Suborbital Space Tours Are Becoming Big Business
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online - August 2 2012
Growing demand for commercial spaceflight could turn a young market into a $1.6 billion industry within ten years, according to a new jointly-funded study.
Tourism is driving about 80 percent of the market for suborbital flights to space, with more than 900 reservations already in place, according to Carissa Bryce Christensen of the Tauri Group. The Tauri Group conducted the study — “Suborbital Reusable Vehicles: A Ten-Year Forecast of Market Demand” — to analyze emerging SRV markets and identify the growth and demand of the space tourism industry.
The cost of a short flight into the void starts at around $95,000 for a flight on the privately owned XCOR, Aerospace’s planned two-seat Lynx vehicle, to $200,000 for a ride aboard Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo, a six-passenger vehicle already in the testing phase.
Virgin Galactic, an offshoot of the Virgin Group, already has $70 million in deposits from 536 people, the company’s Chief Executive George Whitesides said at a related congressional hearing on Wednesday.
Andrew Nelson, chief operating officer at XCOR Aerospace, said his company has sold 150 seats in the last year and 50 more in the last six months.
“We are also seeing multiple flight purchases on our vehicles and from customers who are buying flights on our competitor’s platforms,” he said. “This bodes well for the future of our industry.”
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