Space Tourism - a new Playground for the Super-Rich? The year 2021 opened a new area of space travel: space tourism. Orbital hotels for tourists were an integral part of the future visions of the 1960s. After the premiere of the science fiction film "2001 - A Space Odyssey" in 1968, both the airline Pan Am and the Hilton hotels offered reservations for private vacations in orbit - of course as a marketing campaign with no real background. The X-Prize of 10 million dollars awarded in 1996 for the first flight into space with a privately developed and reusable spaceship can be seen as the starting point for today's tourist flights. Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne spacecraft flew twice into space at the end of 2004 and won the award. Besides the pilot, there were no passengers on board, but ballast for safety reasons.    As early as 1990, a Japanese journalist had spent a few days on the Russian Mir space station. His television-company had paid for the flight. After that, Russia saw a source of money in such passenger flights. In 2001, the US entrepreneur Dennis Tito flew into space with a Russian Soyuz capsule at his own expense. He was followed by some wealthy tourists in other Soyuz. However, one cannot speak of tourist flights here, as Russia simply rented one of three seats in the Soyuz to interested parties from the West. In orbit or sub-orbital? The motivations of space tourists may be diverse - but one thing will be present in addition to the thirst for adventure: The feeling of belonging to the exclusive group of people, the astronauts, who have seen the earth from very high up. This is possible with comparatively little effort in that the passenger is briefly transported above a height that is recognized as the boundary to space. Such parabolic flights (or sub- orbital flights) must exceed the height of 80 kilometers or 50 miles. This is where the mesosphere ends and the thermosphere begins, commonly referred to as the boundary to space. Others set this limit in 100 km, but there is no binding value.    With today's providers, a passenger is only between one to four minutes in space with up to five minutes of weightlessness. A completely different effort is necessary for flights into earth orbit. Here the tourist spaceship orbits the earth about every 90 minutes. The tourists can really feel like astronauts here. Weightlessness prevails throughout the day-long flight. While the landing after sub-orbital flights takes place without the dangerous re-entry into the earth's atmosphere, orbital tourists land like other professional space travelers at very high speed by briefly becoming a ball of fire with their capsule. The first space-tourism airlines  As the successor to the X-Prize winner, Virgin Galactic of the British entrepreneur Richard Branson worked from 2004 on the marketing of the improved spaceplane SpaceShipTwo. Two pilots can bring six passengers here on a suborbital flight up to an altitude of over 80 km. A carrier aircraft takes the spaceplane to an altitude of around 15 km for launch. Virgin Galactic's first passenger flight took place on July 11, 2021 with four passengers on board, including Richard Branson. The landing was done with wings like an airplane.    Just a few days later, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin company took off on July 20, 2021 with the New Shepard rocket with four tourists, including the company founder Bezos, on a sub-orbital flight perpendicular to an altitude of over 100 km. On board was the 82-year-old female pilot Wally Funk, an astronaut candidate from the Mercury program of the 1960s, who was not allowed to fly at the time. The New Shepard rocket lands vertically again after the flight and is reusable. The capsule separates from the missile and lands on parachutes.    Space X's tourism flights began on September 16, 2021 with the spaceship Inspiration4. Four passengers in a modified Dragon capsule orbited the earth for three days at an altitude of 580 km. The spaceship flies in automatic mode, control by the occupants is not provided. What is the purpose of these flights? First and foremost, these space airlines have the same goal as an airline: make money. They are companies that offer a special service for customers. Similar to a parachute tandem jump, a musical performance, a trip to deep sea fishing or a trip to whale watching in Antarctica. In addition, the companies emphasize that they want to inspire people to deal with space travel. The occasional transport of smaller payloads for research programs is also mentioned as a company purpose.    What the companies do not notice is that they provide a slow shift in the technical level in space travel from flights with extremely high risk towards a manageable transport system. What does a space ticket cost? One accusation quickly voiced in the media was that these flights are only affordable for the super-rich and therefore nothing more than a new hobby for people who already have everything. Blue Origin's sub-orbital flight is expected to cost over $ 250,000 per person in 2021. A SpaceShipTwo flight was set at $ 450,000 by Virgin Galactic in 2021. Space X has not yet commented on the costs in 2021, but is expected to be 50 to 60 million dollars per seat for a multi-day orbital flight. Included in the price is the “astronaut training”, which takes place within a few days at Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin and takes a few months at Space X. It is generally assumed that the tickets will become much cheaper over the years and as new providers enter the market. Air fares, which have fallen sharply since the establishment of scheduled air traffic, are used as an example. Toys of the Super-Rich For many people, including the author, a flight as a space tourist is not affordable. But there are enough people in the world whose account balance allows such an excursion. I do not agree with the opinion that this behavior is immoral. With an annual income of $ 34,000, you belong to the richest one percent of the world's population - while most of the people on earth must manage their life on an annual income of around $ 5,000, many even less than $ 1,000 a year. From this perspective, for example, a motorcycle for joy-rides in the summer months or a new iPhone are useless luxuries. This money could also be used differently. The immoral rich are always the other ... Effects of space tourism The beginning of private flights into space has brought space travel - in a positive and negative sense - back into the headlines. The author is of the opinion that, in retrospect, space travel and artificial intelligence will be considered the most important achievements of mankind in a few thousand years. In addition to short-term benefits, such as creating thousands of high-quality jobs and increasing the level of flight-safety, there will also be long-term benefits from private space travel. Private orbital flights and ultimately also private space stations will open up a new economic area. In the long term, this will promote the colonization of near-Earth space and later of the Moon and Mars. New production processes in weightlessness will produce new materials and research results.    The European space agency ESA issued a call for tenders to search for new astronauts in 2021. For the first time, people with disabilities were given the opportunity to apply for space flights. Space X already implemented this on the first passenger flight in 2021. Doctor Hayley Arceneaux beat bone cancer as a child, but had one leg amputated. She flew the Dragon capsule with a prosthetic leg and sees herself as an example of never giving up. In addition, she collected donations for a children's clinic. The future of passenger flights The number of people who have ventured into space on commercial flights will soon exceed that of professional astronauts. New providers will enter the tourism business and flight prices will fall. Media interest will cool off quickly. Sub-orbital flights will soon no longer be as attractive as they were in the early days. With the establishment of space stations for tourists, the high-priced flight business will focus on orbit.    One development that has so far affected every new technology will hopefully not occur in private space travel: a flight disaster with the loss of the crew. This occurred twice in 135 flights on the Space Shuttle. The causes were too complex to be discussed here. In addition to technology, the management in private companies is primarily responsible for deciding on safety and not profit in case of doubt. Private opinion of Uwe W. Jack

Blue Origin’s New Shepard Rocket lifts off with four passengers. (click to enlarge)

The hot end of New Shepard. The engine burns oxygen and hydrogen, producing pure water. (click to enlarge)

After the flight, New Shepard’s booster lands near the launch site. (click to enlarge)

After touch down of the maidenflight, Jeff Bezos (with hat) is welcomed by his wife. Former Mercury-astronaut-candidate Wally Funk is about to leave the capsule. (click to enlarge)

Virgin Galactic’s space plane SpaceShipTwo - a beautiful design! (click to enlarge)

An enthusiastic Richard Branson floates inside SpaceShipTwo in the weightless flight phase. (click to enlarge)

The Dragon capsule of Space X awaits take off at the coast of Florida. (click to enlarge)

The passengers of the Dragon capsule “inspiration4” during training. Second from right is Hayley Arceneaux, the first disabled person in space. (click to enlarge)