Space tourism will be the subject of discussion for the first time in the central hall of the World Travel Market, WTM 2022, in London, on November 8th. Specialists will explore the potential of this segment, as well as its sustainability.
Former Virgin Galactic chairman and current head of UKSpace, Will Whitehorn, will present a session titled “Space: The Last Frontier of Travel?” It will delve into whether space travel is really widespread and whether such an option should be considered given the climate emergency we find ourselves in.
So far, many questions have been raised about the viability of this type of tourism, but little thought has gone into the sustainability of a practice that is now known to have exorbitant costs and therefore exorbitant ticket prices.
The financial services company UBS estimates that the space tourism market will reach 4 billion dollars (more than 4,000 million euros) by 2030, despite the slowdown caused by the pandemic.
Spatial Features
The last event in the space race related to travel took place in August 2022, when Blue Origin successfully completed a six-crew spaceflight, as explained by WTM. They were a YouTube star, entrepreneur, mountaineer, technology leader, engineer and communications executive.
Virgin Galactic has announced that it will once again delay the launch of its commercial passenger service, this time until the second quarter of 2023.
The company signed an agreement in July 2022 to allow tickets to be sold to members of Virtuoso’s global network of agents and luxury operators, despite the record price of $450,000 per ticket, far above what the average tourist can afford.
In contrast, the SpaceX mission in September 2021 was also successful, which made history by launching the first all-civilian crew into space aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.
