By Xinhua,
Paris : The southwestern French city of Bordeaux is hosting an international symposium on space tourism, what marks yet another sign that this form of travel is no longer confined to the realm of science fiction, the French media reported on Thursday.
With the first space tickets on sale since 2005, the “symposium which is bringing together international experts from Wednesday to Friday” in Arcachon, near Bordeaux, is expected to create more awareness regarding this form of tourism, according to organizers of the event.
Currently, what all the world’s wealthiest people need to do is a simple click to reserve their place on one of the first suborbital flights by Virgin Galactic, said one expert, noting that fare was projected “at 200,000 dollars with the first flight set for 2009 or 2010.”
“So far, 250 people from around the world have booked their tickets, including two in France,” said Jean-Luc Wibaux, consultant for World Travelers, France’s “space agent” for Virgin Galactic which is owned by British billionaire Richard Branson.
Other projects are also in the pipeline, with the United States-based XCOR and Astrium, a subsidiary of European Space and DefenseCo. taking the lead in curving a niche in a market that is expected to attract up to 15,000 passengers per annum by 2025.
“The current prices are very expensive compared to average wages, but it is the beginning of a story. In the early days of air transport, the cost of a ticket for a modest trip represented several years of average wages,” said Astrium project manager Hugues Laporte-Weywada.
The company’s space vehicles are due for 2013, said the Astrium official, adding that “they will be built to host up to four passengers and take off from traditional airports.”
“There are some 30 projects, including a dozen credible ones. Of this dozen, four or five are actually being developed,” Christophe Bonnal, an engineer and a member of the International Academy of Astronautics which is organizing the annual symposium, was quoted as saying recently.
Space tourism, according to industry experts, is designed to be very different from the orbital trips that have been undertaken by five billionaires since 2001 aboard the International Space Station.
These are basically suborbital flights, which last about two hours, “peaking at a hundred kilometers above the sea level and offering a compendium of space travel,” according to Laporte-Weywada, who said that there would be “the launch phase, the weightless phase where the sky, the sun and stars are black at the same time before the re-entry phase.”
“After a take off that is similar to that of an airplane, a rocket engine propels the vehicle and its passengers vertically toward the stars. Then enters the weightless phase when the engine shuts down, passengers float and admire the scenery,” said Bonnal.
Ongoing projects will obviously help enrich the symposium, where over 70 presentations will attempt to “address all the issues exhaustively” from the motivation of potential customers to the question of insurance and the legality of this type of tourism.