SpaeCor News

Believe it or not the first space tourism company is not American. In fact its not even a company! Russia has a long standing reputation for promoting space tourism.

Russia’s economy may be the reason for the first space tourists. While NASA is against space tourism at this time, Russia needs the money and will send anyone willing to pay into space on one of their Soyuz rockets. The first space tourists were businessmen from various country’s offering to pay boatloads of money to rocket their way to the stars.

Russia may have started space tourism, but they may need to step it up in order to stay in business. Like many companies today facing competition, having the ability alone may not be enough to compete in the new space tourism industry.

Thanks to the Ansari X prize space tourism is blossoming into a full fledged industry taking hold in the 21st century. The winners of the Ansari X prize, Scaled Composites tout their ship Spaceship One as the ultimate reusable spacecraft. Virgin Galactic took the lead in space tourism by purchasing Spaceship One as their method to boost tourists into space.

Not only will Russia have to compete with different companies but many sovereign nations have plans to boost their space presence such as India and China. China’s Taikonauts may not be space tourists but its only a matter of time before wealthy Chinese business owners pay top dollar for a ticket to space. Russia has some catching up to do if it hopes to stay in business.

The future of commercial space flight lies in the hands of SpacePort America.  SpacePort America, located in New Mexico, is currently accepting contracts from construction companies.  The contracts will be split into areas such as building the runway, upgrading the railroad nearby and constructing the hanger primarily being built for Virgin Galactic’s needs.

SpacePort America is poised to attract major business to the state.  The blossoming space tourist industry finally has a base and New Mexico could potentially be the largest private space transportation/tourist hub in the world.

California companies such as Northrup Grumman plan on moving a lot of their space operations into New Mexico to take advantage of cheap launch vehicles.  Many other Space companies such as Scaled Composites and SpaceX may be tempted to move their base of operations there as well.  Scaled Composites works closely with the Virgin Group building the Spaceship one, two, and three models for them and will better serve their client in new Mexico. SpaceX however may be reluctant to make the switch from their beautiful  launch site in the South Pacific on their private island, but competition may drive them to take cheaper alternatives.

The Aerospace industry wont be the only one benefiting from the new space tourism.  Many other sectors may jump into the mix including restaurants for those who only wish to view shuttle takeoffs from the beautiful Virgin Galactic Hanger.

SpacePort America has a long road to success and over the next 10 years they may be a major player in the industry, however this does not stop competitors, like the spaceport being constructed in Texas.  The Texas spaceport supports vertical launches but most of the major players have already devoted themselves to Space Port America.  I expect to see Space Port America to be the predominant spaceport if only because Virgin Galactic has thrown all of their support.  The Virgin group has the money to support the largest Spaceport in the World and after reading Richard Branson’s book Screw it lets do it, I believe he has no desire to wane support for it.