Lunar tourism may be possible in the future if trips to the Moon are made available to a private audience. Some space tourism startup companies are planning to offer tourism on or around the Moon, and estimate this to be possible sometime between 2023 [1] and 2043. [2] [3]
Two natural attractions would be available by circumlunar flight or lunar orbit, without landing:
When and if landing is made possible, attractions such as these could also be part of the itinerary of a Moon tourist: [4]
Note that these attractions are still conceptual projects that have yet to have been realized, as of November 2023.
The site of the first human landing on an extraterrestrial body, Tranquility Base, has been determined to have cultural and historic significance by the U.S. states of California and New Mexico, which have listed it on their heritage registers, since their laws require only that listed sites have some association with the state. Despite the location of Mission Control in Houston, Texas has not granted similar status to the site, as its historic preservation laws limit such designations to properties located within the state. [9] The U.S. National Park Service has declined to grant it National Historic Landmark status, because the Outer Space Treaty prohibits any nation from claiming sovereignty over any extraterrestrial body. It has not been proposed as a World Heritage Site since the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which oversees that program, limits nations to submitting sites within their own borders. [9] An organization called For All Moonkind, Inc. is working to develop enforceable international protocols that will manage the protection and preservation of these and other human heritage sites in outer space. [10] For All Moonkind, Inc. will be basing their new convention on treaties such as UNESCO's World Heritage and Underwater Cultural Heritage acts. [11] Until then, lunar tourism poses a veritable threat for heritage management, seeing as the most significant cultural sites, such as the Apollo 11 landing sites and the footprints of Aldrin and Armstrong, rely on the preservation of the surface of the Moon as is. [12] Ideally, technologies would be developed which would allow tourists to hover over these sites without compromising the integrity of the lunar surface. [12]
Interest in affording historical lunar landing sites some formal protection grew in the early 21st century with the announcement of the Google Lunar X Prize for private corporations to successfully build spacecraft and reach the Moon; a $1 million bonus was offered for any competitor that visited a historic site on the Moon. [13] One team, led by Astrobotic Technology, announced it would attempt to land a craft at Tranquility Base. Although it canceled those plans, the ensuing controversy led NASA to request that any other missions to the Moon, private or governmental, human or robotic, keep a distance of at least 75 meters (246 ft) from the site. [9] A company called PTScientists plans to return to the Taurus-Littrow Valley, the site of the Apollo 17 mission landing. PTScientists is a partner of For All Moonkind, Inc. and has pledged that its mission will honor heritage preservation and abide by all relevant guidelines. [14]
Tourist flights to the Moon would be of three types: flyby in a circumlunar trajectory, lunar orbit, and lunar landing.
However, the only tourist flights to space that have been successfully executed so far have been suborbital and orbital flights. [15]
Suborbital flights are short and significantly less costly than orbital flights. Tourists on suborbital flights find themselves at an altitude of around 100 km, which is a little over the official beginning of space, where they get to experience zero gravity for approximately 5 minutes before beginning their descent back to Earth. Suborbital flights can last anywhere between 30 minutes and 3 hours and cost approximately $200,000 per passenger. [16]
Orbital flights, on the other hand, are longer, more expensive, and logistically harder to realize. They require flying hundreds of kilometres above the Earth's surface. Orbital flights typically last a day and cost around $10M per passenger. [17] [16]
Both orbital and suborbital flights have only been executed in the context of space tourism, not moon tourism, but private companies have been making significant advancements in the realm of moon tourism. Notably, the entire development of SpaceShipOne, a sub-orbital spaceplane, including its test flight, cost $25 million, a figure notably less than NASA's daily expenses. [18]
Initiatives have been announced for the commencement of commercial sub-orbital spaceline services between 2007 and 2009. The initial passenger price estimate stood at approximately $200,000, with potential price reductions of over 90% if demand rises significantly. According to a 2004 OECD report, [19] NASA's projections suggest that sub-orbital tourism could generate annual revenues ranging from $700 million to as much as $4 billion, representing a substantial increase compared to the 2003 commercial satellite launch market, which ranged from 100% to 600% of those figures. [18]
Various studies have estimated the development costs of orbital passenger launch vehicles to be in the range of a few billion US dollars to around $15 billion. [20] [21] [22]
Some of the space tourism start-up companies have declared their cost for each tourist for a tour to the Moon.
Space tourism companies which have announced they are pursuing lunar tourism include Space Adventures, [23] Excalibur Almaz, [23] Virgin Galactic, [2] SpaceX, [3] and Blue Origin, but nothing has been materialized yet. [28]
Space tourism is human space travel for recreational purposes. There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital and lunar space tourism. Tourists are motivated by the possibility of viewing Earth from space, feeling weightlessness, experiencing extremely high speed and something unusual, and contributing to science.
The Zond 7 spacecraft, part of the Soviet Zond program, was launched towards the Moon on a Proton-K D rocket on August 7, 1969. Its mission was to support studies of the Moon and circunlunar space, to obtain color photography of Earth and the Moon from varying distances, and to flight test the spacecraft systems. It was an unpiloted version of the Soyuz 7K-L1, a crewed Moon-flyby spacecraft.
Human spaceflight programs have been conducted, started, or planned by multiple countries and companies. Until the 21st century, human spaceflight programs were sponsored exclusively by governments, through either the military or civilian space agencies. With the launch of the privately funded SpaceShipOne in 2004, a new category of human spaceflight programs – commercial human spaceflight – arrived. By the end of 2022, three countries and one private company (SpaceX) had successfully launched humans to Earth orbit, and two private companies had launched humans on a suborbital trajectory.
Space Adventures, Inc. is an American space tourism company founded in 1998 by Eric C. Anderson. Its offerings include zero-gravity atmospheric flights, orbital spaceflights, and other spaceflight-related experiences including cosmonaut training, spacewalk training, and launch tours. Plans announced thus far include sub-orbital and lunar spaceflights, though these are not being actively pursued at present. Nine of its clients have participated in the orbital spaceflight program with Space Adventures, including one who took two separate trips to space.
Private spaceflight refers to spaceflight activities undertaken by non-governmental entities, such as corporations, individuals, or non-profit organizations. This contrasts with public spaceflight, which is traditionally conducted by government agencies like NASA, ESA, or JAXA.
Blue Origin Enterprises, L.P., commonly referred to as Blue Origin is an American aerospace manufacturer, defense contractor, launch service provider and space technologies company headquartered in Kent, Washington, United States. The company makes rocket engines for United Launch Alliance (ULA)'s Vulcan rocket and manufactures their own rockets, spacecraft, satellites, and heavy-lift launch vehicles. The company is the second provider of lunar lander services for NASA's Artemis program and was awarded a $3.4 billion contract. The four rocket engines the company has in production are the BE-3U, BE-3PM, BE-4 and the BE-7.
Spaceflight began in the 20th century following theoretical and practical breakthroughs by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert H. Goddard, and Hermann Oberth, each of whom published works proposing rockets as the means for spaceflight. The first successful large-scale rocket programs were initiated in Nazi Germany by Wernher von Braun. The Soviet Union took the lead in the post-war Space Race, launching the first satellite, the first animal, the first human and the first woman into orbit. The United States would then land the first men on the Moon in 1969. Through the late 20th century, France, the United Kingdom, Japan, and China were also working on projects to reach space.
Vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) is a form of takeoff and landing for rockets. Multiple VTVL craft have flown. The most successful VTVL vehicle was the Apollo Lunar Module which delivered the first humans to the Moon. Building on the decades of development, SpaceX utilised the VTVL concept for its flagship Falcon 9 first stage, which has delivered over three hundred successful powered landings so far.
Excalibur Almaz was a private spaceflight company which planned to provide a variety of deep space crewed exploration missions, micro-gravity science, and payload delivery. EA also aimed to offer Low Earth Orbit cargo and crew delivery and return.
The following is a timeline of important events in the history of private spaceflight, including important technical as well as legislative and political advances. Though the industry has its origins in the early 1960s, soon after the beginning of the Space Age, private companies did not begin conducting launches into space until the 1980s, and it was not until the 21st century that multiple companies began privately developing and operating launch vehicles and spacecraft in earnest.
The billionaire space race is the rivalry among entrepreneurs who have entered the space industry from other industries - particularly computing. This private spaceflight race involves sending privately developed rockets and vehicles to various destinations in space, often in response to government programs or to develop the space tourism sector.
The year 2021 broke the record for the most orbital launch attempts till then (146) and most humans in space concurrently (19) despite the effects of COVID-19 pandemic.
The year 2022 witnessed the number of launches of SpaceX's Falcon rocket family surpassing the CNSA's Long March rocket family, making the United States the country with the highest number of launches in 2022 instead of China. This year also featured the first successful launch of Long March 6A, Nuri, Angara 1.2, Vega-C, Kinetica-1, and Jielong-3. National space agencies' activities in this year is also marred by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, leading to tension between Roscosmos and Western space agencies, threats of ending collaboration on the International Space Station (ISS), and delays on space missions.
The year 2024 is expected to exceed 2023's 223 orbital launches. So far, the year saw the successful first launch of Vulcan Centaur, Gravity-1, and notably more developmental launches of SpaceX's Starship – with IFT-3, IFT-4, IFT-5, and IFT-6 planned for this year. Additionally, the final launch of a Delta family rocket occurred in April with a Delta IV Heavy. In May, China launched the Chang'e 6, the first sample return from the far side of the Moon. By 13 May, there were 92 total launch attempts, equaling the total number of attempts for the whole year in 2014, just 10 years prior. Following the trend of the 2020s, it is expected that many more privately-developed launch vehicles will feature a maiden launch in 2024.
The year 2023 saw rapid growth and significant technical achievements in spaceflight. For the third year in a row, new world records were set for both orbital launch attempts (223) and successful orbital launches (211). The growth in orbital launch cadence can in large part be attributed to SpaceX, as they increased their number of launches from 61 in 2022 to 98 in 2023. The deployment of the Starlink satellite megaconstellation was a major contributing factor to this increase over previous years. This year also featured numerous maiden launches of new launch vehicles. In particular, SSLV, Qaem 100, Tianlong-2, Chollima-1,and Zhuque-2 performed their first successful orbital launch, while SpaceX's Starship – the world's largest rocket – launched two times during its development stage: IFT-1 and IFT-2.
Starship is a two-stage super heavy-lift launch vehicle under development by SpaceX. As of June 2024, it is the largest and most powerful rocket ever flown. Starship's primary objective is to lower launch costs significantly via economies of scale. This is achieved by reusing both rocket stages, increasing payload mass to orbit, increasing launch frequency, creating a mass-manufacturing pipeline, and adapting it to a wide range of space missions. Starship is the latest project in SpaceX's decades-long reusable launch system development program and ambition of colonizing Mars.
Zond program was a Soviet robotic spacecraft program launched between 1964 and 1970, using two spacecraft series, one for interplanetary exploration, and the other for lunar exploration.
Starship HLS is a lunar lander variant of the Starship spacecraft that is slated to transfer astronauts from a lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon and back. It is being designed and built by SpaceX under the Human Landing System contract to NASA as a critical element of NASA's Artemis program to land a crew on the Moon.
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