China To Start “Space Tourism” By 2025, With Tickets Costing About $350,000, Crossing The Kármán Line.

China To Start “Space Tourism” By 2025, With Tickets Costing About $350,000, Crossing The Kármán Line.

Beijing may soon be able to send its first paying customers to the edge of space through space tourism as early as 2025, with tickets costing between 2-3 million yuan ($286,400-$429,600). This is according to China’s leading rocket scientist.

The Kármán line, regarded as the aeronautical limit of the earth’s atmosphere, is about 60 miles (around 100 kilometers) above our heads. It is the limit that the Féderation Aéronautique Internationale, which validates and regulates international astronautical records, uses. The FAA and NASA, define everything above 50 miles as space.

Crossing the Kármán line was like a dream for many but now this may become reality with this “Space Tourism” plan of China and this can be a lifetime experience.

Yang Yiqiang, who founded a government-backed business to look into the commercial usage of rockets, predicts that commercial space travel will be in “full flower” by 2027. In 2018, he held the position of general director for the Long March 11 rocket project.

According to Yang, the commercial space industry in China has moved from a 1.0 period of foundational manufacturing and research and development (R&D) to a 2.0 era driven by applications and market pressures.

Within ten years, the sector is predicted to catch up to the US in terms of development. Up to seven people could take to the skies and soar above 100 kilometers in the air.

During the 10-minute flight, which would take them above the Kármán line, the line dividing the earth’s atmosphere from space, passengers would briefly experience weightlessness, according to SCMP.

A contract was struck by the Beijing-based rocket manufacturer CAS Space and the Hong Kong-based China Tourism Group to research and develop the space tourism sector together.

It was stated by CAS Space last year that it is developing a single-stage reusable rocket that could carry up to seven passengers on a 10-minute trip above the Kármán line, which is the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space. This line is located at 62 miles (100 kilometers), and it marks the Earth’s atmosphere ends and space begins.

Once it crossed the Kármán line, a single-stage rocket would separate and continue to fly through the air due to inertia. While the rocket would re-enter the atmosphere and make a smooth landing using only its engines, the spaceship would return with its parachute.

“A space trip for regular people is no longer a pipe dream thanks to space technology. Travelers will have a wholly unique experience in space that they have never had before, “Founder of CAS Space Yang Yiqiang said.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences owns a part of the 2018-founded company CAS Space. It is one of the leading recently founded commercial firms.

According to reports, the corporation and China Tourism Group, the country’s largest state-owned travel agency, had a collaboration agreement in July, promising to promote commercial space technology and create a new space economy that includes space tourism.

Before carrying paying passengers, it will do a series of unmanned test flights starting in the following year. With 370 commercial space firms in 2021, China quickly caught up with the US.

Virgin Galactic, meanwhile, had already declared that it will start charging $450,000 for tickets to space travel. Four private tourists were flown into orbit by Elon Musk’s SpaceX last year, marking the first time without experienced astronauts.

According to SpaceX, the craft carrying a civilian crew orbited the earth for three days at a height of around 575 kilometers, higher than the current space station orbits. The sixth human space travel mission of Jeff Bezos’ company Blue Origin was completed in August.

The global space tourism market

The global space tourism market is exploding, with dozens of companies now taking reservations for everything from zero-pressure balloon trips to astronaut boot camps and simulated zero-gravity flights, less than a year after Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson launched into space within weeks of one another’s last summer.

Three billionaire-led rocket companies have received a lot of attention: Bezos’ Blue Origin, whose passengers have included William Shatner of “Star Trek” fame; Branson’s Virgin Galactic, where tickets for suborbital space tourism start at $450,000; and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which launched an all-civilian spaceflight in September with no trained astronauts.

The environmental impact of space tourism will increase along with the industry. Even some stratospheric balloon flights, which use thousands of cubic meters of helium, a scarce resource, to power their balloons, have the potential.

Future space travelers won’t just go there for the ride, according to space enthusiasts. They’ll wish to stay for a while.

The intellectual property rights that China has, a system for developing talent, and support from the central government all contributed to the market size of China’s commercial space industry posting a growth rate of 22.09 percent between 2015 and 20.

The US started assisting the space industry’s commercialization in the 1980s, and by the time SpaceX was established in 2002, the business had grown.

Comparatively, China started private companies to develop the commercial space tourism industry in 2015. Nevertheless, after seven years of explosive growth in a variety of fields, like rocket launches, the creation of satellite and ground technology, satellite operation, and satellite application, the industry has already started to take shape.

A few seats on upcoming Virgin Galactic flights have been sold, according to Joshua Bush, CEO of Avenue Two Travel. He thinks that, like commercial air travel, the demand for space flight will develop along with its exorbitant costs.