’t forget, who completely freak out.”
