SPACE TOURISM SPACE TOURISM Adventures in Earth Orbit and Beyond Michel van Pelt Copernicus Books In Association with Praxis Publishing Ltd. An Imprint of Springer Science+Business Media © 2005 Praxis Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published in the United States by Copernicus Books, an imprint of Springer Science+Business Media. Copernicus Books 37 East 7th Street New York,NY 10003 www.copernicusbooks.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Van Pelt, Michel. Space tourism: adventures in Earth orbit and beyond / Michel van Pelt. p. cm. Includes bibliographic references and index. ISBN 0-387-40123-6 (alk. paper) 1. Space tourism—Popular works. 2.Astronautics—Popular works. I.Title. Tl793.V293 2005 910’.919—dc22 2004059007 Manufactured in the United States of America. Printed on acid-free paper. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN 0-387-40213-6 SPIN 10932766 To Ria and Leo CONTENTS PREFACE xi INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: BEFORE THE FLIGHT 11 The Experience Begins 12 CHAPTER 2: SELECTION FOR SPACEFLIGHT 15 When Can You Go? 28 Safety First 37 Radiation 42 Back in the Atmosphere 44 Landing 45 CHAPTER 3: GETTING READY 47 Safety 49 Spaceflight Theory 53 Geography 53 Medical Issues 54 vii Contents The Third Day 57 EVA Training 62 Centrifuge and Water Landing Survival 64 CHAPTER 4: ASTRONAUTS AT SCHOOL 69 Training Program 71 Preparing the Spacecraft 73 CHAPTER 5: LAUNCH 83 CHAPTER 6: THE SKY IS NOT THE LIMIT 91 Making it Affordable 99 The Development of Spaceplanes 102 Reusability 107 Financing the Future 112 Nuclear Rockets, Laser Craft and Space Elevators 114 CHAPTER 7: IN ORBIT 121 Earth Orbit 123 Activities in Microgravity 126 The ``Freedom Flyer'' 131 Going Outside 135 CHAPTER 8: SPACE STATIONS: GIANT CANS AND WHEELS IN THE SKY 139 Hotels in Space? 145 Checking in at a 2040+ space hotel 147 Microgravity Sports and Recreation 149 Space Loving 152 Space Food 154 Sweet Dreams 159 Pets in Space 162 CHAPTER 9: THE END OF THE TOUR 165 CHAPTER 10: RETURNING FROM SPACE 171 Rough Landings 171 Spacediving 175 Putting Your Feet Back on the Ground 177 Souvenirs 179 viii Contents CHAPTER 11: TO THE MOON, MARS AND BEYOND 181 Fly Me to the Moon 182 Lunar activities 184 Reaching the moonbase 187 Mars Vacation 189 Space Colonies 192 More Distant Worlds 193 Mercury 193 Venus 194 The giant planets and Pluto194 Asteroids and comets 195 The constraints of distance 196 At the Speed of Light 196 CHAPTER 12: THE ROAD AHEAD 201 Cost and Safety 203 Be a Space Tourist Now 205 BIBLIOGRAPHY 207 INDEX 213 ix PREFACE Many scientific papers and popular articles have been written on the topic of space tourism, describing anything from expected market sizes to the rules of three-dimensional microgravity football. But what would it actually feel like to be a tourist in space, to be hurled into orbit on top of a controlled explosion, to float around inside a spacecraft and be able to look down on your home town from above the atmosphere? Most of us love the view from high places. The Euromast tower in The Netherlands features a ``space ride'' elevator to its top. Following a short countdown, white smoke billows out from the bottom of the elevator and the thunder of a Space Shuttle launch booms in your ears. The rather slow climb up is somewhat of an anticlimax, but the tower does offer a spectacular view of the city of Rotterdam. What if the mast did not end at 185 meters? What if the elevator continued up for another 200 kilometers and really went into space? What if you could see half the planet instead of just part of a city, no matter what the weather is like? The book you are holding now is for those people who wonder about this, who dream about circling the Earth every 90 minutes, freely floating in front of a large window, looking down at the blue planet beneath. It is xi Preface also for those who have never dreamed about this but are curious to know why others do. This book takes you on a future space tourism trip, and along the way explains such things as the required spacecraft technology, medical issues, astronaut training and the possibilities for holidays far from Earth. The Introduction explains what space tourism is and why the time has arrived to take it seriously. Starting with ``Before the Flight'', the next three chapters explain the medical and safety issues and show the current developments in space and space-related tourism. ``Launch'' and ``The Sky is not the Limit'' investigate the technology and costs of current and future launch vehicles, and how space-tourism vehicles could be made cheap enough to enable a mass space-tourism market. ``In Orbit'' and ``Space Stations'' deal with life in microgravity, space stations and the fun things that a trip in Earth orbit offers to space tourists. ``The End of the Tour'' and ``Returning from Space'' are about returning to Earth and the effects of a return to gravity on the human body that has become used to living in space. ``To the Moon, Mars and Further'' looks into the more distant future, when space tourists may leave Earth orbit to explore the rest of the solar system and beyond. As you will see, space tourism is no longer science fiction, but merely a logical next step in the evolution of spaceflight. Accidents can still happen, as the tragic loss of the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia recently proved. No technology can ever be made 100 percent safe. Nevertheless, we have learned how to get a few people into orbit and back, and how to keep them safe and comfortable in the cold, dark hostility of space. We even managed to land some of them on the Moon. Now we are about to open up space for more and more people, creating a routine and safe access to it that will enable thousands, tens of thousands and eventually even millions to travel beyond Earth's atmosphere. The drive behind this is one of the world's largest, most powerful economic forces: tourism. I want to thank Clive Horwood and Dr John Mason of Praxis, Alex Whyte (Praxis copy editor), and Paul Farrell and Anna Painter of Copernicus, for their support to this book and their helpful comments and suggestions. For moral support during the writing of this book, I thank my girlfriend Stefania Monni. Especially helpful were my friends from the International Space University's SSP 2000 Space Tourism project, whose research, imagination and enthusiasm form the basis for this work. To Sven Abitzsch, AlessandroAtzei, TorstenBieler, Peter Buist, Dennis Gerrits, Herve Joumier, Zeina Mounzer, Ron Noteborn, Paulo Ponzio, Rogier Schonenborg, Benjamin Schreiber, Stella Tkatchova and Paloma Villar I express my thanks for the information and inspiring conversations xii Preface about space and many other things, which brought out countless ideas. Also thanks to my fellow editors of the Dutch space magazine Ruimtevaart and editor Gerard Keijzers of Astruim: preparing articles for these publications has taught me how to put pen to paper. Finally, thanks to Marieke van Hijum for supplying the following remark by Wilbur Wright, said shortly after the Wright brothers' first flight in 1903: ``It is not really necessary to look too far in the future; we see enough already to know that it will be magnificent. Only let us hurry and open the road.'' xiii INTRODUCTION PRIL 19, 2004. Three years after 2001, the year for which Arthur AC. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick predicted comfortable routine flights to Earth orbit, space hotels and moonbases in their movie 2001:A Space Odyssey , a Soyuz rocket lifts off from the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan (see Figure 1). People at launch control and at various space agencies around the world are anxiously watching the rocket's flight, as they have done for decades. In the evening, the successful launch will be on the news, as the news anchor readers will tell the public of how yet another crew of bold spacefarers has left the planet. But the International Space Station the astronauts are going to dock to is nothing like the giant wheel depicted in the movie. It is a relatively small cluster of very expensive modules that can house no more than three crew members. In concept, the latest space outpost is not much different from the first orbital stations launched three decades earlier, while the venerable Soyuz rocket is based on the launcher that put the first man intospace in 1961. Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers, working for the European Space Agency, is strapped in a capsule of the type that first flew almost 40 years ago. His selection and that of his two fellow crew members was rigorous; they had to pass many demanding physical and psychological tests to get one of the most privileged jobs in the world. The subsequent training took years, with all the procedures and technology that had to be mastered. However, for them the experience of the flight, the responsibility of the mission, the view of Earth from 250 kilometers (155 miles) up and the experience of microgravity are all worth it. 1 Introduction FIGURE 1 A Soyuz launcher thunders into the heavens to deliver a crew of three cosmonauts into orbit. It already flew two space tourists to the International Space Station on two separate missions.