Tourist trips in space could be only in a few months

The two companies that lead the race in terms of tourist trips to space ensure that they are only a few months away from the first, even though no wanted to risk a specific date.

Moments of Weightlessness

Neither passengers of Virgin nor those of The Blue will orbit the Earth, and your experience with weightlessness will only last a few minutes. It's a very different experience than the first space tourists, who paid tens of millions of dollars to get to the International Space Station (ISS) in the 2000s.

After have paid a lot of cheaper tickets – $ 250,000 US to Virgin and we do not know yet how much in Blue Origin, these new space tourists will enter dozens of kilometers into the atmosphere before coming back on Earth. As a reference, the ISS is in orbit about 400 km from our planet

Virgin Galactic

In the case of Virgin Galactic, six passengers and two pilots is the capacity of the VSS , which has the appearance of a private jet. This unit will be coupled with another spacecraft that accompanies it in its initial route – the WhiteKnightTwo – from which it is separated at a height of about 15 km. Once they have separated, the VSS will start its propeller and continue on its way.

Then, passengers will float in a weightless environment for a few minutes before returning to Earth.

The descent is smoothed by a system that moves the tail of the ship in a kind of bow before returning to its normal position, start planning and end up landing in the spaceport of the Virgin in the desert of New Mexico.

The trip lasts between one and a half and two hours. During a test conducted on May 29 on the Mojave Desert, the spacecraft reached an altitude of 34 kilometers

In October 2014, a Virgin ship broke down during the flight due to Steering error. and one of the two pilots on board is dead. The tests then resumed with another ship

The company reached an agreement for the opening of a second spaceport at Taranto-Grottaglie airport in southern Italy. .

Branson said in May on a BBC program He hopes to be one of the first passengers in the next 12 months. 650 people are already on the waiting list for this trip, according to Virgin at AFP

Blue Origin

Blue Origin is working with a technology that looks more like the traditional rocket: the new Shepard. In this vessel, six passengers climb to a capsule inserted into the tip of an 18-meter rocket. After launch, this capsule separates from the rocket and continues its trajectory for several kilometers. During a test on April 29, the capsule exceeded a hundred kilometers.

After a few minutes of weightlessness, during which passengers can see through large windows, the capsule gradually returns to the Earth assisted in its descent by three large parachutes and propellers that slow down the fall.

From takeoff to landing the flight took about ten minutes in the last test.

Until now, in the only trials dolls were used, but one of the company's principals, Rob Meyerson, claimed that "soon" would start doing tests with human being.

Another Blue Origin director, Yu Matsutomi, He said at a conference on Wednesday that the first tests on humans will take place "at the end of this year," according to Space News.

And what happens next?

SpaceX and Boeing develop their own capsules to transport NASA astronauts, which are expected to be ready in 2020 after a few delays. This is a heavy investment that will likely be partially funded by the private flight offer.

"If you plan to travel in space, you will have four times more options than previously," said Phil Larson, deputy AFP deputy. School of Engineers at the University of Colorado

In the long run, the Russian company that manufactures Soyuz rockets is studying the possibility of taking tourists to the ISS. And an American company called Orion Span announced earlier this year that it hoped to put into orbit a luxurious space hotel a few years ago, even though the project is in its infancy.

Source: AFP