Texas is at the forefront of a booming space tourism industry

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In 2000, Chris Cassidy utilized for NASA’s astronaut program. 

But, after serving two excursions in Afghanistan with the U.S. Navy SEALs Team and finishing a graduate diploma in ocean engineering at MIT, he was prepared to use once more in 2003.

“I was printing everything, making sure it was all perfect [and] compiling the papers when the accident happened,” Cassidy mentioned.

Twenty years in the past — on February 1, 2003 — the Columbia space shuttle exploded on reentry, killing the seven astronauts on board. An investigation discovered insulating foam broken the wing throughout takeoff, resulting in scorching gases breaking up the shuttle on reentry.

“I remember stuffing all those things into the big envelope and mailing it and going, ‘OK, whoa, it’s real,'” Cassidy mentioned. “You’re sad for those people as individuals, sad for those families that lost somebody.”

Cassidy’s eventual NASA coaching started in 2004, simply months after phrase got here that the shuttle program would finish.

“The shuttle’s chief purpose over the next several years will be to help finish assembly of the International Space Station,” President George W. Bush mentioned on Jan. 14, 2004. “In 2010, the space shuttle, after nearly 30 years of duty, will be retired from service.”

There had been round 120 astronauts at NASA when Chris Cassidy was accepted into the program in 2004. By the time he retired after a closing flight in 2020, solely 40 remained.

But, it seems, that finish meant the starting of a new period.

Texas is now house to Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin space program in Van Horn, in addition to Elon Musk’s SpaceX firm in Boca Chica. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is situated simply throughout the border in Sierra County, New Mexico.

Joel Quintana is an affiliate professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering at UTEP, which is conveniently situated near the headquarters for each Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin.

“You go, “Is that going to work? Is there sufficient cash? Is there a marketplace for it?'” Quintana mentioned of his response to the Blue Origin facility.

Now, although, half of Blue Origin’s workers are UTEP grads. And the firm has accomplished six crewed space missions ton this level.

“All those companies are hurting, hurting for engineers,” Quintana mentioned.

Both Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, which made it to space 9 days earlier than Bezos’ model did, are concentrating on a burgeoning space tourism industry.

Craig Curan acquired into the space tourism recreation as an accredited Virgin Galactic “space agent” after 35 years spent working as a conventional journey agent — as a result of, as he places it, it was one thing completely different.

“Going to space… was sexy,” he mentioned. “It was quick, it was on the edge. It was dangerous. It was next-level.”

Curan himself is round four-hundredth in line to fly on Virgin’s spaceship after having purchased his seat in 2011. He hopes to fly someday in 2025.

“Demand exceeds capacity right now — that, I think, is pretty clear,” he mentioned. “All of this infrastructure, it is beginning to turn into constructed out proper now — and it is right here.”

Investment financial institution UBS estimates the space tourism industry can be price $4 billion by 2030.

“Opportunities to invest in the broader space economy will continue to grow, helping to get the Space Economy to nearly double over the next 10 years as it has over the last 10 years,” the bank’s report read.

Already, it is a big-money area.

A thousand folks have paid the $450,000 payment to fly Virgin’s shuttle, which has gone 53 miles up in the air.

Meanwhile, Blue Origin — which went to 66 miles up into space — auctioned its first seat for $20 million. Since then, bidding has slowed some to round the $1 million to $3 million marks. There’s some hypothesis the bidding was a strategy to decide the place future seats may very well be priced.

And then there are the three males who paid $55 million every to fly SpaceX’s flight to the space station a full 250 miles above Earth.

“When plane first began flying at the daybreak of the jet age, solely the very rich, and only a few folks, might go by jet journey,” Curan said. “My son is 31. He’ll have a possibility to go to the moon if he desires to. He will completely have the ability to go to a space lodge.”

Marco Caceres, a senior space analyst at the Teal Group, agrees with that notion.

“The vision for these companies, to me, is infinitely more ambitious than NASA,” Caceres mentioned. “They can afford to be — because these entrepreneurs plan to be around for the long term.”

Caceres says SpaceX is centered on exploration, whereas Blue Origin and Virgin goal tourism. But all three are rapidly decreasing prices for space journey with the purpose of finally being on par with a aircraft ticket.

“I don’t think it’s a pipe dream,” Caceres mentioned. “But I don’t think we’re going to see it in the next 10 years. I think the reason for that is because you need volume. I think the next year and the next two years are going to be very telling in terms of who survives in this space launch industry.”

With the perspective he has from his time at NASA, Cassidy is a little extra tempered in his timeline: “Maybe in 50 years it’s like, ‘Hey, what do you wish to do for Christmas break this 12 months? Want to go to Hawaii?’ ‘No, dad! We went there final 12 months — let’s go to the space station.’ ‘OK, alright, we’ll go to the space station.'”

Cassidy mentioned he isn’t bothered by non-public astronauts. Rather, he welcomes them.

“I don’t claim that only government-selected astronauts are the people that can experience this,” Cassidy mentioned. “I fundamentally think if you take a big picture of humanity, that the world would be better off if every single person had five minutes to look out the window of a spacecraft and see Earth going by. You just see blue and green and brown, and white clouds and white mountaintops, and oceans of all colors. It looks like one blob that’s a home for everyone.”

Of course, there are extra choices past the three firms getting in on space journey, too. There are planes designed to create micro-gravity conditions, space services that give the feeling of takeoff G-forces, and balloons that may be rented by teams for particular occasions to achieve the edge of the ambiance.

“Imagine, if you will, celebrating a wedding and getting married at 100,000 feet,” Curan mentioned.

The potentialities are huge.

“There are different companies that are talking about  providing different experiences for space tourism,” Quintana mentioned. “It’s grown by leaps and bounds, and we’ve been able to kind of democratize but also kind of spread out that supply chain.”

The eventual objective, most events on this area agree, is utilizing the moon as a launch pad to colonize Mars.

“Elon Musk’s vision is out of this world,” Caceres mentioned. “I mean, it’s just no pun intended, but his goal really is to colonize Mars. What SpaceX is doing is infinitely more difficult and more challenging, and they’re much farther along.”

The out-of-this-world is, certainly, changing into attainable.

“If it hadn’t been for the Columbia catastrophe, which led to the finish of the shuttle program, you would not have had sufficient room for and cash to encourage the growth of some of these non-public firms,” Caceres mentioned.

And issues will solely take off from right here. 

“It sounds goofy, but it’s very possible,” Cassidy mentioned. “Just a little over 100 years ago, the Wright Brothers first flew — and now we’re talking about space flight. So who knows?”