Forbes : Dec 21, 2021
A handful of billionaires spent 2021 blasting into space. But a growing public backlash against their extravagance could curb the future of space tourism.

More than three quarters of people in the U.K. think wealthy individuals, such as Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson, “should focus their resources on problems facing Earth, like climate change, before space travel,” according to a new study.

An 11-minute space flight can create as much as 75 tons of emissions, according to a report by Lucas Chancel, a fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations. That’s more than the average person creates during their entire lifetime.

Branson’s Virgin Galactic SPCE +1.2% burns roughly five tons of carbon per passenger, according to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, and charges $450,000 for a seat on one of its rockets.

Bezos’s Blue Origin would not disclose prices for its space flights, and nor would SpaceX, whose first space mission crewed entirely by paying tourists touched down in September after three days in orbit.
Spending such vast sums of money, and burning so much carbon and other harmful emissions all in the name of tourism is callous, many argue. “The billionaire class are out of touch with the problems facing the planet,” says Jordan Greenaway, partner at Transmission Private, a reputation management firm that conducted the study.

Popularity started turning against space tourism soon after both Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin launched their maiden manned flights in July. “We’ve now reached stratospheric inequality. Billionaires burning into space, away from a world of pandemic, climate change and starvation… This is human folly, not human achievement,” said Deepak Xavier, Oxfam International’s global head of Inequality Campaign, at the time.

Similar statements were voiced during the COP26 summit in November. British astronaut Tim Peak said he was disappointed to see space travel was now being treated as a luxury experience. He told the climate change summit, “I personally am a fan of using space for science and for the benefit of everybody back on Earth.”

Public opinion has only hardened since then as the recent survey by Transmission Private shows. For space companies, such as Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and a host of other startups that have launched in their shadow, this could harm the future of their business.

“This is a sentiment that could pave the way to more calls from the public for targeted climate taxes on the lifestyles of the wealthy individuals in the New Year,” says Greenaway.
Shares in Virgin Galactic have lost more than half of their value since the company’s first flight in July. Branson has even sold $300 million of his own shares in the business, and a subsequent space flight has been postponed until next year.

Shares in Blue Origin cannot be publicly traded, and early rumors that the company might go public via an IPO or SPAC have come to nothing.

Some space startups are looking to capitalize on the negative publicity attracted by these rocket companies. Space Perspective offers “zero-emissions” trips that are “flown gently by a spaceballoon instead of rockets.”

But the rocket companies are fighting back, trying to show the world that they are more “professional,” says Greenaway. “There needs to be a purpose to it over and above just wanting to fly up high and look at the world.”
Blue Origin says that in order to preserve Earth “we must go to space to tap its unlimited resources and energy.” Bezos’s Amazon has just aired a documentary Shatner In Space, in which the actor William Shatner, who took a Blue Origin space trip in October, praised the research mission of the company.

Its New Shephard rockets are powered with BE-3PM engines, which use clean liquid oxygen and hydrogen and are therefore carbon free during flight. Almost all of its “dry mass” is reused, including the booster, capsule, ring fin, engine, landing gear, and parachutes.

Virgin Galactic says its rockets are reusable and the company aims to “transform the current cost, safety and environmental impact of space-launch.”

The tech billionaire Jared Isaacman says his trip on board Inspiration4 raised funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. SpaceX, which ran the mission, boasts much broader goals, including interplanetary travel
This kind of higher purpose is what space tourists should think about before they buy a ticket into outer orbit, says Greenaway. “Why invest your money in this? Why expend this amount of CO2 on an 11-minute trip?

“For some people this might be because they believe that investment in blue-skies high-end space tech will unlock innovation in other areas that could help us in new and different ways.”

For others, such as the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, it’s all about advancing society rather than technology.

Maezawa returned to earth on Monday (20 December) after a 12-day trip on a Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station. The trip was a practice run for his planned mission around the moon in a SpaceX rocket in 2023.

Maezawa said he was looking for eight members of public to join him on his lunar mission. Applicants need to advance “whatever activity” so long as it would “help other people and greater society in some way,” he said in a video, adding that he has already paid for the entire trip.