Alien travel

With the investment of many large corporations, the ticket to travel into space is no longer at the 'alien' price as before.

Last month, Virgin Galactic inaugurated the runway of the space airport in New Mexico, USA. This is a subsidiary specializing in space tourism of Virgin Group of British billionaire Richard Branson. So far, there are 380 customers including the president, wealthy directors, scientists, famous artists booking tickets for about 300,000 USD / person, 1.5 times higher than the usual price, to be flying right in The first year of exploitation of Virgin Galactic. The company currently accepts online registration through Virgingalactic.com website and expects the first flight to depart in the next 2 years.

More than 40 years after Neil Armstrong performed the " great step of humanity " on the Moon, space travel is no longer a distant desire. Along with Virgin Galactic, private companies are increasingly showing interest in this lucrative service.

Spaceships will be as popular as airplanes

Many experts predict optimism that in the near future, the spacecraft will be popularly used as current aircraft, according to The Independent. The newspaper quoted Professor Richard Croxther, technical adviser of the British Space Agency, saying: ' The first time the price will be very high, but the development of the engineering industry will open the space for everyone '. The research department of Futron Corporation estimates that the space tourism market will reach 15,000 visitors by 2021 with a total revenue of about 800 million euros.

VSS Enterprise spaceship SpaceShipTwo - Photo: Virgin Galactic

So far, at least 500 people have flown into space on the spacecraft invested by the US, Russian and Chinese governments. After the Cold War, the US and Russia had no reason to spend billions of dollars on space programs. In February, US President Barack Obama canceled NASA's Moon-flying project because it was too costly and groundbreaking. While great powers must be measured and calculated, commercial corporations invest heavily in space research. Among them, apart from Virgin Galactic, there is Blue Origin by Jeff Bezos, founder of online sales website Amazon.com .

Virgin Galactic plans to bring more than 500 visitors into space in the first year of operation. The space airport in New Mexico is invested 225 million USD, when completed, there will be a complex including training centers, shops, restaurants, according to Le Point. And Blue Origin is experimenting with New Shepard, a type of spacecraft - a rocket rocket to ' bring lots of people into space at competitive prices '.

In fact, the current $ 200,000 price of Virgin Galactic is very cheap compared to $ 20-30 million of Russian and US space travel agencies since 2001. According to Will Whitethorn President of the company, prices will even fall below US $ 103,000 over the next 5 to 6 years.

The cost of a private company flight is maximized because the types of cruise ships are much lighter than the NASA spacecraft and can be used many times. Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo-class spacecraft has six seats, which is taken by the mother ship to a height of 16 km, then will be launched at 4,000 km / h and then stopped at a distance of 100 km from the earth. This is the boundary area between the atmosphere and space, lower than the official orbit of the national space agencies. The visitors will have about 5 minutes to admire the space, before returning. Whichever money, the billionaires who give up $ 20 million to ' hang out ' with NASA will spend many months training for a trip lasting about 10 days and they will be set foot on the ISS space station.

Although the time and quality of the trip cannot be equal, but with a lower cost and long training time (about 3 days), the mass space tourism of private companies is overwhelming. service of national space agencies. The Independent quoted real estate entrepreneur Nick Candy, who bought Virgin Galactic's three space travel sources, saying: ' Unlike professional astronauts, we don't need to spend half a year practicing but still Play in gravity and admire the entire earth. I have experienced many unbelievable things and hope to see that feeling again when traveling in space '.