China to launch space tourism by 2025, says industry veteran China’s space tourism operators will lift off for first time in 2025 at between $280k-$400k per sub-orbital seat, according to the founder of Beijing-backed commercial launch service provider CAS Space, Yang Yiqiang. Yang, who served as director general of Long March 11 rocket program in 2018, a year in which the vehicle …
General Saltzman:
I think we should look at this from the military point of view. I mean, supposing the Chinese stashes away some big theme park, see. In fact, they might even try an immediate sneak attack so they could take over our theme park space... I think it would be extremely naive of us, Mr. President, to imagine that these new developments are going to cause any change in Chinese expansionist policy. I mean, we must be... increasingly on the alert to prevent them from taking over other space tourism spaces, in order to boast more prodigiously than we do, thus, knocking us out in superior numbers when we emerge!
Mr. President, we must not allow... a space tourism gap!"
Does suborbital really qualify as 'space'? Or is this another questionable superlative like "astronaut"? The latter means traveller to the stars, which nobody has done yet. I suppose if you're going to command something approaching half a million dollars for providing a short period of weightlessness with an interesting view, you need to use superlatives to make the sales pitch. However it's not likely to become mass tourism in short order (fortunately for the environment).
"Does suborbital really qualify as 'space'?"
If the rocket goes to 100km, that's the definition of space, but the article states "orbital". The price is really cheap for orbital. Ms. Ansari paid about $26mn for her trip to ISS. I had the pleasure of meeting her some years ago at the Xprize offices. Very charming. Granted, that trip was longer than a couple of days and she was crammed in a Soyuz.
There will be people with the money and physical health to go on these trips, but I'm not convinced there is enough of a market for a purpose built system. It's not easy as Virgin Galactic has demonstrated. Blue Origin has made some tourist flights, but I haven't heard if they plan to continue them indefinitely before moving on to New Glenn and trips to orbit and the moon. Many more people can afford a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon and there isn't much in the way of physical requirements to go on an excursion as long as one can fit inside and the carrying capacity isn't exceeded. This makes the business of doing those flights a reasonable one and if the company finds it isn't bringing in the money, they can do something else with the helicopters since they aren't super specialized.
The article definitely says "sub-orbital" not "orbital".
"China’s space tourism operators will lift off for first time in 2025 at between $280k-$400k per sub-orbital seat, according to the founder of Beijing-backed commercial launch service provider CAS Space, Yang Yiqiang."
"The article definitely says "sub-orbital" not "orbital"."
It seems I wasn't paying enough attention. You are correct.
$280k-$400k is more than Virgin. I'm not sure I've ever heard how much Blue Origin has been charging, but if I had the money, I would have really splashed out to do the flight with William Shatner or Wally Funk.
For anybody that doesn't watch the space news, Brian Binnie, one of the prize winning pilots of Space Ship One passed away.
".one day a private Chinese space technology startup will arrive that hasn't simply rendered a bunch of copies of American rockets,"
Rocket design (outer mold lines) has converged on what works the best for a given sort of mission. Any renderings of the OML is going to look very similar to everything else.
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