In 2022, the era of comprehensive "space travel business" began, and human beings entered space.

65438+20221early October. In the outdoor exhibition area of Las Vegas International Convention and Exhibition Center, the main venue of CES (International Consumer Electronics Show) 2022, a particularly eye-catching booth appeared. This is the booth of Sierra Space, a space technology company headquartered in Nevada.

As shown in the picture, the company brought a full-scale model of the space shuttle "Dreamcatcher" to transport people and materials to the space station.

At the world's largest people's livelihood science and technology event "CES", the background of Serra Space's first exhibition is the big environmental changes around the commercial market of the universe.

During the Apollo program 50 or 60 years ago, launching rockets aimed at the moon brought huge development cost burden and risks directly related to human life. As a "major national project", the mission is centered on NASA.

But now, the main task has shifted to the multi-frequency and low-risk routine business of transporting personnel and materials to the International Space Station (ISS).

In order to reduce the overall cost of the aerospace industry, the US government is pushing the outsourcing business based on bidding from NASA to private enterprises, such as the Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Plan (CLD Plan).

Seeing this change in the business environment as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, including the expectation of future development prospects, Serra Space is the representative of a startup company full of ambitions for the aerospace industry.

Serra Space's "dream catcher" is 9 meters long, only one-third the size of the previous space shuttle. Launched by a vertical rocket and landed on the runway when returning, it can be used for more than 15 times, which has many similarities with the space shuttle in technology and application. It is reported that Sierra Space has signed a contract with NASA to transport materials to the International Space Station and plans to make its first flight after the second half of 2022.

In addition, Serra Space also cooperated with Blue Origin (an aerospace manufacturer and space transportation service company founded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos), which was successful in space travel in July 20021year. It announced the plan to build and operate the newly developed space station "Orbital Reef" from 265438 to the end of 1920s.

"Orbital Reef" will replace the aging International Space Station and become one of the driving forces of the civil space station supported by NASA.

In the near future, the Serra space project will use the "dream catcher" to transport materials to the "orbital reef", and use the commercial basis of b2b to transport private space tourists to achieve profitability.

Then, although they are all space travel businesses, they also have various services. The services provided now, including those planned to be provided in the future, are summarized in the following table with the axis of "distance from the surface", as well as the main business companies and service procedures that carry out space travel business above 100km (defined as the "universe" above the surface height 100km).

The trip of "Earth Low Orbit Experience" and the trip of "Zero Gravity Experience Near the Universe Realm" on Shallow Red Online have been included in the service category. The "Mars Experience" and "Moon Experience" with high technical challenges displayed on a white background, and the "Flying Experience Across the Universe" developed by a special supersonic body that needs to accommodate a large number of people are all areas where services are planned to be introduced in the future.

First of all, the "Earth Low Orbit Experience" service that Serra Space hopes to enter is in cooperation with Space Exploration Technology Company and Space Exploration Company (1998, a travel company founded by entrepreneur Eric Anderson), which has entered the market and attracted people's attention with good performance.

The idea is to send private travelers to the International Space Station, stay for 8 to 12 days in a way that does not interfere with the work of astronauts from various countries working in the International Space Station, and then return to earth safely.

By the way, unlike the reusable Falcon rocket used by Space Exploration Technologies, the Russian Soyuz rocket was used for space exploration.

Interesting travel expenses, each tourist, space exploration technology company 5.5 billion dollars and space exploration 3.7 billion dollars, are very expensive.

In addition, the journey of "weightless experience close to the universe" is also famous for the origin of blue and the service of Virgin Galactic. The most wonderful 3 4 minutes of all travel time can experience weightlessness.

The travel modes of the two companies are in sharp contrast. Virgin Galactic's small spaceship "VSS Unity" (8 seats) climbed vertically into outer space like an ordinary plane, began to descend when it reached a height of 80 kilometers, then returned to normal flight mode, and finally stayed on the runway like an ordinary plane. The origin of blue, like Space X, is to use the reusable rocket "New Shepard" to reach outer space once, and then release the crew cabin that can accommodate six people. This is an all-round course trip, where you can "feel" its free fall, open the parachute and return to the ground through automatic control.

Jeff Bezos and richard branson both made public test flights in July last year, and both of them successfully traveled in space.

At first, Virgin Galactic set the travel expenses at $250,000 and the blue origin at $200,000, but when Virgin Galactic resumed booking sales last August, it announced that it would increase to $450,000, about twice the original price. This price increase may also affect the price setting of blue origin.

On the other hand, the journey of "crossing space" may become a revolutionary means of movement, and hypersonic flight can be realized by flying in space without air resistance.

Space Exploration Technology Company said that although the test flight has just begun, it has developed a space shuttle that can carry 100 people, shortening the current time from new york to Shanghai from 15 hours to 39 minutes.

Stratolaunch Systems, another aerospace company (a space transportation company with air-launched rockets founded by Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, etc.), uses a catamaran giant jet plane with a wing width of about1.20m to drag the space plane into the sky and shoot it out. The company is developing a unique service to transport a large number of passengers at the hypersonic speed of Mach 6, and plans to use an aircraft called Talon-A for test flight before the end of 2022.

The price list (travel fare) of Space Exploration Technology Company and Stratolaunch Systems has not been published, but if the future fare can be reduced to the current first-class fare level of airlines (60,000 yuan to 1.2 million yuan), the journey of "experiencing flying across the universe" may become a killer service and promote the existing aviation business.

In front of space travel around low earth orbit, there are more formal "moon experience" travel and "Mars experience" travel (not only travel, but also immigration).

In the "Al-themis Plan", NASA proposed to realize manned exploration of the moon by 2025, and recently proposed to realize manned exploration of Mars by 2040.

Private space travel to the moon and Mars may continue to develop, in the form of catching up with private space travel business companies that won the NASA project through bidding.

Taking lunar exploration as an example, unmanned "Artemis 1" will be implemented this spring and summer, and manned "Artemis 2" will be implemented in 2023.

Pioneers such as Houston, Texas-based private space infrastructure development company, Space Exploration Technology Company and Axiom Space will also become the BtoB of NASA in the "Mars Experience" trip. Establish technology and know-how by accepting outsourcing, and immediately expand the business foundation from scientific exploration to private space travel BtoC service.

The last sentence. Space travel provides us with a bright and dreamy topic of "expanding the possibility of human existence". Never let your dreams stay in your dreams forever.