The Near Future of Space Tourism

The first time that I have ever heard of space tourism, Lance Bass of N'Sync was in training to go into space and was paying to go. That deal fell through, but ever since then, the subject of space tourism has become more and more common, with new companies trying to get into the game every year. It is the private companies that are in the space race this time, instead of government-controlled administrations like NASA. The goal to be the first to send tourists into space on a regular basis has led to many different types of competitions, like the X-Prize.

The company that currently seems to be closest to the goal of regularly sending tourists into space is Virgin Galactic, an off-shoot of the major airline company, Virgin. Virgin galactic has created a space plane called Space Ship One and the company is already creating a better design known as Space Ship Two. Both of these space planes are attached to a larger plane which takes off from a runway and carries the space plane until it reaches a high enough altitude for the space plane to turn on her thrusters and head into space. Virgin Galactic plans to send out Space Ship Two on her maiden voyage in late 2008.

Everything was going fine for the space tourism industry until July 26th, 2007, when an accident killed three workers and injured three others while testing a valve meant for the rockets on Space Ship Two. The failure that caused the accident appears in preliminary investigations to be in the equipment used to test the valve, and not in the valve itself.