Final Project

Matthew W.

Legislator:  Robert L. Duncan, Senator

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Final Project - Space Tourism

As a very young child, my favorite dreams were always those that included flying.  Whether I was a superhero or just casually soaring through the city, I would always wake up enthralled about my mental experience.  As I grew older, I learned that this dream could be a reality in space, but was made impossible by the difficulty of achieving orbit.  With so many new developments being made in space travel these days, however, my trip to space may occur in the near future.  Using current Space Tourism designs, I have created my own trip to space for my final project.

My trip will start at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the mid 2020s.  My flight to space will be made possible by the Vela Space Cruiser, which was developed by Vela Technology Development, Inc. and Space Adventures.  Five other passengers and I, along with two members of the flight personnel, will be carried to an altitude of 50,000 feet under the Sky Lifter.  Once free of the Sky Lifter, three rocket engines will bring the Cruiser to a speed of 2,300 miles per hour.  Once the engines cut off, the Cruiser will coast to an altitude of over 62 miles.  A period of weightlessness will be experienced before the engines fire again to bring the Cruiser into orbit (using technologies not yet planned for the cruiser).

The Cruiser will dock at Shimizu’s space hotel after a few hours of weightlessness.  The hotel’s dock will be located at the base of the access tube, and as the doors open I am led through the tube in total weightlessness, pulling myself through with a wire.  The first room I enter in the hotel is the lobby.  I is a spherical shape and the other guests are already enjoying their first moments of complete freedom in weightlessness.  After making arrangements for our rooms, we are led into a meeting room where we are told all about the hotel.  The entire facility is 240 meters tall and weighs 8,000 tons.  It contains 64 guest rooms arranged in a circle along a tube.  This tube makes a full circle around the main facility, where the lobby, meeting rooms, dining rooms, and activity rooms are located.  Protruding downward from the center is the tube that connects the hotel to the docking port and storage areas.  They tell us that the cruiser we just arrived on has already refueled and is preparing to head for Earth again with returning customers.  The efficiency of this hotel amazes me.  We are given our room keys and are allowed to go rest and look around before dinner.  I use the wire running through the hallway to make my way to my room.  I arrive at my door and enter, still in total weightlessness.  I see that all of the furniture in the room is bolted down and made of extremely light materials, probably because of the tremendous cost of sending objects into orbit.  There is a window opposite the door and I approach it.  There is the sight I paid so much to see!  Earth, translucent blue, is shining back at me.  I gaze at this sight for a while and realize that my room is hanging entirely away from the main structure.  I begin looking around my room, and I see a control panel near the door.  It has a dial that indicates “artificial gravity”.  I turn the dial to .7G and I feel the room move.  I slowly begin to feel the force of gravity on my body and I am pulled to the floor.  Now I realize that my room is disconnected from the rest of the facility to allow for this rotation.  I unpack and then realize that it is time for dinner.  I arrive at the dining room and see that all of the other guests have already begun eating.  I am served with three pouches labeled beef, salad, and punch.  I open them and begin eating, careful not to let any of my food float away.  I anger another guest when I accidentally spill my punch and it lands on his head.  I leave the dining room and head for the room marked “Stargazing”.  I enter and see the most brilliant sight I have ever experienced.  A huge window is opposite the door and through it I can see the brightest, clearest stars I have ever seen.  I am told that they do not flicker because the view is not hindered by the earth’s atmosphere.  I use the telescope to see galaxies formed long ago.  An attendant tells me that I can almost see back to the “Big Bang”.  I leave this room and enter the room labeled “watersports”.  I am given an oxygen mask and a bathing suit and I enter a room full of large spheres of water.  The weightlessness allows me to almost swim through these bubbles of water.  I realize that the oxygen mask is needed because in weightlessness you do not float to the top of the water and it is rather difficult to get out.  I was able to have a water balloon fight with a younger guest without using balloons!  We just threw the water.  As I exit, I see a man recruiting guests for training to participate in a space walk.  I decline and instead head for the bar, which has a huge window to gaze at Earth through.  As I look, I think about how fun this experience in space will be.

I know this is not quite what you would call a report, but I always feel that the best way to experience something you can’t see for yourself is to experience it from someone else’s point of view.  I know that this trip will be possible in the near future, once it becomes possible to send objects into space for a low price.  The real question is, however, whether or not people will be able to afford it.

Works Cited

http://www.spaceadventures.com/adventures/suborbital/cruiser.shtml

http://www.spacefuture.com/tourism/tourism.shtml

http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~FX7M-SZK/cosmo/smz/smz.htm

Last Updated: 07/23/01