Space Tourism Market and Background

"When ships to sail the void between the stars have been invented, there will also be men who come forward to sail those ships."
-- Johannes Kepler

We assert that space tethers make it possible to supply the space tourism market, but first we need to analyze that market.

Demand Studies

Tourism volume is price sensitive. Today's world wide travel and tourism market as a whole is about $400 billion per year. Excursions to the Antarctic, Africa, or Mt. Everest draw thousands every year. If you want to look at what is available now we recommend Space Adventures.

There have been several space tourism market studies. For more information on space tourism we recommend SpaceFuture.com in particular their reference section. The actual market for space tourism in 2001 and 2002 was 1 ticket per year at a price of about $20 million, for a total market of $20 million/year. The results of a German study of global market demand in 1994 were used to generate the following graph. At a ticket price of $100,000 the demand is estimated to be 400,000 tickets per year or about $40 billion per year. At lower prices the number of passengers goes up but the total market is not much larger. We will assume $50,000 per ticket for a 1 week stay in a hotel.

Suborbital Tourism

The SSTT rocket could be used for suborbital tourism before the tether is even started. This would reduce the time to profitability and the size of the initial investment required for the total system. The suborbital market could help pay for development of the SSTT.

Toss for hours

Another market is to be able to toss someone on a ride that lasts for one long orbit and then reenters. This could be done before the space hotel was finished and so generate income sooner.