Virgin Galactic’s first ever commercial spaceflight that is open to private, paying members of the public is set to launch on Thursday afternoon at 4pm UK time (9am local time) from Spaceport America in New Mexico, US.
This spaceflight will carry Jon Goodwin, the first Olympian and second person with Parkinson’s disease to go to space, and also Keisha Schahaff and Anastatia Mayers, the first mother-daughter duo to go to Space, as well as the first from the Caribbean.
The spaceflight will be the seventh such journey carried out by the company since it started in 2004. The previous flights, which launched from December 2018 onwards, have successfully taken pilots, founder Sir Richard Branson, company employees and researchers to the edge of space and back.
So what’s it like to experience space tourism, how do the technologies work, and what legal protections govern these flights and protect the passengers? Here’s The Standard’s guide.
What is sub-orbital spaceflight?
Sub-orbital spaceflights are basically parabolic flights, in that the space vehicle travels through the Earth’s atmosphere to a point some distance above the Earth, and then comes straight back down again.
This essential concept is the same whether you’re talking about Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic or Blue Origin’s spaceflight, which was founded by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos.
When we talk about space, typically we talk about orbits — things floating in a large ring around the Earth. For example, the International Space Station (ISS) is located in low-Earth orbit, 350km above the Earth, while Elon Musk’s Starlink constellation of tiny satellites moves around the Earth about 482km away.
And satellite TV companies like Sky make use of huge satellites much further away in geo-stationary orbit, which is 35,786km from Earth.
However, spaceflights don’t go into orbit — the space vehicle launches from the ground and travels up to just between 70km to 90km above the Earth, which is below the recognised edge of space. The flights essentially stay within the Earth’s atmosphere.
The Kármán Line, which is a boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and space, is defined as being 100km above the Earth, hence why we call these flights “sub-orbital”.
So, if you were to go on any of these flights, there’s no way your space vehicle would bang into any satellites or space stations, you’d be far below and mostly still within the Earth’s gravitational field.
According to Luigi Scatteia, a space activity manager for consultancy PwC in France and Maghreb, spaceflights are so new as a technology that there are not even any statistics yet. Commercial spaceflights are only really becoming a thing now in 2023.
How do sub-orbital spaceflights work?
In order to reach the edge of space, you need a space vehicle, typically rocket-powered, explains Mr Scatteia.
There are two different approaches to make spaceflights possible — the first method is where you use an actual rocket, like Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket shuttle, which “hops” up vertically, and then comes back down again and lands vertically, too.
Virgin Galactic, on the other hand, uses a carrier aircraft, the VMS Eve. It takes off like a regular aeroplane from an airport runway.
“The VMS Eve has two fuselages and in the middle between the two fuselages there is a sub-orbital vehicle, a space plane called VSS Unity, or SpaceShip Two,” says Mr Scatteia.
“The aircraft takes off, and when it [reaches] an altitude of around 50,000ft, the sub-orbital vehicle detaches from the carrier aircraft, the rocket turns on, and then the spaceplane goes up to an altitude of 70-90km.”
As the space plane travels up through the Earth’s amosphere to the edge of space, it accelerates, reaching speeds that are three times the speed of sound, before hitting the apex peak height of the journey where, for a few minutes, the space plane is in zero gravity.
And then, at 300,000ft, passengers get a stunning view of the Earth below and on the way back down, the space plane heads straight to the ground helped by gravity, with aerodynamic drag used to reduce speed and make for a gentle landing.
What does it feel like to be on a spaceflight?
On your way up, passengers will experience up to four times the force of the Earth’s gravity, known as 4G. This feeling is probably more intense on Blue Origin’s rocket shuttle than it is on Virgin Galactic’s spaceplane, which only heads up vertically from 50,000ft upwards.
Then, once you enter zero gravity, you are literally weightless. It is at this point that Virgin Galactic says you can unbuckle your seatbelt and float around the cabin for several minutes.
After enjoying the view and experiencing zero gravity, it’s time to buckle up again and, on the way back down, passengers will experience up to six times the Earth’s gravitational force, which is 6G.
A study published in Aerospace Medicine and Human Performance in May by the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority, with help from the Royal Air Force and King’s College London, looked at the physical and psychological impacts sub-orbital spaceflights would have on the human body.
The researchers found that G-forces could cause a rise in heart rate and blood pressure, a dip in blood oxygen and, for some people, their peripheral vision to “grey out” during periods of high G-force.
And study participants reported feeling a heavy sensation on their chests, finding it more difficult to breathe, which the researchers said could lead to less oxygen being inhaled and therefore affect the heart’s rhythm, as well as seeing blood begin to pool away from the brain.
However, the researchers said these effects did not last long. There was one case where a participant briefly lost consciousness, but with no lasting ill effects, and regained consciousness when the chair was tilted back slightly.
Mr Scatteia says the closest way to explain what it feels like to be on a spaceflight is to imagine what it feels like when you’re at the top of a rollercoaster at a theme park, just before you go down a sharp, vertical dive, and the feeling as you zoom downwards, aided by the Earth’s gravitational pull.
“It’s not exactly a comfortable ride, would be closer to [the feeling of] an extreme sport,” says Mr Scatteia. “But I don’t think there’s any permanent effect on people. When you [land] then you’re okay.”
What rights do I have as a spaceflight passenger?
So this is a tricky issue. You do not have the same consumer protection rights as someone who gets on an airplane, a train, a boat, or any other conventional vehicle on Earth.
The issue is that commercial spaceflight is still considered to be in the “experimental” phase, and so lawmakers around the world are still working on rules to protect consumers and work out liabilities, should something go wrong.
“It all started in 2004 when there was the Ansari X Prize, won by the team that became Virgin Galactic. People thought it would lead to routine space tourism flights, even point-to-point space transport, but in reality, it took much much longer... now we are in 2023, and this is where we are starting to see routine operations. It’s been nearly 20 years,” explains Mr Scatteia.
PwC did a study on sub-orbital flights back in 2012, when the scene seemed to be heating up, with lots of companies popping up and EU regulators considering introducing spaceflight regulation.
“Most of those companies don’t exist anymore,” explains Mr Scatteia.
At the moment, spaceflight in the US is governed by a “licensing regime” devised by the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA). It was only meant to last a few years while tests were ongoing, but because nothing happened for so long during the 2010s, this phase of much looser regulations was extended (see Virgin Galactic’s licence for SpaceShipTwo here).
“They couldn’t fully regulate this type of vehicle with safety standards as there was no vehicle concept, so they devised a licensing regime where companies could operate or carry on accepting payment from customers, not as actual customers, but more as a sort of test crew,” says Mr Scatteia.
While this might bring back awful recollections of the recent OceanGate submersible disaster, where OceanGate boss Stockton Rush classed all passengers as “mission specialists” who contributed money to fund their own missions, in order to swerve US safety laws about experimental vehicles, he says this is not the same situation with spaceflights.
“I don’t think there has been any corner that has been cut, and this is the reason why it took [almost] 20 years from 2004 till now to have commercial operations,” stresses Mr Scatteia, who added that in the aerospace and defence industry, which includes space, safety is first and foremost.
“The moment you have, say, a failure with loss of passenger lives, the whole business is doomed forever, no-one will ever go on it again. If something happens to either Virgin Galactic or Blue Origin, or even just to one of them, the other one would be done for.”
Can passengers call themselves ‘astronauts’?
Another issue is whether private citizens going on the spaceflights should be called “astronauts”, when they have no air force or actual space training.
“The moniker of astronaut, it doesn’t depend on training, the wings of astronaut depend on the altitude you reach. If you reach 90km, that altitude qualifies you to be called an ‘astronaut’. The first Virgin Galactic commercial spaceflight in July was not entitled to that moniker,” explains Mr Scatteia.
He adds that, since Blue Origin’s rocket shuttle goes higher than Virgin Galactic, past the 100km Kármán Line, there was a rivalry between them about whether passengers can call themselves actual astronauts, until regulators intervened. Now, such a title is only really for marketing purposes.
“The FAA intervened and said they can’t be called an ‘astronaut’ as they’re not serving the purpose... there is an official taxonomy saying they are not to be called this.”
