Christian Davenport
THE WASHINGTON POST – The bidding quickly climbed to USD2 million, then USD2.2 million. Soon it hit USD2.8 million, and finally climbed well past USD3 million.
The object in play wasn’t an old-master painting or an heirloom diamond but rather a spot on a short up-and-down trip to space that would last just 10 minutes.
In that time, however, the winner of the auction would have travelled in a rocket at three times the speed of sound to the edge of space alongside Jeff Bezos, whose Blue Origin space company promises startling views of Earth, glimpses of the cosmos and a rollicking, weightless ride “that will change how you see the world.”
The bidding for a seat on the July 20 launch will culminate today in a live Internet auction that is expected to drive the price even higher after the announcement recently that Bezos will be aboard the flight – the first with people after 15 previous uncrewed launches.
The auction will have just a single winner. But the losers won’t be shut out of space travel; in a new era where wealth is as important as courage, there are still plenty of options in a new and expanding marketplace intended to make space accessible to civilians – or at least to the uber rich.
Forget luxury African safaris or Caribbean cruises on private chartered yachts. Space is quickly becoming the new destination for the wealthy, a market that analysts say could be worth billions in the years to come.
After years of delays and daunting setbacks, several companies are in various stages of signing up passengers, completing their test programs and even training what will become a new generation of astronauts.
Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic successfully completed its third human suborbital spaceflight test flight last month and is looking to fly paying passengers early next year. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which flies much more powerful rockets that send spacecraft to orbit, has private astronaut flights on its manifest that could send as many as 20 private citizens to orbit over the next few years. That’s more astronauts than flew during NASA’s Gemini programme.
The trips aren’t cheap. Axiom Space, a Houston-based company that arranges training and all aspects of the flights, is charging as much as USD55 million for a week-long trip to the International Space Station (ISS). It’s booked four such flights on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon over the next couple of years.
Blue Origin hasn’t announced what it will charge for its relatively quick suborbital flights once ticket sales are live, though the auction would give it plenty of data about the potential market and a list of interested buyers. Virgin Galactic was charging as much as USD250,000 per seat on its SpaceShipTwo spaceplane and has a waiting list of about 600 passengers. And when it re-opens sales this year, the ticket price is likely to rise to about USD500,000, analysts of the business say.
The market has the potential to be robust, according to the analysts. In a note to investors, analysts at Canaccord Genuity Ken Herbert and Austin Moeller wrote that the suborbital space tourism market could be worth USD8 billion by 2030, with one million potential customers wealthy enough to afford the ticket price and willing to go.
Despite delays from technical issues and a fatal crash that killed one of its pilots in 2016, “we expect a surge in orders” once Virgin Galactic is selling tickets again, they said. And the company, they noted, probably will get a lot of attention when Branson flies later this year and as celebrities start to go as well. Using data from a French consulting firm, the analysts said that there are 19.6 million people worldwide with a net worth greater than USD1 million.
“We believe that the life-changing experience and value proposition of traveling to the edge of the cosmos is like no other,” they wrote. “And there are likely many single-digit millionaires who would be willing to contribute a sizable portion of their assets to partake in a once-in-a-lifetime space odyssey.”
“Flying from Spaceport America in the New Mexican desert, Virgin Galactic has for years been promising a luxurious experience beyond the flight itself. Virgin’s astronauts would ride around the spaceport in specially designed Land Rovers and be outfitted in custom spaceflight suits tailored by UnderArmour.”
Blue Origin has made similar promises of a wondrous experience, especially as it seeks to up the bidding for its first flight in an effort that would benefit its non-profit, Club for the Future, which works to encourage students to pursue careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.
They’re not the first, though, to promise out-of-this-world rides. The Russian space agency flew seven wealthy people to space for some USD20 million each during the 2000s. And it is also sending up several private citizens in the coming months. In October, Russian actress Yulia Peresild and film director Klim Shipenko are scheduled to fly alongside Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov on a trip to the space station where they will shoot scenes for a film.
Then, in December, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa is scheduled to fly on the Russian Soyuz with his production assistant Yozo Hirano who’ll document the experience on the station for Maezawa’s YouTube channel. Previously, Maezawa had booked another flight, on SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft, in a mission that would fly him and several other applicants in orbit around the moon. But clearly eager to get to space while SpaceX works on developing Starship, he decided to take a trip to the space station with the Russians while he waits.
“I’m so curious, ‘what’s life like in space?’” he said in a statement released by Space Adventures, the Virginia firm that helps book seats on Russian missions. “So I am planning to find out on my own and share with the world on my YouTube channel.”
In some cases, the wealthy space travellers are opening up the frontier for others – raffling off seats or giving them away in competitions. On his trip around the moon, Maezawa had initially wanted to fly artists who would be inspired by the mission, but then he decided to pursue a TV show where he would seek a romantic partner with whom to share the flight. Now, instead, he’s holding a competition for eight seats on the moon mission – an undertaking that, if it happens, would be the most ambitious mission civilian spaceflight ever.
“I want people from all kinds of backgrounds to join,” Maezawa said in a video released earlier this year. He said he was looking for people who “want to help people and contribute to society. You want to take your creative activity to the next level.”
Billionaire founder of Shift4 Payments Jared Isaacman also held a competition for two seats on a mission, scheduled for September, that would orbit the Earth in an effort to raise money for St Jude Children’s Research Hospital. One went to artist and explorer Sian Proctor who spent more than 20 years as a science professor at South Mountain Community College in Phoenix, the other to engineer Chris Sembroski at Lockheed Martin. The final seat Isaacman gave to physician assistant Hayley Arceneaux at the hospital and a childhood cancer survivor.
Isaacman is an accomplished pilot who flies military and commercial jets and holds a couple of speed records. But he is not a professional astronaut, and the flight he is commanding would be the first time the crew would be comprised entirely of civilians.
Russia’s paid flights in the early 2000s were an effort to raise money for its struggling space programme, at a time when NASA forbade the practice, saying spaceflight was too dangerous to be opened to ordinary people.
But in 2019, NASA reversed course, throwing the doors open to the space station, at least for those who could afford it.
“That’s the dream, right? That space isn’t just for NASA anymore, and I think that’s what we’re trying to do,” Kathy Lueders, who heads NASA’s office of human spaceflight, said at a recent briefing with reporters. “Our goal is really to be able to give access to as many folks in space as much as possible so it’s kind of opening up opportunities for all of us.”
She acknowledged that for now only the super wealthy, or lucky, will have an opportunity to fly to the space station, which has cost taxpayers some USD100 billion. But she said the prices would likely come down as the companies fly more frequently. “We’re right at the beginning of these private astronaut missions,” she said. “It’s tough at the beginning.”
NASA does get a share of the money. Under new pricing guidelines, the agency now charges USD10 million for each private astronaut mission – for crew time to support flights to the space station, mission planning and communications. It also charges other, smaller fees, including USD2,000 a day per person for food.
The agency has no plans to subsidise missions for ordinary people the way governments carve out affordable housing units for the working class. She said, rather, she hopes “we’ll have so many customers, the price point would go down.”
For all the hype and excitement about the upcoming private astronaut missions, spaceflight remains extraordinarily risky. And it’s not clear what will happen if there is an accident on a commercial vehicle. After Virgin Galactic’s fatal accident in 2016, Branson thought about shuttering the venture entirely before deciding to press on, saying opening the frontier to more people was worth the risk.
Virgin Galactic has said it is confident that it has fixed the problems that caused the fatal crash in 2014. But it noted in a recent annual report that, “due to the inherent risks associated with commercial spaceflight, there is the possibility that any accident or catastrophe could lead to the loss of human life or a medical emergency.”
