Daily Lobo columnist
American Dennis Tito became Monday what many are calling the world’s first space tourist. Floating onto the International Space Station with a grin on his face and $20 million poorer, he became the first to show that what science fiction authors have dreamed of for decades may not be so far out after all.
Tito’s trip is far from luxurious — he’s only going to be up there for a week, he has to live in cramped conditions without gravity, he’s not allowed to go into the American portions of the station without permission, and if he breaks anything, he buys it. But he’s got an unbelievable view.
In 1967, Barron Hilton, CEO of Hilton Hotels, declared that Hilton would be the first company to put hotels in space. He even arranged with director Stanley Kubrick to make the circular, orbiting hotel in 2001: A Space Odyssey a Hilton. Unfortunately, Barron’s dream of Hiltons in space hasn’t come to be. It’s 2001, but our facilities in space are hardly the expansive, cruise ship-like vacation spots we were told to expect.
What is the future of space tourism? The demand for it is definitely there: thrill seekers from around the world already pay thousands of dollars to be flown to high altitudes by Russian pilots. Incredible Adventures, a company that specializes in arranging high-altitude flights, is already planning a “space cruiser” that will take passengers up to 100 kilometers high. Check out their Web site at www.incredible-adventures.com.
The problem with real space tourism, however, is not just flying high enough to get a view, but getting high enough to stay up there as long as you want to (and are willing to pay for). Getting into orbit is not an easy task. Getting a hotel up there is proving to be next to impossible, at least for any sane amount of money.
A group based in West Covina, Calif., called Space Islands has been working to make a deal with Hilton and the U.S. government to build a space hotel the cheapest way possible. You know the big orange fuel tanks attached to the space shuttle when it lifts off? They want to convince NASA to carry those tanks all the way into space rather than dropping them into the ocean. Once in orbit, a crew could assemble the discarded fuel tanks into a ring-shaped space station. The ring would spin to create artificial gravity with centrifugal force.
Once the physical structure of the station was complete, a hotel company would move in and furnish the interior, dressing it up in luxury like any five-star hotel on earth. The chief obstacle to the development of such a space hotel is the cost of getting things up there. The fancy chairs, tables, beds, carpeting — all the things an upscale hotel needs — weigh a lot. Not to mention that ferrying hundreds of people back and forth on their vacations would be, at this point, impossibly expensive.
Alternative methods of getting into space have been a priority of NASA for years. The chemical rockets we have used since Robert Goddard’s day are an effective but inefficient and expensive way to get things into space. Ideas for spaceplanes have been in development since the 1940s. These airplanes could take off and land at any large airport and fly up into orbit to dock with a space station. So far, no one has created one.
A more far-out idea that NASA has been studying seriously in recent years is the “space elevator.” Basically, it would be a cable stretching 35,000 kilometers from the earth to a counterweight in orbit. Magnetically levitated vehicles would move cargo up and down on tracks along the length of the cable.
The elevator would allow for quick, cheap transport into orbit for furniture and tourists alike. Unfortunately, the prospect of building such a colossal structure is daunting to most investors. Even so, recent advances in technology are quickly making the space elevator less an object of science fiction and more a question of budgeting.
Information on NASA’s research on space elevators can be found at science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast07sep_1.htm
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The visionaries and sci-fi authors of the 1960s imagined we would already be planning our family’s annual vacation to space by 2001. It may be another 50 or 100 years yet before the average person can even think of such a thing, but it is closer than ever before.
Within our lifetimes we will see more millionaire adventurers like Dennis Tito taking to the stars, and their experiences are already inspiring the rest of us on earth to wonder how long the rest of us will have to wait. The technology exists to make our dreams of space vacations possible — but who will foot the bill?
