Booking a holiday in space

MY SORT of tourism involves sunshine; a visit to a palazzo/chateau/ ruined temple; a lot of lying by a pool with a book; nice scenery; lowlevel shopping; and convivial lunches/dinners on a terrace involving a decent rosé.

Adrenaline-pumping excitement is fairly low down my list of requirements. I wouldn’t be that difficult guest in Fawlty Towers who complained about her view. “May I ask what you expected to see out of a Torquay hotel bedroom window?” asks Basil, “Sydney Opera House, perhaps? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically…?”

This sad lack of ambition explains why the prospect of “space tourism” leaves me colder than the dark side of the moon (that’s minus 153C). Sitting in a tin can, like David Bowie’s Major Tom, has no appeal. Even if you do see the curve of the Earth and experience zero gravity.

But it’s the coming

CHRIS BUCKLAND, a celebrated Daily Express journalist, died this week aged 73. He rewrote the famous adage, “The first casualty of war is truth”, for in his view, that of a seasoned foreign correspondent: “The first casualty of war is room service.”

thing, no doubt about it, and this week billionaire Elon Musk announced that within two years his company SpaceX will fly two wealthy tourists around the Moon and back.

In the past various thrill-seeking celebrities have been named as having reserved tickets on forthcoming space jaunts, among them Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Sarah Brightman, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (though those two probably won’t want to sit together now). And while many of us would be happy to see all sorts of celebs blasted into space none of them ever seems to actually go.

But my main problem (apart from the lack of shopping, rosé, palazzos and the necessary funds) is what you might call… pure terror. When Nasa was in the business of sending astronauts into space it accepted a three per cent fatality rate. But as Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic put it in 2014: “For a government-owned company you can just about get away with losing three per cent of your clients. For a private company you can’t really lose anybody.” He said this months before the test flight of Enterprise which broke up in the sky, killing the chief pilot – a huge blow to Branson’s space tourism ambitions.

And if you’re not incinerated during take-off or re-entry (rockets are rather susceptible to catastrophic failure and, yes, that is rocket science) you’ll be out on a spacewalk, happily admiring the blue planet when a chunk of space debris knocks you for six and you’ll spend eternity floating like George Clooney in Gravity. I’ve seen all the films and none of them – from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Alien – encourages me to strap myself into a capsule and wait for a countdown.

Fewer than 600 people have been into space. I salute them all from Yuri Gagarin to Tim Peake for their immense bravery. But it sure isn’t my idea of a holiday.