Space tourism

Space tourism is space travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. A number of startup companies have sprung up in recent years, hoping to create a space tourism industry. Orbital space tourism opportunities have been limited and expensive, with only the Space Adventures Ltd. company providing transport to date.

Sub-orbital

• Virgin Galactic, is planning to begin passenger service aboard the VSS Enterprise, a Scaled Composites SpaceShipTwo class spacecraft.

• XCOR Aerospace is developing a suborbital vehicle called Lynx.
• Armadillo Aerospace is developing a two-seat vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) rocket called Hyperion.

Orbital

• SpaceX is developing the Falcon rocket and a capsule named Dragon
• Boeing is building the CST-100 and intends to fly tourists. The CST-100 is planned to be launched by an Atlas V rocket.
• Space Adventures Ltd. have announced that they are working on DSE-Alpha, a circumlunar mission to the Moon.
• Excalibur Almaz, a private company based in the Isle of Man, plans to use modernized TKS space capsules to carry paying research crews into low Earth orbit and beyond.

Several plans have been proposed for using a space station as a hotel:

• Bigelow Aerospace, has already launched two first inflatable habitat modules (Genesis I and Genesis II).They hope to setup a space station.
• The Space Island Group have set out plans for their Space Island Project,[39] and plans on having 20,000 people on their "space island" by 2020, with the number of people doubling for each decade.[40]

External links

• Bigelow Aerospace
• Boeing
• China National Space Administration
• Excalibur Almaz
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA
• Roscosmos
• Space Adventures
• Space Island Group
• SpaceX