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21/05/24 05:56 AM IST

First Indian space tourist completes flight

In News
  • India-born aviator and commercial pilot Gopi Thotakura was among the six space tourists who undertook a short recreational trip to space  recently.
Sub-Orbital Trips
  • Thotakura flew aboard a spacecraft of Blue Origin, one of the several private space companies offering a joy ride to people wanting to venture into space.
  • From take off to landing, the whole journey lasted only about ten minutes, during which the spacecraft attained a maximum height of about 105 km from the Earth.
  • It was one of the shortest and quickest trips to space.
  • The passengers – among them a 90-year-old American – got to experience weightlessness for a few minutes and observe Earth from a height.
  • Space travel begins at about 100 km altitude from Earth, after crossing the so-called Karman line, which is generally considered to be the boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space.
  • Anything flying below this altitude is called an aircraft while those crossing this line get classified as a spacecraft.
  • Thotakura’s journey was what is called a sub-orbital space flight. The spacecraft did not get into an orbit around the Earth.
  • It crossed the Karman line, stayed there for some time, and then descended back to Earth, similar to how most space tourism flights operate.
Space tourism
  • Longer joy rides in space are also available.
  • Space tourists have orbited around the Earth, and even spent a few days on the International Space Station, the permanent space laboratory that goes around the Earth at an altitude of about 400 km.
  • In fact, the first space tourist was Dennis Tito, an American who paid to travel on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2001.
  • He spent over seven days on the International Space Station.
  • Between 2001 and 2009, the Russians took seven tourists to the space station with one of them, Charles Simonyi, travelling twice.
  • There are plans afoot for having much deeper space trips for interested individuals, potentially to destinations around the Moon, other planets or asteroids.
  • But these are still some time away in the future. For the time being, sub-orbital space flights are the most favoured journeys for space tourism enthusiasts.
  • Blue Origin, which carried out the latest flight, has taken 37 tourists to space – all of them in suborbital flights.
  • There are about a dozen private space companies offering tourism opportunities.
  • These include established players like Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, Axiom Space, Zero Gravity Corporation, and airline companies like Boeing and Airbus.
Cost of Space tourism
  • Blue Origin has not disclosed the price that its latest set of passengers paid for a seat on this journey.
  • But according to Space.com, a similar journey on a Virgin Galactic spacecraft, costs about $450,000 (about Rs 3.75 crore).
  • A journey to the International Space Station is now estimated to cost anything between 20 to 25 million dollars (about Rs 160 to 210 crore).
  • A recent NASA paper mentions that space companies SpaceX and Space Adventures were planning to offer a journey around the Moon for about 70 to 100 million dollars (about Rs 600 to 850 crore).
  • Clearly, space tourism is accessible to only the super-rich right now. But it is a market that is predicted to grow rapidly.
Source- Indian Express

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