Author: Lawrence LeBlond
Publisher: redOrbit
Date: August 2, 2012
Growing demand for commercial spaceflight could turn a young market into a $1.6 billion industry within ten years, according to a new jointly-funded study.
Tourism is driving about 80 percent of the market for suborbital flights to space, with more than 900 reservations already in place, according to Carissa Bryce Christensen of the Tauri Group. The Tauri Group conducted the study — “Suborbital Reusable Vehicles: A Ten-Year Forecast of Market Demand” — to analyze emerging SRV markets and identify the growth and demand of the space tourism industry.
The cost of a short flight into the void starts at around $95,000 for a flight on the privately owned XCOR, Aerospace’s planned two-seat Lynx vehicle, to $200,000 for a ride aboard Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo, a six-passenger vehicle already in the testing phase. Read more here.
