Fancy floating in a capsule and looking down on Earth? You can do that by end 2024

Do you remember the moment when you first fell in love with space and the notion of space travel? Well, Tara Hyland, luxury travel advisor and one of the first to become a Virtuoso “Accredited Space Agent” for Virgin Galactic’s sub­orbital space flights in North America, remembers it vividly.

It was the moment when man landed on the moon (July 16, 1969), and she was living on farmland near the Johnson Space Center. “And as I grew up, I had friends and neighbours who were involved in the space programme. And I, like many others of my generation, fell totally in love with it,” Hyland told the group gathered at the Space Tourism Roundtable at Phocuswright 2023 in Fort Lauderdale in November.

And according to her, even though space tourism, which she sees as a niche of luxury travel, is still in its infancy, “there’s a lot going on”.

Hyland herself has sold three tickets (two to customers in the Philippines) for these flights and she also had the privilege of being invited to attend the first private astronaut and tourist spaceflight, Galactic 02 on August 10 at Spaceport America in New Mexico.

On that flight, there were three civilians – former Olympian Jon Goodwin, who had bought a ticket years ago, and a health and wellness coach Keisha Schahaff and her 18-year-old daughter, Anastasia Mayers, both of whom are Antiguan. Schahaff won her seat onboard the Galactic 02 as part of a fundraising competition by Space for Humanity, a non-profit organisation seeking to democratize space travel.

“I cannot tell you how incredibly inspiring it was to see them fly,” said Hyland. “It’s worth dispelling the myth that it’s only for billionaires or the very wealthy because that’s not true. Even in the Virgin Galactic space, the original ticket price was $250,000. I sold three of those. It’s now $450,000.

“Timing is everything. Virgin has announced that it’s going to halt their flights of Unity, the current spacecraft mid-year, to concentrate on developing their Delta class, which will hopefully be flying in 2026.”

So, in terms of timing, the closest possibility to space tourism is now Space Perspective, which hopes to take travelers up in the air by the end of 2024 in a craft known as Spaceship Neptune, a pressurized capsule with panoramic views. A space balloon will lift Neptune 100,000 feet into the upper stratosphere, where guests can witness the earth’s curvature.

For Edyta Teper, Head Of Global Sales & Trade, Space Perspective, who’s spent 25 years in the luxury travel space, “it’s an honour and a privilege to actually have this opportunity in my lifetime”. She said two years ago, the space travel industry was valued at $3 billion and “I am sure it’s a much higher number now”.

“At Space Perspective, we’re changing the face of space travel. Think of a pressurized capsule, which is an aeroplane, it’s the same thing, with the largest windows to ever go to the edge of space, propelled by a space balloon. The mission for us is to take as many people to the edge of space as possible. We know that when astronauts go to space, they come back changed forever. Our goal and our mission is to give our explorers that experience.”

From left, Edtya Teper of Space Perspective, Tara Hyland, and Katie Crowe and Sasha Gainullin of battleface at the Space Tourism Roundtable at Phocuswright

She added, “We’re a sustainable company, we’re a flight carbon neutral company. It’s a very gentle journey. It’s a six-hour journey that takes you up to the edge of space at 100,000 feet. And then you have two hours, gliding very gently at the edge of space, we don’t have any training, there is no zero G, we have a bar on board, we have a bathroom, Wi Fi, and then gently you descend down. We hope to build a community of space explorers, who can benefit our planet and earth.”

So far, about 1,650 people have purchased tickets priced at $125,000 each. Teper said currently, 60% of those bookings can be attributed to travel advisors such as Hyland. The US accounts for 80% of sales, with Asia Pacific round about 10%, she said. “The UK is becoming a big market for us as well.”

Teper said the company was looking at global expansion in the next five years. It has purchased a ship called the Voyager, the first space pod in the world, which will allow it to launch from anywhere in the world, beyond the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. “We hope to have a fleet of ships and in the next five years, you will see a huge global expansion,” she said.

Space tourism of course falls into the same bucket as extreme adventure and given the recent OceanGate’s Titan submersible disaster, insurance is naturally a hot topic in the category.

Sasha Gainullin, co-founder and CEO, of Battleface, which offers space travel insurance, said, “We’ve been developing products from the initial stages, and we also work with Virgin Galactic. To us, travel insurance is as soon as you leave home. It’s not just from takeoff or up and down. Travellers still have to travel to the destination, and they often travel with families and friends, and they often have plans before or after. That’s the type of products that we’ve been developing for this industry.”

He added, “Our mission about space has been to essentially to match products and services behind trends. Space tourism is another trend that’s been developing rapidly. It is a very similar concept to skydiving, scuba diving or bungee jumping. How do you create a product that actually fits into that niche?

“What our challenge is going to be, from the travel insurance perspective, is how do we actually create products that are specifically designed for this (space tourism) industry, because historically, the travel insurance market has been one size fits all. It doesn’t matter if you’re flying from New York to London, New York to Los Angeles, it’s the exact same product … These policies have to be customizable. Space travel is a very good example in that you cannot just take the product from the shelf and give it to the customer.”

With its space travel insurance, he said, “We started out by developing a company out of Lloyd’s of London, which is the place that essentially was already insuring NASA and commercial travel up to space. And we just decided to use the exact same data to create products to fit in within the industry. My personal fascination with space travel is essentially the unknown, the thrill …”

Hyland said the OceanGate disaster has not had any dampening effect on sales of extreme adventure travel. “I don’t think that in the long run, it will affect people. One thing I would say, at least from my experience of being around the people who purchase Virgin Galactic tickets, is they bond as a group of entrepreneurs, they form a community, and they’re early adopters, and some of them are very altruistic about their reasons.

“I just think that there’s been a lot of bad press about how it’s folly for rich people. And it’s just not really true. Of course, there are some thrill seekers and it’s a bucket list thing but for many of the people I’ve met, it’s not that.”

It’s worth reiterating that no special training is required to go on the Space Perspective flights. Said Teper, “Obviously, prior to the flight, we will have our explorers come to our mission control probably a day or two earlier, because we want them to meet the team, we want them to have a tour of the Kennedy Space Center, see Spaceship Neptune – but you don’t need any training, it’s just as easy as being on an aeroplane.”

Hyland meanwhile has experienced weightlessness in a simulator and compared it to like “having a permanent facelift”.

Sounds like a good reason to travel to space.