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Study Shows Large Space Tourism Market
HobbySpacer writes: "A serious market study has finally been done on space tourism and it shows a substantial market, even for brief sub-orbital flights. The
Futron/Zogby study of high income individuals found that 19% would pay $100k for a sub-orbital flight. Furthermore, 7% would pay $20M to go to the Space Station (if they had the money.) The percentages go up if the prices could come down, especially with availability of private orbital facilities. With around 30 million high-net-worth households ($500,000+) in the US, this indicates a market of several million for suborbital on the short term and eventually for orbital. We can hope that like previous expensive luxuries, e.g. jet travel and ocean cruises, the wealthy will pull the prices down to a level reachable by the rest of us."
Furthermore, 7% would pay $20M to go to the Space Station (if they had the money.)
If I "had the money", I'd pay $3B for my own private space shuttle. Duh.
Was this study perchance done by the Center For Figuring Out Really Obvious Things? People want to see space? Whouda thunk it...
Shift happens. Fire it up.
The same Captain Obvious who came up with this earth-shattering observation?
I'm sure Admiral No Fucking Shit has his own 2 cents to contribute. Maybe he'll figure out now that people think that it would be cool to go back in time too.
I'd give my left nut for a space ship. More interesting would be a study of which body parts people would be willing to trade for the ability to take a weekend excursion to Mars.
~D
Space tourism is a great idea.
1. Space research programs are strapped for cash.
2. Rich people have lots of cash.
3. Space research has long-term, not-very-tangible goals.
4. People who have lots of cash generally made it by focussing on short-term, tangible goals. Therefore, they are not likely to spend money on space research.
5. However, "going into space" is immediate and extremely tangible, not to mention fun.
6. So rich people will spend their cash on space tourism. And the profits will go to space research. Great!
Most people with worths between 500K and 1000K would be insane to pay 100 grand for a sub-orbital flight.
Think about it this way: Most people's equity is in their house, which, for "wealthy" families, usually costs around 500K.
So maybe they have their mortgage half-paid-off (which is uncommon). That leaves 250K-750K of money. Again, most, i'd say 75% or so, of that is in a retirement account, or some other form of non-liquid asset.
So you have somewhere between 60K and 190K of liquid assets. Do you really want to spend half-to-all of your assets on a sub-orbital flight lasting several minutes, at most?
In my book, you'd have to be insane.
The "wealthy people" discussed here are probably in double digits of million dollars of assets, or at least $5M or so.
Either that, or the "researchers" just asked "would you do this if you had the cash?" which is, pretty much, a bull-shit question. Its like saying "would you buy 30 houses, if you had the cash?" The people who *actually* have the cash still don't consider themselves "rich" enough to have it, as wealthy people tend to invest their money.
As noted in the excellent book "The millionaire next door," high income, and especially high expenditures and consumption, or a "rich" lifestyle, almost never correlate to a large amount of assets. People who live such a lifestyle usually never save up enough to maintain a large amount of assets.
Still am sure there are thousands of people who would pay for this stuff. But it is definately NOT the incredibly large amount of people they make it out to be.
What about a Space lottery? You sell lottery tickets and the grand prize winner gets a space trip (assuming they qualify physically). Runners up get suborbital flights. The profits could fund other space programs.
Finally!! A lottery a self-respecting geek can play without feeling like a mouth-breathing idiot!
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
It was only 80 years ago that "horseless carriages" were the "rich-man's toy".
well, it seems that in the same vein. I tried to submit this earlier, but I presume that this article is the reason that it was rejected. :D
I found this while I was reading NASA Watch (a slashdot like site with space as it's main focus). It seems that they are Ebay auctioning off a trip to the International Space Station. Last I checked it was at $19 mil and hadn't quite met the reserve. Sounds like a market to me...
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
First of all, $500k isn't a high net worth, that's not even upper-middle class, it's just plain middle class. $500k is a guy with a house, a car, and not much else.
Secondly, the study itself was of people with $1m net worths, or $250k annual salaries, where did the submitter get that $500k figure anyway?
Lastly, a higher percentage of people said they'd pay $20m than is possible. Fewer than 7% of all people with a net worth > $1m have a net worth that would allow $20m to be spent on a vacation, which is contrary to what this study shows.
Who fucking cares?
This 1998 market study claimed a civilian space travel industgry was feasible. Lots of graphs.
On the same subject, Discovery or TLC ran a documentary last year that said commercial airliners within the next 30 years will be designed to fly to about 40-50,000 feet, refuel from a tanker, then climb steeply out of the atmosphere and coast to a landing. Passengers will be strapped in, no snacks, no potty break. Max trip time to anywhere in the world: 45 minutes. Now that's my kind of space travel.
So think twice before shelling out $98K for a suborbital flight. You'll be able to get your 20 minutes of weightlessness on a routine flight to Hawaii.
in the form of /. polls
How much are you willing to pay for a sub-orbital flight?
o Up to $10,000
o Up to $50,000
o Up to $100,000
o Pay? I didn't even pay for my OS!
o I wanna fly with CowboyNeal!
geek page at KY speaks
According to the current price on Ideosphere, the X-prize will be won around Feb 2005. See the XPRIZE claim for the full bidding history.
I personally think Feb 2005 is way optimistic, especially given the reusability requirement: the same craft must fly twice in a 14-day period. A private effort to get a single manned launch is tough enough -- 14 days to test, re-prep, and relaunch? Even NASA would have a tough time.
maybe i just missed it, since it is a rather lengthy description, but i didn't see anything that mentioned actually GOING to the ISS. it just talks about training and simulators and the like. i sure as hell wouldn't pay $20M to fly on a plane that *feels* like 0-g
I recently went to dinner with my father, he is a employee of Rocketdyne in California, he has spent the better part of his career working on things for the Shuttle. A few months ago when the launched he was invited to Canaveral to be honored for his work at the launch. To put it mildly he loves being onvolved with the shuttle project, and is very well off (but he doesn't break that 5 mill number you propose, maybe 2 or 3 at best).
So anyways back to the dinner, i had just read a story about the Russian 100k sub-orital trip deal, and asked him what he thought. I was pretty surprised to hear how interested he was in it, no doubt he wouldn't risk his life on some crackpot ride... but if there was one available with a fairly proven track record i now know he would jump on the opportunity.
This is a very well educated and well informed person when it comes to space flight, and he loves the idea. It doesn't surprise me one bit that it's a fairly common view.