• Question: Do you think that one day humans will be able to have holidays in space or on the moon?

    Asked by 11CSpaldingHS to Anne, Beth, COLFlight, Jon, Tom on 12 Oct 2015.
    • Photo: Beth Healey

      Beth Healey answered on 12 Oct 2015:

      Hello! This is Adrianos from Greece, I am Beth’s predecessor as a research doctor for the European Space Agency in Antarctica and I am filling in for her today due to connectivity problems over there.

      With regards to your question, there are already 6 “space tourists”, very wealthy people who have paid a few millions in order to train like astronauts and get a “ticket” to visit the International Space Station.

      But perhaps what you mean is more like what we see in science fiction films, when a person spends a weekend of vacation in space? I have to be optimistic and say yes, i believe that there will come a day when traveling to space will be commonplace, so that holidays in a space hotel or a lunar base will be possible. However, this time seems very distant now as currently we are only able to send a handful of humans on orbit around the Earth or occasionally on the Moon, for scientific purposes only (not holiday yet!). I think that great breakthroughs are needed in technology before we can picture ourselves buying medium-priced tickets to lift off the planet. But we can always hope – and contribute to the effort of space exploration!

    • Photo: Columbus Flight Directors

      Columbus Flight Directors answered on 13 Oct 2015:

      Simon: Hi Curie Comets!

      The astronauts on the ISS already celebrate “big holidays” in space such as Christmas:

      And “millionaire” space tourists have already “paid” to go into space as Adrianos has already pointed out.

      But for sure if human exploration and exploitation of space takes off and the cost of going and living in space goes down I can imagine that more and more people will go into space for leisure reasons. Alot of companies are already investing time and money assuming this is going to happen (checkout their websites):

      – SpaceAdventures
      – Bigelow Space
      – Virgin Galactic

      SpaceAdventures, the company that flew all the spacetourists so far, already sell tickets for a 10day trip around the moon using Russian technology!

Comments