Abstract
Space tourism or commercial space travel will revolutionise the future of the global aviation industry. Recently, Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX announced that his company has received deposits from two private travellers to travel around the moon in late 2018. Over 1000 people have paid their deposits to make suborbital journey with Virgin Galactic. It is important to track to the developments of the emerging space tourism industry. There are several questions centred on the space tourism industry following the changes in the political and economic landscape globally. These include the slow reduction of US funding to government programs leading to the scale down of the operations of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), rapid development of the space industry in India and China, Brexit in the UK and related negotiations with the European Space Agency, changes in the leadership of the US and UK governments and the looming economic stagnation in the UK. In these circumstances, this brief article evaluates the progress of the commercial space tourism industry following the setback caused by the Virgin Galactic crash in 2014 and debates the status of opportunities and challenges in current political and economic situation whilst emphasising research directions for researchers in this field.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 40-46 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | New Vistas |
| Volume | 3 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Publication status | Published - 30 Jan 2018 |
Keywords
- Space tourism
- Aviation
- UK Space Agency
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Social Sciences
- Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management