I’m popping up in your inbox this weekend to answer all your questions about the hottest new vacation spot: space.

Put down your Aperol spritz and pick up a space suit, because Euro summer is cancelled. We’re heading to the stars.

Well, that’s what a group of billionaires are trying to sell us on.

It seems most of you aren’t buying it, however. In a survey of the TDA audience, almost two-thirds of you said you have no desire to book yourself in for a trip to the galaxy.

Today, I’m going to explain space tourism, why it’s copping so much flak, and get to the bottom of whether we should be investing in the burgeoning industry at all.

This month, pop star Katy Perry joined a crew of women on an 11-minute flight to the edge of space.

The trip was operated by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ space tech company Blue Origin, and billed as the first all-female crew to head to space in more than 60 years.

The short joyride was met with a healthy dose of internet backlash. As one TDA commenter put it: “This is the billionaire spaceflight equivalent of those celebrities butchering 'Imagine' during Covid.”

Space tourism existed long before pop stars were packing their bags for the cosmos, however.

The first official ‘space tourist’ was an American millionaire named Dennis Tito in 2001. Tito reportedly paid $US20 million to spend six days at the Russian section of the International Space Station (ISS). For context, that’s roughly $AU56 million in today’s money.

By 2009, eight other space tourists had taken journeys to the ISS.

There have been many stop/starts to the industry in the time since, and the list of people who can claim the title of ‘space tourist’ remains very short and extremely wealthy.

In recent years, the industry has been led by private spaceflight companies helmed by billionaires, including Elon Musk's SpaceX, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, and the aforementioned Blue Origin.

The global market for space tourism is projected to be worth $US6.7 billion ($AU10.5 billion) by 2030.

As of now, however, there are no airports in space. So, when you buy a ticket to space, where are you actually going?

The three major space tourism players I mentioned earlier offer tickets on suborbital flights.

These flights reach extremely high altitudes, but not quite high enough to enter into the Earth’s orbit and stay floating up there.

Whether these types of flights even qualify as space travel is actually a point of contention, because we don’t have a solid definition of where Earth’s atmosphere ends and space begins.

It’s a question space experts have spent years trying to answer.

One of those experts is Emeritus Professor Steven Freeland, an international law expert working with Western Sydney University and Bond University in the field of space law.

Professor Freeland told TDA that we do not have an internationally agreed-upon definition of space because a clear definition would create restrictions on what can and can’t be done on either side of that boundary.

“It’s purely geopolitical,” he said.

Marking a legal line at the end of the Earth’s atmosphere would also place limits on what tourism operators could sell as a space flight, versus a really high rocket ride.

Tickets on those suborbital flights can cost millions of dollars.

Professor Freeland says that means most of us won’t be going to the stars any time soon.

“ A lot of the high profile stuff that we've just had is marketing, it's chest-beating by companies wanting to show off their technology. I don't think it is the precursor of a major commercial industry, because you and I can't afford… to fly,” he said.

Even if we could afford it, when I asked you how you feel about space tourism, most of you said you weren’t interested.

Only 1 in 3 respondents to a survey I ran said they were interested in space tourism.

61% of you told me that, given the opportunity, you would not travel to space.

Overwhelmingly, sustainability was the number one reason our audience did not want to board a rocket to the stars.

It turns out, however, that the environmental impacts of space tourism are not entirely clear.

When a kerosene rocket is launched, it releases carbon dioxide (CO₂), soot, and other particles that can linger in the stratosphere, absorbing heat and contributing to climate change.

Blue Origin claims it produced zero carbon emissions during its recent launch, using a combination of oxygen and hydrogen to fuel the spacecraft’s ascent and emitting mainly water vapour.

University College London Professor Eloise Marais told the BBC that releasing water vapour in the upper atmosphere can still affect the climate, however, because it’s not supposed to be there.

However, Mani Thiru, founder of Sydney-based space tech consultancy Deep Tech Ventures, told TDA the environmental impact of rocket launches is negligible in comparison to other forms of tourism, like cruises.

“A single [cruise] liner’s annual pollution dwarfs the entire space tourism industry’s output,” she said.

However, Thiru said “projected increases” in the number of launches happening each year “could amplify” environmental impacts.

If that does happen, Professor Freeland said there are limited ways to hold space tourism operators accountable for their pollution.

“ The main treaties that were being developed for space were in the 60s and 70s… nobody was interested in the environment of Earth, let alone space,” he said.

The rapid growth of the industry has posed more challenges than just the emissions left here on Earth: namely, space debris.

Space debris (aka space junk) is any non-functioning man-made object that remains floating in Earth’s orbit. Think of satellites and rocket pieces that have broken into pieces over time.

Space junk can also be found in our ocean, left over from crafts splashing down, and other places in space we have ventured, like the moon.

Researchers from the European Space Agency (ESA) estimate we have created roughly 130 million pieces of space debris since the first successful launch of a satellite in 1957.

Professor Freeland called space debris  ”the greatest threat for us in our ability to use space, and that really challenges the ongoing sustainability, accessibility, navigability, and viability of space.”

More launches from more space tourism will mean more space junk, crowding Earth’s orbit.

But it could also offer the solution.

In the U.S, for example, the Trump administration is planning to cut NASA’s budget over the next year by halving science research funding.

In lieu of government investment, Thiru says space tourism might fill the gap. After all, vital infrastructure in space helps us predict the weather, navigate the globe, and FaceTime our mums.

“Tourism drives demand for safe, reusable launch systems, reducing costs over time,” she told TDA.

Of the major players in the industry, only Virgin Galactic has a stated long-term goal of establishing ongoing space tourism.

On the other hand, SpaceX are leveraging tourism as a way to test and fund their mission to place humans on Mars, while Blue Origin are working to create jobs and industry in space.

So for now, the people over at Aperol can breathe a sigh of relief, and you can hold onto your booking for that all-inclusive resort package.

We’ll have to settle for watching the stars from Earth.

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