2009-2019: space tourism's lost decade

Regardless of the best efforts of Richard Branson and a handful of other space entrepreneurs, space tourism is shutting down, at least for the next decade.

The Russians are shutting down their space tourist program at the end of 2009, 8 years and 6 passengers after Dennis Tito their first paying passenger. At $20m a shot, it was rather expensive for the average Joe, but there you go.

In 2010, at the same time that Russia shuts down their tourist program, the US will not have any space-faring vehicle available as the Space Shuttle goes into retirement. The US hope to bring their new shuttle online in 2015, but there are no guarantees regardless of Obama's guarantees that all will be well on the space front.

The UAE and Singapore have announced their own spaceports, but check either websites, and the last updates date from 2006 and nothing since then.

China has started building its own space station(s), but have no plans for testing their first unmanned modules before 2011 - and astronauts would come later - whereas space tourism remains a vague notion in the future, ie. 10+ years into the future, if you know how the Chinese government manages its announcements on large projects. So nothing from the Chinese until 2019, even though their container-style space stations will probably be the way of the future.

So this is sizing up to be the lost decade for space tourism, although Virgin Galactic-like trips up into the atmosphere for $200k a pop and better materials/suits via nanotechnology research may improve the lot of future generations going up in the 2020s.