SPACE, MAN…CONT…
When you’re
starting a new year, it’s difficult to decide where to start in terms of travel
trends. What we wanted to do was uphold
the values we extolled in our pre-blog blog…or plog, if you will: what we do not want to do is bang on about New
Year new you. So we’re going to save all
the health trends and get-fit trends for another time…
Something we
want to continue to do this year, as we hopefully achieved last year, is to
take you away. To transport you to a
different place and, as you’re reading this blog on a Sunday afternoon on your
sofa, take you away from the ordinary without you having to move a muscle.
As it’s been
in the news recently, indeed, as we write, we decided to re-visit Space…because,
why not? It was our first ever Travel
Trend (https://www.traveltrendsbyglobalgreathotels.co.uk/2019/01/space-man.html)
Are we going to Space or are we not? Are
we any further forward 12 months later?
So buckle up, astronauts, have a click on this to get you in the
mood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YwFvmnbj3E
and let’s see what’s occurring!
In our previous
post, we noted that things were getting close and indeed it looked like Branson
was going to win the newly discovered ‘space race’. However we came to the conclusion that just
going 50 miles up into the atmosphere to achieve weightlessness and possibly to
spin a couple of somersaults wasn’t actually what we meant when going into
space, and yes, you would be officially classed as an astronaut but still, it
wasn’t really going the whole hog. We
decided that Jeff Bezos’ (Amazon) Blue Origin ship (the New Shepard) looked the
most impressive, with enormous windows so that you could observe the Blue
Planet itself at its best, but you weren’t going any further either. We also concluded that Elon Musk’s SpaceX was
the most authentic, with actual trips round Mars planned.
How about
now? Who’s winning the race? It cannot be lost on anyone observing that
really, when you think about it, it’s not Russia v USA anymore, but it is a
race amongst three of the world’s biggest billionaire entrepreneurs…Should we
be worried? Or shall we just go on a
Space Holiday and enjoy it because there’s nothing we can do about it anyway…
Virgin
Galactic:
In typical
Branson style, he has forged on and in a massive way. During the last 12 months he has merged with
a company called Social Capital Hedosophia holding company owned by Chamath
Palihapitiya…an early senior exec at Facebook (make of that what you will) with
a $800 million investment in Virgin Galactic.
Did you know, as an aside, that Branson actually has two space
companies? Didn’t realise that…the other
one is called Virgin Orbit and intends to provide orbital commercial small
satellite launch capabilities…who knew!
This merger triggered Virgin Galactic to become the first commercial
space flight company to be listed on the stock market.
The
time-scale is now set for set for the second half of this year if it is stuck
to and Branson has recently debuted the special space suits that the passengers
will wear. The price has gone up
slightly, as we noted before it was £170,000 but now reports say it’s $250,000
which today means £192,000…guess those new space suits are expensive…
The guest
list has also gone down to 600 from the 700 we reported last year, but there is
a waiting list of 3,700 people. In terms
of the money, based on the level of high net worth individuals and realistic figures,
the company is projecting that by 2023 revenues will exceed $590 million. Branson, in typical Branson style, is in all
fairness, still reported in the press to be saying that he intends, within the
next decade, to bring the ticket price down to the £30k mark…so there’s hope
for the rest of us yet!
On that note,
and it is worth nothing this here: it
must be remembered that air travel was once the preserve of the top 1%, so let’s
not be too critical of space travel. As
air travel is now open to everyone and anyone, so, potentially, will space.
Blue Origin:
Did you know
that last year Jeff Bezos became the richest person since people began writing
it down? He is now worth over $150
billion. Who cares? Well, what it means for his company, Blue
Origin, is that he can pump at least a billion dollars into it from Amazon
every year, and that is what he is doing.
Are we any further
forward than we were last time? The
short answer is ‘not really’. Yes,
tickets are expected to cost the same roughly as Virgin, and yes the list is
about as long, and potentially it will happen by the end of this year, but
Bezos is characteristically tight-lipped.
What is
interesting, and perhaps this is where the War of the Worlds theme comes back
in, is that Bezos, like Tesla, is branching into far more complex
projects. We mustn’t forget that Branson,
equally, has Virgin Orbit, Bezos has another project going on. This one bases itself in the theory that
since the earth is running out of resources, we, as the human race, seriously need
to get out. Ergo we will all be living
in space, and will visit earth like one does a national park, looking at it as
a place for relaxation and holiday, rather than living here and battering the
hell out of it as we are currently doing.
SpaceX:
Right,
well Elon Musk (apart from that disastrous practical demonstration on the
Cybertruck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q3uaepRCl4)
has moved on since our last post. Sure
his excited passengers are still clamouring for their trip which is still
planned for 2023 and has even acquired a hash-tag since we last reported: #dearMoon and it is still as we observed last
time: a real space trip. Six days rather than the 90 minute offerings
of Virgin and Blue Origin, and they will genuinely complete a singular
circumlunar trajectory around the moon which I think we can all agree is what
we think of when we think of ‘going into space.’ Bottom line, all is still on course for 2023.
However,
what prompted us to have another look at his subject today is that today is the
very day that SpaceX are doing something very important: they are today launching a live safety test
that will destroy the rocket. Why? Because they have been hired by NASA to build
rockets and capsules to carry astronauts into space, rather than NASA doing it
themselves. Today, SpaceX are trialling
a sort of modern-day ejector capsule which can remove astronauts from an
exploding rocket on take-off, a source of huge past problems, hence seeing them
on their way to make space travel inexorably safer. As we type they are experiencing some weather
difficulties, but the time is set for 2pm local time.
We’re
not talking about tourism any more, though.
SpaceX, who have teamed up with Boeing, are now effectively private
companies heading up the latest innovations within NASA. Is this a good thing? Will Bezos soon be involved too? Does it matter?
All
these questions lead us round to perhaps the fact that a year on, in real
terms, we’re not actually any further forward and indeed, we come to the
conclusion that is identical: for a
realistic and what technically is a visit to space, the first missions will
probably happen in the latter part of this year with Virgin Galactic and Blue
Origin. Branson, typically still throwing
the bone that in 10 years or so we might all be able to afford it. But the fact remains, you’re going on a 90
min jaunt to get a bit weightless.
SpaceX
are maintaining their programme for our Japanese billionaire and his artist
friends in 2023 to take them round the moon which is precisely what the
majority of us think of when we think of space travel, for an undisclosed
sum. The question is, will SpaceX abandon
all this in favour of the commercial gain of being in charge of NASA’s
rockets?
Who
knows, it’s Space, man.
