May face rough ride’
THE BIGGEST RISKS
ARE TECHNICAL FAILURE ON BLASTOFF, DURING
THE VOYAGE, OR ON REENTRY INTO EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE, SAY EXPERTS
to get caught in the blast, high exposure could cause radiation sickness leaving the travellers too ill to control t heir vessel.In an extreme case, they could die.
TECHNICAL PROBLEMS
The main danger to space tourists, observers agree, is spacecraft failure.
“In my view, the biggest risks are technical failure on blastoff, during the voyage, or on reentry into Earth’s atmosphere,” said Martin Giard of France’s National Institute for Earth Sciences and Astronomy.
“There is an overall risk of an accident... something going wrong,” added John Logdsdon, former director of the Space Policy Institute at the George Washington University. But he stressed “the technology is even better now than 45 years ago”, when we last sent humans into deep space.
UNKNOWN GLITCHES
Up to now, said Grant, only extremely healthy people, “basically perfect humans”, have been sent to space after months of training and health checks.
“With space tourism, you’re going to start seeing some unhealthy people getting sent into space. If they need to be on medication or they have illnesses in the background, we don’t know how they react in space because we’ve never seen that before.”
For most, the payoff far outweighs the risks.“There are of course, a lot of risks,” said Berger. It doesn’t mean you have to scare people. But it is always necessary to inform everybody about possible risks, and this starts with the risk of sitting on a rocket.”