In 2022, the era of comprehensive "space travel business" begins, and humans go into space

Early January 2022. In the outdoor exhibition area of ??the Las Vegas International Convention and Exhibition Center, the main venue of CES (International Consumer Electronics Show) 2022, a particularly eye-catching booth appeared. This is the booth of Sierra Space, a space technology company headquartered in Nevada.

As shown in the photo, the company brought a life-size model of the space shuttle "Dream Chaser" used to transport personnel and supplies to the space station.

At "CES", the world's largest technology event for people's livelihood, Serra Space participated for the first time against the background of the huge environmental changes surrounding the space commercial market.

During the "Apollo Project" 50 to 60 years ago, launching rockets aimed at the moon brought huge development cost burdens and risks directly related to human life. The mission was regarded as a "major national project". Promotion centered around NASA.

But now the main task has shifted to high-frequency, low-risk routine business such as transporting personnel and materials to the International Space Station (ISS).

In order to reduce the overall cost of the space industry, the U.S. government is promoting bidding-based outsourcing services from NASA to private enterprises, such as the "Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program" (CLD Program).

Seeing this change in the business environment as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, including expectations for future development prospects, the representative of startup companies with ambitions for space business is Serra Space.

Sierra Aerospace's "Dream Chaser" is 9 meters long, only one-third the size of past space shuttles. It is launched with a vertical rocket, lands on the runway when it returns, and can be reused more than 15 times. This has many similarities with the space shuttle in terms of technology and application. It is reported that Sierra Space has signed a contract with NASA to deliver supplies to the ISS, and plans to conduct its first flight after the second half of 2022.

In addition, Sierra Space is partnering with Blue Origin, the aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company founded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, which will travel in space in July 2021 achieved success. It announced plans to build and operate a newly developed space station, the Orbital Reef, by the late 2020s.

The "Orbital Reef" will replace the aging ISS (International Space Station) and become one of the sources of support for the civilian space station being built by NASA.

Sierra Space plans to use the "Dream Chaser" to deliver supplies to the "Orbital Reef" in the near future, and use the b2b commercial basis to transport private space tourists to achieve profitability.

So, although they are all space travel businesses, they also have various services. The services currently being provided, including the services scheduled to be provided in the future, are organized based on the "distance from the earth's surface" as the axis, and the main business companies that conduct space travel business in areas above 100km (from the height of 100km above the earth's surface is defined as "space") The following table outlines the procedures and services.

The "Low Earth Orbit Experience" tour and the "Gravityless Experience Near the Realm of the Universe" tours on the light red website have now been included in the service scope. The "Mars Experience" and "Moon Experience", which are highly technically challenging and are displayed with a white background, and the "Flight Experience through the Space" journey, which requires the development of a special supersonic body that can accommodate a large number of people, are plans to introduce services in the future. category.

First of all, the "Low Earth Orbit Experience" tours that Sierra Space hopes to enter are in partnership with SpaceX and Space Adventures, founded in 1998 by entrepreneur Eric Anderson. Travel company) These two companies have cooperated and have now entered the market and attracted people's attention with good performance.

The idea is to send private travelers to the International Space Station, stay for 8 to 12 days in a way that does not interfere with the work of astronauts from various countries working on the International Space Station, and then safely return to Earth to serve the content.

By the way, unlike the reusable Falcon rockets used by SpaceX, Space Adventures uses Russian Soyuz rockets.

The travel costs that matter, each tourist, $55 million for SpaceX and $37 million for Space Adventures, are extremely expensive.

In addition, the services of Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic introduced at the beginning of the "Gravity-free experience near the realm of the universe" tour are also famous. The most exciting 3 to 4 minutes of all travel time are spent experiencing zero gravity.

The two companies contrast sharply in their approach to travel.

Virgin Galactic's small spacecraft "VSS Unity" (8 seats) climbs vertically to reach outer space like an ordinary airplane, begins to descend when it reaches an altitude of 80 kilometers, then returns to normal flight mode, and finally lands on the runway like an ordinary airplane. Blue Origin uses the reusable rocket "New Shepard" like Space It can "feel" it free fall, open the parachute and return to the ground through automatic control.

Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson both publicly conducted test flights in July 2021 last year, and both successfully conducted space travel.

The travel cost was initially set at a relatively reasonable price of US$250,000 by Virgin Galactic and US$200,000 by Blue Origin, but Virgin Galactic restarted reservation sales in August last year. At that time, it was announced that it would be increased to approximately 2 times the original price of US$450,000. This price increase may also affect Blue Origin’s price setting.

On the other hand, the "Flight Through Space Experience" journey may become a revolutionary means of transportation to achieve hypersonic flight by flying in space without air resistance.

SpaceX said that although the test flight has just begun, it has developed a space shuttle that can carry 100 people, shortening the current 15 hours from New York to Shanghai to 39 minutes.

Another space company, Stratolaunch Systems (a space transportation company with air-launched rockets founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and others), uses a twin-body giant jet with a wingspan of about 120 meters. An airplane pulls the plane of space into the sky and shoots it out. The company is developing a unique service to transport large numbers of passengers at hypersonic speeds of Mach 6 and plans to conduct test flights using an aircraft called Talon-A by the end of 2022.

The price lists (travel fares) of SpaceX and Stratolaunch Systems have not been announced, but if future fares can be reduced to the current airline first-class fare levels (60,000 to 120,000 yuan), "Flight Through the Universe" tours have the potential to become a killer service, boosting existing aviation business.

On the frontier of cosmic travel around low-Earth orbit, there are also more formal "Moon Experience" tours and "Mars Experience" tours (not just travel, but also immigration).

NASA proposed in the "Artemis Project" to achieve manned lunar exploration before 2025, and recently proposed to achieve manned exploration of Mars before 2040.

Civilian space travel to the moon and Mars is likely to continue to grow, catching up with the commercial companies that bid for NASA projects.

Taking lunar exploration as an example, the unmanned "Artemis 1" flight around the moon will be carried out in the spring and summer of this year, and the "Artemis 1" manned (4 astronauts) flight around the moon will be carried out in the spring and summer of this year. 2" will be implemented in 2023.

Pioneer companies like SpaceX and Axiom Space, a private space infrastructure development company based in Houston, Texas, will also serve as NASA's BtoBs on the Mars Experience journey. Build technology and know-how by embracing outsourcing and immediately expand the business base from scientific exploration to BtoC services for private space travel.

One final word. Space travel provides us with a bright and dreamy topic of "expanding the possibility of human existence." Never let your dreams stay just dreams forever.