You are now free to move about the cosmos .… if you can afford it

THE bidding quickly climbed to $2 million (about R27m), then $2.2m. Soon it hit $2.8m, and finally climbed well past $3m.

The object in play wasn't an old-master painting or an heirloom diamond but rather a spot on an up-and-down trip to space that would last just 10 minutes.

In that time, however, the winner of the auction would have travelled in a rocket at three times the speed of sound to the edge of space alongside Jeff Bezos, whose Blue Origin space company promises startling views of Earth, glimpses of the cosmos and a rollicking, weightless ride “that will change how you see the world”.

The bidding for a seat on the July 20 launch will culminate today in a live Internet auction expected to drive the price even higher after the announcement on Monday that Bezos will be aboard the flight – the first with people after 15 previous uncrewed launches. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

The auction will have just a single winner. But the losers won’t be shut out of space travel; in a new era where wealth is as important as courage, there are still plenty of options in a new and expanding marketplace intended to make space accessible to civilians – or at least to the uber rich.

Forget luxury African safaris or Caribbean cruises on private chartered yachts. Space is quickly becoming the new destination for the wealthy, a market that analysts say could be worth billions in the years to come.

After years of delays and daunting setbacks, several companies are in various stages of signing up passengers, completing their test programmes and even training what will become a new generation of astronauts.

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic successfully completed its third human suborbital test flight last month and is looking to fly paying passengers early next year. Elon Musk’s Spacex, which flies much more powerful rockets that send spacecraft to orbit, has private astronaut flights on its manifest that could send as many as 20 private citizens to orbit over the next few years. That’s more astronauts than flew during Nasa’s Gemini program.

The trips aren’t cheap. Axiom Space, a Houston-based company that arranges training and all aspects of the flights, is charging as much as $55m for a week-long trip to the International Space Station. It’s booked four such flights on Spacex's Crew Dragon over the next couple of years.

Blue Origin hasn’t announced what it will charge for its relatively quick suborbital flights once ticket sales are live. Virgin Galactic was charging as much as $250 000 a seat on its Spaceshiptwo spaceplane and has a waiting list of about 600 passengers. And when it reopens sales this year, the ticket price is likely to rise to about $500 000 .

The market has the potential to be robust, according to the analysts. In a note to investors, Ken Herbert and Austin Moeller, analysts at Canaccord Genuity, wrote that the suborbital space tourism market could be worth $8 billion by 2030, with 1 million potential customers wealthy enough to afford the ticket and willing to go.

Despite delays from technical issues and a fatal crash that killed one of its pilots in 2016, “we expect a surge in orders” once Virgin Galactic is selling tickets again, they said. And the company, they noted, probably will get a lot of attention when Branson flies later this year and as celebrities start to go. Using data from a French consulting firm, the analysts said there are 19.6 million people worldwide with a net worth greater than $1 million.

“We believe that the life-changing experience and value proposition of travelling to the edge of the cosmos is like no other,” they wrote. “And there are likely many single-digit millionaires who would be willing to contribute a sizable portion of their assets to partake in a once-in-a-lifetime space odyssey.”

Flying from Spaceport America in the New Mexican desert, Virgin Galactic has for years been promising a luxurious experience beyond the flight itself. Virgin’s astronauts would ride around the spaceport in specially designed Land Rovers; be outfitted in custom spaceflight suits tailored by Underarmour; and be served postflight drinks such as the “Galactic Martini” and “Beyond the Clouds Cocktail”.

Blue Origin has made similar promises of a wondrous experience, especially as it seeks to up the bidding for its first flight in an effort that would benefit its non-profit, Club for the Future, which works to encourage students to pursue careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering and maths.

They’re not the first, though, to promise out-of-this-world rides. The Russian space agency flew seven wealthy people to space for some $20m each during the 2000s. And it is also sending up several private citizens in the coming months. In October, Yulia Peresild, a Russian actress, and Klim Shipenko, a film director, are scheduled to fly alongside Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov on a trip to the space station, where they will shoot scenes for a film.

Then, in December, Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire, is scheduled to fly on the Russian Soyuz with his production assistant, Yozo Hirano, who’ll document the experience on the station for Maezawa's Youtube channel. Previously, Maezawa had booked another flight, on Spacex’s Starship spacecraft, in a mission that would fly him and several other applicants in orbit around the moon. But clearly eager to get to space while Spacex works on developing Starship, he decided to take a trip to the space station with the Russians while he waits.

“I’m so curious, ‘what’s life like in space?’” he said in a statement released by Space Adventures, the Virginia firm that helps book seats on Russian missions. “So I am planning to find out on my own and share with the world on my Youtube channel.”

In some cases, the wealthy space travellers are opening up the frontier for others – raffling off seats or giving them away in competitions. On his trip around the moon, Maezawa had initially wanted to fly artists who would be inspired by the mission, but then he decided to pursue a TV show where he would seek a romantic partner with whom to share the flight.

Now, instead, he’s holding a competition for eight seats on the moon mission – an undertaking that, if it happens, would be the most ambitious mission civilian spaceflight ever.

“I want people from all kinds of backgrounds to join,” Maezawa said in a video released earlier this year. He said he was looking for people who “want to help people and contribute to society; you want to take your creative activity to the next level”.

Jared Isaacman, the billionaire founder of Shift4 Payments, also held a competition for two seats on a mission, scheduled for September, that would orbit the Earth in an effort to raise money for St Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

One went to Sian Proctor, an artist and explorer who spent more than 20 years as a science professor at South Mountain Community College in Phoenix, the other to Chris Sembroski, an engineer at Lockheed Martin. The final seat Isaacman gave to Hayley Arceneaux, a physician assistant at the hospital and a childhood cancer survivor.

Isaacman is an accomplished pilot who flies military and commercial jets and holds a couple of speed records. But he is not a professional astronaut, and the flight he is commanding would be the first time the crew would be comprised entirely of civilians.

Russia’s paid flights in the early 2000s were an effort to raise money for its struggling space programme, at a time when Nasa forbade the practice, saying spaceflight was too dangerous to be opened to ordinary people.

But in 2019, Nasa reversed course, throwing the doors open to the space station, at least for those who could afford it.

“That’s the dream, right? That space isn’t just for Nasa anymore, and I think that’s what we’re trying to do,” Kathy Lueders, who heads Nasa’s office of human spaceflight, said at a recent briefing with reporters. “Our goal is really to be able to give access to as many folks in space as much as possible so it’s kind of opening up opportunities for all of us.”

She acknowledged that for now only the super wealthy, or lucky, will have an opportunity to fly to the space station, which has cost taxpayers some $100bn.

But she said prices would likely come down as the companies fly more frequently.