Is Space Tourism Good For Tourism In General?
So Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson have become the world’s first “space tourists.” Good for them, I guess. There are two sides to every story, and this one is no different.
Is space tourism good for tourism in general, or even good for the planet?
One side is that all of this is just a couple of wealthy men who want to play out their boyhood fantasies of going into space but don’t realize that their wealth and power could solve much bigger problems for the people of earth.
The other side is that innovation has to start somewhere, and these two gentlemen have “earned” the right to innovate into space. Fair point. Who else is gonna do it? The government? They have bigger problems. What problems do these two guys have? Not any that affect people like you and me, that’s for sure. So they set their sights higher. And to the point of space travel starting somewhere, all travel and innovation have to start somewhere.
Air travel was prohibitively expensive when it first came out. It was only for the super-rich. Historically, the super-rich always starts new trends and ideas that the general public adopts later. Perhaps this will be the same.
They’ve Earned The Right To Go To Space…
There is no denying that both men have worked hard and achieved a level of financial success that has also left the stratosphere, so why shouldn’t they be the first to explore space with the companies they have founded. It is their name on the company (so to speak), they take and have taken all the risks, and their risks paid off. To the victor go the spoils.
Or Have They?
Unfortunately for them, especially Bezos, their fortunes are now being made on the backs of low-wage workers who will never be able to afford a $28 million ticket to space. When he returned from his historic flight, Bezos thanked his employees and customers, brazenly saying, “you paid for all of this.”
Ouch.
Of course, he meant it in a grateful-for-the-American-Dream kind of way, but still, his employees make $20 an hour and pee in bottles to avoid pay-reducing breaks. Amazon has a CEO-to-worker pay ratio of 58:1. The American average CEO-to-worker ratio is 47:1. Bezos is selling $1 billion of his Amazon stock every year to pay for Blue Origin, his space tourism company.
Branson is similarly rich and powerful with owning Virgin Group Ltd for the past fifty years. He has also decided to go into the space tourism business with his venture, Virgin Galactic. He has sold seats for $200,000 to $250,000 apiece for space tourism flights, with prices sure to go higher from there.
Neither company is expected to offer tickets that are affordable to the average American.
Now, I am not here to debate the insane wage and wealth inequalities of our planet. I think we can all agree that such inequalities exist. It is the product of the American Dream.
So is this space race good for tourism for normal folks like you and me?
It depends on who you are, I guess.
If you want to go to space one day, this might be the way for you to get there. $250,000 or $500,000 or a million dollars is not an other-worldly sum (pun intended) nowadays. Sure, it’s a lot of money, but it’s not entirely out of reach. And now that space tourism has started, the demand will skyrocket (pun intended), and Bezos and Branson will find ways to get the costs down so more people can buy tickets. That’s the capitalist way. Additionally, more billionaires will probably start their own space tourism companies, and the competition will drive prices down.
Two more reasons why space tourism could be good for the rest of us are:
- It will boost the economy
- It will make people realize (more) how rare and valuable our planet is
Tourism generated $7.2 trillion in 2015 and accounted for 1 out of every 11 jobs on the planet — 284 million jobs. Space tourism will add to that number, generate untold taxes and revenue, and create many hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs. Space tourism is expected to grow to a $1.7 billion US industry by 2027.
Maybe as more and more people go up into space, they will acquire a deeper appreciation of our planet. Space travel may provide an answer to Earth’s problems one day, but not for a long time, and that place will be very far away if it exists at all. In our known and reachable solar system, the Earth is all we got.
On the flip side, there are downsides to space tourism.
As mentioned, there is the idea that the untold billions, and eventually trillions of dollars put into the space tourism industry, could be put to better use on this planet. Not going to waste too much time trying to explain the whims and reasoning of billionaires, though.
The other criticism is the environmental impact that getting to space has on Earth. Rockets need fuel to burn to get to the edge of space. So far, there have only been a handful of flights, but what happens when there are hundreds or thousands of flights? That is a lot of rocket fuel being burned.
One day, they hope to use clean fuel, of course. Blue Origin’s engines use liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen that combust to water vapour, but downstream, the fuels require a lot of electricity to make. Elon Musk’s company SpaceX is taking customers into space in September, and its F9 rocket will emit “the equivalent of 395 trans-Atlantic flights worth of carbon emissions”. So instead of helping to solve our emissions and climate change problems, they are creating new ones.
So what is the verdict on space tourism?
Only time will tell.
Right now, we are in the beginning phase of this phenomenon, and its popularity is going to increase shortly as more and more people (who have the means) will want to get to space.
After all the billionaires that want to go to space have gone to space, then the millionaires will go next and then maybe the rest of us. That day might seem far away right now, but at one point not too long ago, “the rest of us” couldn’t afford an airplane ticket.
Personally, I think this will be good for the tourism industry as a whole. Innovation usually is. More jobs and more taxes mean more money in the tourism industry which means more people can travel, which means the world will be a better place.
Who knows? Maybe airline tickets will become cheaper because everyone will want to go to space? Maybe exotic and amazing hotels will become more accessible to more people because all the rich folks spent their money on a flight to the edge of space?
It will be interesting to see how space tourism plays out for the rest of the tourism industry. I hope it will be for the better for all of us.
“Life is a journey, not a destination.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Please stay safe and travel when it’s safe to do so.
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