Space tourism taking flight
Line forming to follow in Shepard’s footsteps 60 years after his suborbital journey
CAPE CANAVERAL — Sixty years after Alan Shepard became the first American in space, everyday people are on the verge of following in his cosmic footsteps.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin used Wednesday’s anniversary to kick off an auction for a seat on the company’s first crew spaceflight — a short Shepard-like hop launched by a rocket named New Shepard. The Texas liftoff is targeted for July 20, the date of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic aims to kick off tourist flights next year, just as soon as he straps into his space-skimming, planelaunched rocketship for a test run from the New Mexico base.
And Elon Musk’s SpaceX will launch a billionaire and his sweepstakes winners in September. That will be followed by a flight by three businessmen to the International Space Station in January.
“We’ve always enjoyed this incredible thing called space, but we always want more people to be able to experience it,” NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough said Wednesday from the space station.
It’s all rooted in Shepard’s 15-minute flight May 5, 1961.
Shepard was the second person in space — the Soviet Union launched cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin three weeks earlier, to Shepard’s everlasting dismay.
The Mercury astronaut’s capsule, Freedom 7, soared to an altitude of 116 miles before parachuting into the Atlantic.
Since Gagarin and Shepard’s pioneering flights, 579 people have rocketed into space or reached its fringes, according to NASA. Nearly two-thirds are American and just over 20% Soviet or Russian. About 90% are male and most are white, although NASA’s crews have been more diverse in recent decades.
A Black community college educator from Tempe, Arizona, sees her spot on SpaceX’s upcoming private flight as a symbol. Sian Proctor uses the acronym J.E.D.I. for “a just, equitable, diverse and inclusive space.”
NASA wasn’t always on board with space tourism, but is today.
“Our goal is one day that everyone’s a space person,” NASA’s human spaceflight chief, Kathy Lueders said following Sunday’s splashdown of a SpaceX capsule with four astronauts. “We’re very excited to see it starting to take off.”
Twenty years ago, NASA clashed with Russian space officials over the flight of the world’s first space tourist.
California businessman Dennis Tito paid $20 million to visit the space station, launching atop a Russian rocket. Virginia-based Space Adventures arranged Tito’s weeklong trip, which ended May 6, 2001, as well as seven later tourist flights.
“By opening up his checkbook, he kicked off an industry 20 yrs ago,” Space Adventures co-founder Eric Anderson tweeted last week. “Space is opening up more than it ever has, and for all.”
There’s already a line.
A Russian actress and movie director are supposed to launch in the fall from Kazakhstan. They’ll be followed in December by Space Adventures’ two newest clients, also launching on a Russian Soyuz rocket. SpaceX will be next up in January with the three businessmen.
And as early as 2023, SpaceX is supposed to take a Japanese entrepreneur and his guests around the moon and back.