Analysis of the similarities and differences between aviation tourism and suborbital tourism development histories

摘要

In this paper, it was assumed that the developments of aviation tourism and suborbital space tourism (SST, or simply suborbital tourism) were stimulated by the Orteig Prize and Lindbergh's flight in 1927 and the Ansari X Prize and SpaceShipOne's flight in 2004, respectively. The purposes of this paper are to study the similarities and differences between the development histories of SST and aviation tourism by investigating the Orteig Prize and Ansari X Prize, and then to discuss the future prospects of SST from the current status. Lindberg's solo non-stop trans-Atlantic flight in 1927 was encouraged by the Orteig prize founded in 1919, while the Virgin Galactic's successful suborbital space flights in 2004 was motivated by the Ansari X Prize established in 1996. Both occurrences were 8 years from the initial announcements of the prizes and were privately founded. After WWI, aviation industry was already very prosperous in the private sector. Lindbergh's flight encouraged people started to promote aviation industry deliberately, induced enormous general public to take part air travel seriously although they were still strongly doubtful on it. After SpaceShipOne's winning, many private companies without much experience joined the development of SST. But obviously the energy and momentum established were not enough. In particular, the first SpaceShipTwo crashed in October 2014 during test flight. Currently, Blue Origin, XCOR and Virgin Galactic remain in the market. It is hopeful that the commercial SST could be realized within several years but with less prosperous prospects as was expected.