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Everything you need to know about space travel (almost)

We're a long way from home...

Paul Parsons

When did we first start exploring space?

The first human-made object to go into space was a German V2 missile , launched on a test flight in 1942. Although uncrewed, it reached an altitude of 189km (117 miles).

Former Nazi rocket scientists were later recruited by both America and Russia (often at gunpoint in the latter case), where they were instrumental in developing Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) – rockets capable of carrying nuclear weapons from one side of the planet to the other.

It was these super-missiles that formed the basis for the space programmes of both post-war superpowers. As it happened, Russia was the first to reach Earth orbit, when it launched the uncrewed Sputnik 1 in October 1957, followed a month later by Sputnik 2, carrying the dog Laika – the first live animal in space.

The USA sent its first uncrewed satellite, Explorer 1, into orbit soon after, in January 1958. A slew of robotic spaceflights followed, from both sides of the Atlantic, before Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin piloted Vostok 1 into orbit on 12 April 1961, to become the first human being in space . And from there the space race proper began, culminating in Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin becoming the first people to walk on the Moon as part of NASA's Apollo programme .

Why is space travel important?

Space exploration is the future. It satisfies the human urge to explore and to travel, and in the years and decades to come it could even provide our species with new places to call home – especially relevant now, as Earth becomes increasingly crowded .

Extending our reach into space is also necessary for the advancement of science. Space telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope and probes to the distant worlds of the Solar System are continually updating, and occasionally revolutionising, our understanding of astronomy and physics.

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But there are also some very practical reasons, such as mining asteroids for materials that are extremely rare here on Earth.

One example is the huge reserve of the chemical isotope helium-3 thought to be locked away in the soil on the surface of the Moon . This isotope is a potential fuel for future nuclear fusion reactors – power stations that tap into the same source of energy as the Sun. Unlike other fusion fuels, helium-3 gives off no hard-to-contain and deadly neutron radiation.

However, for this to happen the first challenge to overcome is how to build a base on the Moon. In 2019, China's Chang’e 4 mission marked the beginning of a new space race to conquer the Moon, signalling their intent to build a permanent lunar base , while the NASA Artemis mission plans to build a space station, called Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway , providing a platform to ferry astronauts to the Moon's surface.

Could humans travel into interstellar space and how would we get there?

It’s entirely feasible that human explorers will visit the furthest reaches of our Solar System. The stars, however, are another matter. Interstellar space is so vast that it takes light – the fastest thing we know of in the Universe – years, centuries and millennia to traverse it. Faster-than-light travel may be possible one day, but is unlikely to become a reality in our lifetimes.

It’s not impossible that humans might one day cross this cosmic gulf, though it won’t be easy. The combustion-powered rocket engines of today certainly aren’t up to the job – they just don’t use fuel efficiently enough. Instead, interstellar spacecraft may create a rocket-like propulsion jet using electric and magnetic fields. This so-called ‘ ion drive ’ technology has already been tested aboard uncrewed Solar System probes.

Another possibility is to push spacecraft off towards the stars using the light from a high-powered laser . A consortium of scientists calling themselves Breakthrough Starshot is already planning to send a flotilla of tiny robotic probes to our nearest star, Proxima Centauri, using just this method.

Though whether human astronauts could survive such punishing acceleration, or the decades-long journey through deep space, remains to be seen.

How do we benefit from space exploration?

Pushing forward the frontiers of science is the stated goal of many space missions . But even the development of space travel technology itself can lead to unintended yet beneficial ‘spin-off’ technologies with some very down-to-earth applications.

Notable spin-offs from the US space programme, NASA, include memory foam mattresses, artificial hearts, and the lubricant spray WD-40. Doubtless, there are many more to come.

Read more about space exploration:

• The next giant leaps: The UK missions getting us to the Moon
• Move over, Mars: why we should look further afield for future human colonies
• Everything you need to know about the Voyager mission
• 6 out-of-this-world experiments recreating space on Earth

Space exploration also instils a sense of wonder, it reminds us that there are issues beyond our humdrum planet and its petty squabbles, and without doubt it helps to inspire each new generation of young scientists. It’s also an insurance policy. We’re now all too aware that global calamities can and do happen – for instance, climate change and the giant asteroid that smashed into the Earth 65 million years ago, leading to the total extinction of the dinosaurs .

The lesson for the human species is that we keep all our eggs in one basket at our peril. On the other hand, a healthy space programme, and the means to travel to other worlds, gives us an out.

Is space travel dangerous?

In short, yes – very. Reaching orbit means accelerating up to around 28,000kph (17,000mph, or 22 times the speed of sound ). If anything goes wrong at that speed, it’s seldom good news.

Then there’s the growing cloud of space junk to contend with in Earth's orbit – defunct satellites, discarded rocket stages and other detritus – all moving just as fast. A five-gram bolt hitting at orbital speed packs as much energy as a 200kg weight dropped from the top of an 18-storey building.

And getting to space is just the start of the danger. The principal hazard once there is cancer-producing radiation – the typical dose from one day in space is equivalent to what you’d receive over an entire year back on Earth, thanks to the planet’s atmosphere and protective magnetic field.

Add to that the icy cold airless vacuum , the need to bring all your own food and water, plus the effects of long-duration weightlessness on bone density, the brain and muscular condition – including that of the heart – and it soon becomes clear that venturing into space really isn’t for the faint-hearted.

When will space travel be available to everyone?

It’s already happening – that is, assuming your pockets are deep enough. The first self-funded ‘space tourist’ was US businessman Dennis Tito, who in 2001 spent a week aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for the cool sum of $20m (£15m).

Virgin Galactic has long been promising to take customers on short sub-orbital hops into space – where passengers get to experience rocket propulsion and several minutes of weightlessness, before gliding back to a runway landing on Earth, all for $250k (£190k). In late July 2020, the company unveiled the finished cabin in its SpaceShipTwo vehicle, suggesting that commercial spaceflights may begin shortly.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s SpaceX , which in May 2020 became the first private company to launch a human crew to Earth orbit aboard the Crew Dragon , plans to offer stays on the ISS for $35k (£27k) per night. SpaceX is now prototyping its huge Starship vehicle , which is designed to take 100 passengers from Earth to as far afield as Mars for around $20k (£15k) per head. Musk stated in January that he hoped to be operating 1,000 Starships by 2050.

10 Short Lessons in Space Travel by Paul Parsons is out now (£9.99, Michael O'Mara)

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The future of spaceflight—from orbital vacations to humans on Mars

NASA aims to travel to the moon again—and beyond. Here’s a look at the 21st-century race to send humans into space.

Welcome to the 21st-century space race, one that could potentially lead to 10-minute space vacations, orbiting space hotels , and humans on Mars. Now, instead of warring superpowers battling for dominance in orbit, private companies are competing to make space travel easier and more affordable. This year, SpaceX achieved a major milestone— launching humans to the International Space Station (ISS) from the United States —but additional goalposts are on the star-studded horizon.

Private spaceflight

Private spaceflight is not a new concept . In the United States, commercial companies played a role in the aerospace industry right from the start: Since the 1960s, NASA has relied on private contractors to build spacecraft for every major human spaceflight program, starting with Project Mercury and continuing until the present.

Today, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is expanding on the agency’s relationship with private companies. Through it, NASA is relying on SpaceX and Boeing to build spacecraft capable of carrying humans into orbit. Once those vehicles are built, both companies retain ownership and control of the craft, and NASA can send astronauts into space for a fraction of the cost of a seat on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft.

SpaceX, which established a new paradigm by developing reusable rockets , has been running regular cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station since 2012. And in May 2020, the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft carried NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the ISS , becoming the first crewed mission to launch from the United States in nearly a decade. The mission, called Demo-2, is scheduled to return to Earth in August. Boeing is currently developing its Starliner spacecraft and hopes to begin carrying astronauts to the ISS in 2021.

Other companies, such as Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic , are specializing in sub-orbital space tourism. Test launch video from inside the cabin of Blue Origin’s New Shepard shows off breathtaking views of our planet and a relatively calm journey for its first passenger, a test dummy cleverly dubbed “Mannequin Skywalker.” Virgin Galactic is running test flights on its sub-orbital spaceplane , which will offer paying customers roughly six minutes of weightlessness during its journey through Earth’s atmosphere.

With these and other spacecraft in the pipeline, countless dreams of zero-gravity somersaults could soon become a reality—at least for passengers able to pay the hefty sums for the experience.

Early U.S. Spaceflight

Looking to the moon

Moon missions are essential to the exploration of more distant worlds. After a long hiatus from the lunar neighborhood, NASA is again setting its sights on Earth’s nearest celestial neighbor with an ambitious plan to place a space station in lunar orbit sometime in the next decade. Sooner, though, the agency’s Artemis program , a sister to the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s, is aiming to put the first woman (and the next man) on the lunar surface by 2024.

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Extended lunar stays build the experience and expertise needed for the long-term space missions required to visit other planets. As well, the moon may also be used as a forward base of operations from which humans learn how to replenish essential supplies, such as rocket fuel and oxygen, by creating them from local material.

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Such skills are crucial for the future expansion of human presence into deeper space, which demands more independence from Earth-based resources. And although humans have visited the moon before, the cratered sphere still harbors its own scientific mysteries to be explored—including the presence and extent of water ice near the moon's south pole, which is one of the top target destinations for space exploration .

NASA is also enlisting the private sector to help it reach the moon. It has awarded three contracts to private companies working on developing human-rated lunar landers—including both Blue Origin and SpaceX. But the backbone of the Artemis program relies on a brand new, state-of-the-art spacecraft called Orion .

Archival Photos of Spaceflight

Currently being built and tested, Orion—like Crew Dragon and Starliner—is a space capsule similar to the spacecraft of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, as well as Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft. But the Orion capsule is larger and can accommodate a four-person crew. And even though it has a somewhat retro design, the capsule concept is considered to be safer and more reliable than NASA’s space shuttle—a revolutionary vehicle for its time, but one that couldn’t fly beyond Earth’s orbit and suffered catastrophic failures.

Capsules, on the other hand, offer launch-abort capabilities that can protect astronauts in case of a rocket malfunction. And, their weight and design mean they can also travel beyond Earth’s immediate neighborhood, potentially ferrying humans to the moon, Mars, and beyond.

A new era in spaceflight

By moving into orbit with its Commercial Crew Program and partnering with private companies to reach the lunar surface, NASA hopes to change the economics of spaceflight by increasing competition and driving down costs. If space travel truly does become cheaper and more accessible, it’s possible that private citizens will routinely visit space and gaze upon our blue, watery home world—either from space capsules, space stations, or even space hotels like the inflatable habitats Bigelow Aerospace intends to build .

The United States isn’t the only country with its eyes on the sky. Russia regularly launches humans to the International Space Station aboard its Soyuz spacecraft. China is planning a large, multi-module space station capable of housing three taikonauts, and has already launched two orbiting test vehicles—Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2, both of which safely burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere after several years in space.

Now, more than a dozen countries have the ability to launch rockets into Earth orbit. A half-dozen space agencies have designed spacecraft that shed the shackles of Earth’s gravity and traveled to the moon or Mars. And if all goes well, the United Arab Emirates will join that list in the summer of 2020 when its Hope spacecraft heads to the red planet . While there are no plans yet to send humans to Mars, these missions—and the discoveries that will come out of them—may help pave the way.

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March 6, 2020

Do We Really Need to Send Humans into Space?

Automated spacecraft cost far less; they’re getting more capable every year; and if they fail, nobody dies

By Donald Goldsmith & Martin Rees

The Mars 2020 Rover.

NASA and JPL-Caltech

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American

What future lies ahead for humans in space? Last year, the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing found a host of private and governmental projects that aim to send astronauts far beyond the near-Earth orbits that have limited human space exploration since 1972. China, which landed the first spacecraft on the lunar far side in 2019, has plans to place astronauts to the moon. India, which crashed a lander on the moon in 2019 , dreams of doing likewise. Russia, which doesn’t seem to have much of an ongoing astronaut program, still provides the rockets and launch facilities that provide astronauts with access to the International Space Station. The Trump administration proposes to create a lunar base as a key step in sending astronauts to Mars. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have spent large sums on future human space missions. Indeed, Musk has already created a thriving rocket business, which NASA uses to resupply the Space Station, 250 miles above Earth’s surface.

What benefits will flow from these efforts to send humans much farther into space? As children of the 1950s, we were thrilled and inspired by the satellites that began to circle Earth in 1957, the first astronauts—who followed similar paths in the 1960s and made the first spacewalk in 1965—and what turned out to be the culmination of human spaceflight: NASA’s six astronaut explorations of the lunar surface from 1969 through 1972. Beyond any scientific returns, these efforts elevated the human spirit, reaching a peak on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong set humanity’s first footprints on the moon. During the 1960s, we became astronomers with a deep passion to explore the cosmos.

But the past five decades have taught a clear lesson about how best to explore the cosmos. People venturing into space are fragile: They require a continuous supply of oxygen, water, food and shelter. They must endure long intervals of weightlessness. Their physical capabilities remain constant across generations. And their loss, when it occurs, casts a pall over our would-be joy of identifying with their exploration. In contrast, automated spacecraft require only a power supply. They cost far less than humans do, and we know how to improve them every year. And if they fail, we lose only dollars and scientific results.

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Since the first moon landing, we have sent several hundred probes throughout the solar system, from innermost Mercury to Arrokoth (previously nicknamed “Ultima Thule”), a planetesimal orbiting far beyond Pluto. Spacecraft have landed on Mercury, Venus and Mars, spent years in orbit around Jupiter and Saturn, and surveyed Uranus and Neptune. And the Japanese Hayabusa2 spacecraft will soon pass by Earth to release a capsule with material from the asteroid Ryugu, one of the oldest members of the solar system. Multiple lunar missions have mapped the moon’s far side, detected the gravitational anomalies that make the “man in the moon” always face Earth and discovered huge amounts of water frozen in the soil at the lunar poles.

Limited to low-Earth orbits, astronauts have basically performed extensive experiments on the hazards and requirements of living in space-bound habitats. By far, the finest achievement of humans in space has been the five servicing missions that allowed astronauts to repair instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope, which orbits Earth at the maximum altitude that the now defunct Space Shuttle could carry it to. Astronomers, who cheered these efforts more than anyone, remained deeply aware of an ironic fact: Hubble suffers from close proximity to our planet, whose reflected and emitted radiation greatly hampers the telescope’s ability to peer clearly and deeply into space. The James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to supplant the now creaky Hubble next year, will be directed to the much more astronomically favored “L2 point” (for second Lagrange point), a million miles from Earth. Spacecraft at L2 can easily maintain a stable orbit, avoiding the slow drift that gravitational tugs from the sun and moon produce elsewhere. Astronomers have already maintained spacecraft at L2 to observe the cosmos in infrared, ultraviolet and x-radiation, unaffected by interference from our own planet.

Why, then, should we not expect future astronauts, if called upon, to repair one of the numerous space-borne instruments to be sent to L2? An astronaut expedition to repair one of these great observatories at L2 would involve at least as much complexity as a landing on the moon—and possibly a greater expense than the creation and launch of a new and improved observational platform. In fact, the missions to repair the Hubble telescope cost significantly more than replacing it with a newer and better version. But these missions elevated our spirits, whereas writing off the telescope would have been a profound downer—a reminder that public opinion, which would have scorned the latter action while celebrating the former, understandably plays a crucial role in determining what our government chooses to do.

The contrast between astronaut and automated space missions will grow ever stronger as we improve our miniaturization, virtual-reality and artificial-intelligence capabilities. Today a trained geologist on the moon can perform as well as a robotic explorer, but the future of geologic investigation of other worlds lies with highly improved versions of our Mars rovers. These explorers will deploy numerous tools to probe rocks and minerals, using a memory equal—and soon superior—to any human’s. They will traverse the lunar or Martian surface for decades, continuously learning about the topography, seismographic activity and distribution of geologic strata in bulk and in detail. Conceptually similar robots will eventually be able to repair spacecraft at the L2 point, while others could construct complex structures in space, including an array of radio telescopes on the radio-quiet far side of the moon.

The fundamental issue of sending humans into the cosmos asks not how easily astronauts can repair instruments in deep space, how quickly they can land on the moon and construct a base there, or why they should travel to Mars and attempt to create a habitat there. Instead it queries, Why should we do any of this? Four major motivations deserve special attention as answers to this question.

Uplifting the human spirit . Sending humans into space adds glory to our lives. Overcoming the manifold challenges to long-term spaceflight inspires and delights us. Almost everyone naturally responds to heroic accomplishments, and many of us would regard a human landing on Mars as a paramount achievement of our species. But to many scientists, and to some among the public, such potent reactions fail to justify the costs and dangers of these missions.

We should note that several other motivations lie behind the push for astronaut expeditions to our celestial neighbors. These include the desire to outdo our rivals, the belief that space offers an eventual refuge from a debilitated Earth and an eagerness to exploit raw materials in the nearby solar system. Each of these arguments, in our opinion, favor expeditions not with humans but with our ever improved spacecraft and robot explorers—at least until the habitats for the refuge of a chosen population are ready.

National pride . The cold war argument that the Russians could “seize the high ground” by establishing a lunar base never made sense, because any nation seeking to use space to launch weapons would attempt to do so close to Earth, not from a quarter-million miles away. There remains the pride that a nation may feel from sending the first humans to other worlds, as when President Donald Trump exalts a future “when American astronauts will plant our beautiful Stars and Stripes on the surface of Mars,” adding the pride of ownership to the thrill of human achievement.

Human survival . Shortly before his death in 2018, Stephen Hawking stated that “spreading out may be the only thing that saves us from ourselves. I am convinced that humans need to leave Earth.” More recently, Bezos has said that humans need space travel because “we are in the process of destroying this planet.” Among other outcomes, he envisions giant space colonies that would each allow millions of people to live in space.

To their enthusiasts, giant space colonies and human habitats on Mars offer not only sites to develop a better society but also places where we may modify humans themselves, partly for adaptation to the lower gravity on Mars or, in many scenarios, to the artificial gravitational force produced within the enormous rotating wheel of a million-person “posthuman environment,” where genetic engineering could attempt to reduce diseases and prolong human life.

Such future plans appeal to those who see Earth’s future as deeply uncertain or even hopeless. A moment’s thought, however, tends to reveal that (a) the notion that we can learn from our errors on Earth in order to survive in space involves pie-in-the-sky optimism and (b) the billions of people to be left behind deserve greater consideration. If we can’t solve humanity’s problem on our home planet, we seem highly unlikely to be able to do so by establishing ourselves in space.

Raw materials . Although less cited in the wider world, a great incentive for reaching nearby solar system objects springs from an old-fashioned, solid desire: the quest for raw materials for profit. One of the asserted justifications for sending humans back to the moon focuses on their potential for harvesting helium-3, a rare isotope of helium. Unlike those of helium-4, the far more common stable isotope of the element, helium-3 nuclei will fuse readily once they reach a sufficiently high temperature. Because this fusion releases large amounts of energy but no radioactive by-products, helium-3 nuclei could provide an almost ideal nuclear fuel. On Earth, helium-3 nuclei furnish only about one one-millionth of already scarce helium nuclei, but their relative abundance in lunar soil rises 100 times higher. Visionaries propose a future society that runs on helium-3 nuclei from the moon, which contains enough of these nuclei to provide many centuries of the world’s current power consumption.

The asteroids likewise offer a road to wealth. Although most asteroids have a composition that resembles Earth’s, a few of them consist largely of metals such as iron, nickel and cobalt—together with a much smaller amount of silver, gold and platinum. A metal-rich asteroid that is only the size of a house would contain a million pounds of metal, including 100 pounds of platinum, gold and other rare metals. We can imagine future space missions that use the more abundant minerals for the construction of mining colonies but that draw the bulk of their profits from the return of the most valuable metals to Earth.

Do any existing international agreements deal with these issues? In 1967 several countries ratified the United Nations’ Outer Space Treaty, whose full formal title includes “the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies.” The 100-plus nations that ratified this treaty include all those likely to carry out space exploration during the coming decades (with the possible exception of Iran, which signed the treaty but did not ratify it).

The treaty’s key provisions forbid placing weapons of mass destruction on the moon, in orbit or elsewhere in outer space. They also state that celestial bodies are to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes and are “not subject to national appropriation” by any means and that all parties will follow international law in their activities relating to the exploration and use of outer space. One may easily see that space lawyers, who have a growing future ahead of them, can dispute the term “national appropriation,” which hardly seems to rule out operations by private parties that do not add directly to a nation’s wealth. Furthermore, the current geopolitical climate suggests the treaty’s terms might not fully govern the actions of any state or private party.

Let’s examine the arguments in favor of sending humans into space in the in reverse order from which we have posed them.

Raw materials and the transformation of planetary surfaces . In 2015 the U.S. Congress passed legislation, informally known as the SPACE Act, that denies any assertion of authority over cosmic objects but promotes the right of U. S. citizens (which naturally includes corporations) to engage in the “commercial recovery of space resources free from harmful interference ... subject to authorization and continuing supervision by the Federal Government.” The marvelous word “recovery,” common in mineral-extraction circles, tends to hide the obvious impacts of such activities. On a moral basis, do we, as humans, U.S. citizens, or private individuals or corporations, possess the right to alter or even destroy the landscape of other celestial objects? To some, the answer is obvious: Of course we do. And the resources of these worlds belong to those who can first exploit them.

The opposing moral argument begins with the thought that humans ought not to embark on these activities lightly, because whatever we do may not be capable of being repaired. To scientists, the gravest threat from the “recovery” of other worlds’ resources resides in the possibility that human activities can forever cloud our knowledge of the origin and distribution of life in the solar system. Wherever we land, we inevitably leave behind traces of our own forms of life. NASA has worried about this problem ever since the first lunar probes and has taken pains, which the agency knows can never be entirely successful, to avoid the biological contamination of other worlds. Large-scale extraction efforts, however, could never proceed without this contamination. Even the moon or asteroids, hostile to life though they now are, may contain traces of past biological activity.

For colonies on Mars—even “harmless” ones whose purpose is purely exploration—the problem increases steeply: Most experts agree that life probably existed on Mars when water ran freely over its surface and may that it may yet survive in underground pools. The discovery of life on a nearby world should reveal, through comparison of its DNA or equivalent material, whether life in the solar system originated separately or transferred itself from world to world onboard meteoroids or asteroids. If we find Earth-like organisms on Mars, our ability to discriminate will be lost if we cannot tell whether this transfer occurred in recent years or eons before.

Advocates of exploiting other worlds often point to a glorious future on Mars after engineers have “terraformed” the planet to produce more Earth-like conditions. By releasing sufficiently large amounts of carbon dioxide that currently reside in rocks and in Mars’s modest polar caps, along with other gases even better at trapping heat, we could produce a “greenhouse effect” that would raise the planet’s surface temperature and increase its atmospheric pressure to the point that liquid water could once again flow over the Martian surface. Those who oppose reworking an entire planet begin with a hard look at what humans have done to “terraform” Earth.

Human survival . Aside from the immense difficulties of creating sustainable, million-person colonies (required for sufficient long-term genetic variation), any lunar or planetary colonists will bring the same human attributes that have caused problems on Earth. In addition, plans to leave behind eight billion of their fellow humans on a dying planet might produce unrest sufficient to derail the project.

National pride . One need not be a one-worlder to recognize that national competition to explore nearby objects—and, even more so, to exploit space resources—fails to furnish a sustainable basis for rational exploration. By exporting our Earthly competition into space, we increase the likelihood of conflict in both venues.

Uplifting the human spirit . Debating the wisdom of sending humans into space inevitably returns to the immense boost that humanity will receive from tracking astronauts as they explore other worlds. Undeniable though these emotions may be, they hardly settle the issue. What remains is the key question of whether this spiritual uplift so far surpasses any news that may be sent by spacecraft that humans in space must be worth the expense and the danger of contaminating other worlds, along with encouraging the exploitation of these worlds for economic gain.

Approximately 3 percent of astronauts who have begun a journey into space have not survived.” Although our increased understanding of how to launch and return spacecraft safely may reduce this percentage, “space tourism”—a phrase that suggests that ordinary people can enjoy the thrill of travel around the Earth or even farther—conceals the actual risks. Space travelers will long resemble stunt motorcyclist Evel Knievel more than they do Jules Verne’s fictional adventurer Phileas Fogg .

Those who feel that our automated planetary explorers can never come close to the human experience in uplifting our spirits may find a modest rebuttal in our robotic explorers on Mars, which have commanded widespread attention and even some human identification during their years on the red planet. NASA’s Opportunity rover, for example, spent more than 15 years on Mars and traversed complex topography for more than two dozen miles, at a price tag that is almost certainly less than 1 percent of what a comparable human expedition would cost today. In addition, we may reasonably expect that popular culture will expand our identification with our marvelous spacefaring machines.

Private expeditions . This discussion has assumed the existence of a forum to debate the pros and cons of humans in space and reach a (more or less) logical conclusion. What of the superrich who operate free from such constraints? The exploitation of raw materials in space offers a wide range of construction, destruction and confrontation among private parties and corporations. If these parties choose to act, who can stop them? Should we try? Human history shows that no scarcity of volunteers will arrive, including those who would gladly gain fame from being among the first to land, for example, on Mars, without any prospect of a return journey.

What, then, should be done? Should members of the public confront these arguments and attempt to influence governmental decisions? Do we want to regulate space adventuring—and if so, how? Or do we prefer to let the “space frontier” work itself out? Private individuals, though aware of the considerations we have raised, need answer to none but themselves in their spacefaring endeavors. Statements by Musk and Bezos testify to deep beliefs in human activities in space, which they apparently regard as not even requiring justification. Musk has so deeply embraced the belief that only humans in space can fulfill the human desire to explore other worlds that he has tweeted “nuke Mars!” to express his plan to use nuclear weapons in order to release carbon dioxide stored in the Martian soil and polar caps in order to create a greenhouse effect to warm the planet.

Whether the exploits proposed by Musk and Bezos will inspire us to greater efforts on Earth—or cause us to imagine that we can forget about problems on our planet—remains an open question. Because little hope of curtailing these endeavors exists, we may do well to let them advance as the masters of space would wish, believing, as we always must, that humans will soon see the wisest way to proceed.

None of our discussion and suggestions looks beyond the next few decades, a sufficiently long stretch of time to beware the accuracy of our predictive abilities. If human civilization successfully overcomes its current problems and achieves long-term stability, we shall certainly send people to the other worlds in our solar system. If we discover much faster means of propulsion or find a way to prolong human life or invent a means of inducing limitless suspension of life during a multicentury journey, we can send humans to the nearest stars and their planetary systems. If we create human colonies in space, their inhabitants might undergo evolutionary changes that make them more fit for space travel. If, as is likely to happen soon, we can manipulate the human genome as we like, we could manufacture a new set of beings designed for space travel.

None of these “ifs” tells us much about what we should do within the next few years. Nor do they rule out machines as superior to whatever humans we may invent. Designs now exist for spacecraft that include photography and radio communication equipment, but which weigh only one-thirtieth of an ounce. These could be accelerated by lasers to 20 percent of the speed of light and reach the closest stars within a couple of decades. This concept leads to the mind-bending, though hardly impossible, notion that eventually we can send human consciousness, downloaded from individuals or created by artificial intelligence, to nanoexplorers that will range through the vastness of space in the name of humanity. Possibly, they may meet and interact with similar probes from an array of other civilizations.

Meanwhile we would do well to ponder the current advantages that our automated explorers of realms close to Earth maintain over their human counterparts.

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13 Things Tourists Should Know Before Traveling to Space, According to Astronauts

We asked the pros for their best tips on handling a first trip to space.

For most of human spaceflight history, those lucky enough to reach the stars were professional astronauts hired and trained by government agencies around the world. But since the early 2000s, when seven intrepid travelers paid millions to spend a few days aboard the International Space Station (ISS), space tourism has begun to take off. We're now on the cusp of a new era of space exploration, with commercial companies like Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin launching spacecraft capable of taking paying travelers beyond the Earth's surface.

We spoke with former NASA astronauts Leroy Chiao and Scott Parazynski to get their tips for first-time spaceflight participants. During his 15 years with NASA, Chiao participated in four missions — three aboard the space shuttle and one to the ISS, in which he served as commander. Parazynski worked at NASA for 17 years, flying five shuttle missions throughout his career. Read on to discover what they think aspiring space tourists need to know.

Your only job on the flight will be to kick back, relax, and enjoy the ride.

If you're taking a suborbital flight, which is what companies like Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin have offered, your ride will be a quick up-and-down to reach space, rather than a full orbit of the Earth. The short journey is relatively easy compared to what professional astronauts experience. For starters, you won't need to worry about flying your spacecraft. That's all up to the spaceflight provider. "You won't have any responsibility other than to enjoy the experience — and not kick anyone else in the head," says Parazynski. "Their obligations on the flight are pretty straightforward."

As such, the training programs for suborbital space tourist experiences are relatively minimal, perhaps only a few days in length at most. "The downside of not having a lot of training is that you don't have the confidence that comes from lots of training," says Parazynski. "Contrast that with the training I had on the space shuttle, where we trained for hundreds and hundreds of hours for launching in space. If something were to go awry, we would know exactly what to do and our hearts wouldn't skip a beat."

So, other than learning to place your complete trust in your spaceflight provider, Parazynski recommends talking to people who have flown before in order to ease any nervousness. Chiao agrees: "The best advice I can give on launch — and it's easy to say, harder to do — is to try to relax and enjoy the whole process," he says. "Pay attention during your training, talk to other people who've been there if you can. And actually, you might be surprised — it's quite calm!"

Make sure you’re physically and mentally fit.

"I think people should treat this as their Olympics or Super Bowl. This is a really big life experience, and though you don't need to be an Olympic athlete or a Super Bowl champion to fly in space, it helps to be fit," says Parazynski. After all, your body will be experiencing quite a range of new sensations during your spaceflight."

But it's not just about physical fitness — mental fitness is key, too. "I think through fitness comes mental acuity as well," says Parazynski. "The more you can be engaged in the experience, the more you'll remember of it — it'll be more impactful to you."

The G-forces experienced on launch and reentry are not as intense as you might expect.

If you've ever watched a livestream of an astronaut launch, caught any Hollywood flick about space travel, or ridden Mission: Space at Walt Disney World's Epcot theme park, you know that during launch, astronauts get crushed back into their seats. (And, actually, during reentry, too!) They're experiencing strong G-forces, or a sensation of weight felt during acceleration. It's the same feeling you get when you speed up quickly in a car or zoom through a loop or a sharp curve on a roller coaster, but during a rocket launch, those forces are stronger and more sustained. While the experience might seem a little terrifying, the pros say it's quite manageable.

"The G-forces aren't nearly as bad as they show in the movies," says Chiao. "If you're good enough to be given medical approval to go on a trip like this, you're not going to have any problems handling the G-forces." He also notes that you'll likely go through centrifugal runs during your training to prep for the sensation — you'll be strapped into a spinning machine that lets you experience strong G-forces, just like that spinning amusement park ride where you're pressed against the wall and the floor drops.

But to make launch and reentry as comfortable on your body as possible, you'll want to physically relax your muscles so you don't fight against the G-forces. "If you relax and let your body sink into the launch couch, you're going to tolerate it much better," says Chiao. "If you're rigid, that's where you might hurt yourself. And make sure your limbs and arms are inside of the couch."

To prep for weightlessness, you should book a zero-gravity flight.

While it takes quite a bit of effort (and time and money) to get into space to experience weightlessness, you can actually experience the sensation right here on Earth — or rather, just slightly above it. All you need to do is book a zero-gravity flight , where a plane flies in a series of parabolas (or arch-like shapes) during which passengers experience simulated weightlessness through free fall.

It's physically the same as skydiving or even riding a roller coaster, but in those two instances, your senses tell you you're actually falling. "When you're in a zero-G airplane, the airplane is falling at the same rate you are, so you're floating inside the airplane," says Chiao. "That's what it's like in a spacecraft when you get up into space and the engines cut off."

Through commercial companies like the Zero Gravity Corporation , anyone who can spare the cost of a ticket can experience weightlessness — and anyone who's planning on making a trip to space should definitely give it a go. "If they have the means, they should get on a zero-G flight before they go on a suborbital flight," says Parazynski. "It would take some of the mystery out of 'what am I going to feel like?' and 'how do I move?'"

Learning how to scuba dive is good weightlessness training, too.

While being underwater isn't exactly like floating in space, it's a pretty good way to practice moving around in a weightless environment. In fact, NASA even has a life-sized replica of the ISS set inside a giant pool, so astronauts can train for spacewalks underwater.

"Moving in weightlessness comes to you very quickly when you spend some time underwater," says Parazynski. "Get neutrally buoyant underwater and very gently try and move yourself along the ocean floor or bottom of your pool. It doesn't take a lot of force, but it does take a lot of thought."

Come up with a game plan for your few minutes in space.

On suborbital flights, you're only going to have a few minutes in weightlessness, so you should plan exactly how you want to spend your time up there. Figure out if you'd like to bring a memento like a family photo or college pennant for a fun picture. (U.S. Naval Academy graduates and former astronauts Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford famously put a "Beat Army" sign in the window of their Gemini VI spacecraft, so there's a long tradition of this.) Decide in advance if you want to attempt what spaceflight veterans call "stupid astronaut tricks," like flips or spins. But most importantly, budget time to look out the window.

"The most important thing I would tell future astronauts is to savor the view out the window," says Parazynski. "It's, for lack of a better term, a God's-eye view, and so few people have ever had a chance to see it. It's really a beautiful thing to be hovering in space and looking down at your planet."

Don’t worry about taking your own photos.

"As far as taking photographs, I don't know that I would recommend it," says Chiao. "You're not going to be very good at it, first of all, because it takes a little bit of practice to get used to zero-G. Don't waste that time taking photos. Get your memories, look out those windows, and enjoy the whole experience of being weightless." Plus, given the price tag of these spaceflights, we're pretty sure that your operator will provide you with photos and videos of your journey anyway.

When you get into zero gravity, you might feel a little dizzy.

The body functions a bit differently when you remove gravity from the equation for a sustained period of time, and side effects may include dizziness and nausea. "You're going to feel full-headed because there's no longer gravity pulling fluid down into your legs," says Chiao. "And so all that fluid comes up into your torso, and you can feel it right away. It feels kind of like you're standing on your head."

But the good news is, on suborbital flights you might be able to avoid the worst of it. "The adrenaline and excitement are going to make you do OK at first, and by the time you might start feeling bad, it's time to strap back in and come back down," says Chiao.

If you’re spending a few days in space, be prepared for some bumps and bruises.

On a suborbital flight, you won't have a ton of time in space, so you won't really have to worry about acclimating to zero gravity. However, some private spaceflight companies are looking to send their clients up into orbit for longer stays and there are even talks of a space hotel within Voyager Station . If you're going to spend a few days or even a few weeks up in space, you're probably going to bump your head more than once, no matter how much you've trained for the experience.

"It's really funny watching rookie astronauts the first day or two up on a mission," says Parazynski. "We called them the bull in a china shop. They push off with full force and they crack their skull or bang their knee."

You’re also going to make a mess.

Doing routine tasks like brushing your teeth (you can't just spit your toothpaste into a sink), clipping your fingernails (you don't want them floating off into your space station), and going to the bathroom (have you ever thought about how to use a toilet without gravity?) are all very different experiences in weightlessness. Inevitably, you might have a few mishaps early on in your trip.

"Just sitting down for a meal, you put your fork down, and it's gone in 30 seconds," says Parazynski. "You may find it two days later in the cabin air cleaner because that's where the air currents have taken it." Luckily, a lost fork is an easy mess to clean up — and the situation can be prevented by tethering it down. Other messes are a different story.

"As far as using the restroom, that's what you need to pay attention to during your training. The toilet is not particularly simple and you have to be careful," says Chiao. (In case you were wondering, space toilets use airflow to guide things where they're supposed to go.) "But be prepared to make some messes," says Chiao. "And everybody has to clean up their own mess."

If you’re going to do a spacewalk, the stakes are much higher for you and your crew.

If you want to zip around space with a jetpack like George Clooney in "Gravity," sorry, but chances are that's not going to happen any time soon. Most private astronauts will be safely tucked inside their craft for the duration of their flight.

Unlike suborbital flights, future orbital flights with a spacewalk will require extensive training, given that spacewalks are inherently more dangerous than simply riding in a vessel. "If you're careless with your tethers and you float off into the void, there's not a whole lot anyone can come do for you," says Parazynski. It's possible that a crewmate may be able to head out to rescue you, but then you're endangering their life as well. "It's paramount for a spacewalker to think not just about their own health and well-being and their experience, but also that of their crewmates," he says.

If you’re in a capsule, be prepared for a bumpy landing.

While the only way up to space is by rocket, there are two ways to come back down: via a winged vehicle, like the space shuttle or Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, or a capsule, like Apollo, Soyuz, and Blue Origin's New Shepard. The experiences are quite different, as winged vehicles land like an airplane on a runway, whereas capsules descend beneath parachutes onto land or water. While both experience a range of G-forces during reentry, capsules have a bit of a rougher ride, particularly at the very end.

"When the parachute comes out, you can expect to get jostled around a fair amount, so that can be disorienting," says Chiao. "Then, whether you're hitting the water or the ground, you're gonna get a good bump. There are shock-absorbing mechanisms, of course, that make it not too big a deal. But on Soyuz, you smack the ground pretty darn hard. It was kind of surprising!"

It’ll be worth every penny.

Sure, it's going to cost a small fortune to go into space as a tourist — for now, that's somewhere in the ballpark of several hundred thousand dollars for a suborbital flight and millions of dollars for longer-duration orbital stays. But ask any astronaut, and they're sure to tell you it'll be worth the investment.

"What I would tell prospective astronauts is that it's going to change their lives forever," says Parazynski. "It's a perspective that can't be captured in emotion on film. Even in 3D IMAX, there's no way to capture the way it's going to make you feel, the connectedness you feel to planet Earth, and the awe you have when you look out into the universe."

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March 22, 2023

Health Research Is Needed Now before Sending Civilians to Space

Now is the time to protect the health and safety of civilians who will be traveling, living and working in the dangerous environment of space

By Michael Marge

Blue Origin’s New Shepard lifts off from the Launch Site One launch pad carrying Good Morning America co-anchor Michael Strahan, Laura Shepard Churchley, daughter of astronaut Alan Shepard, and four other civilians on December 11, 2021 near Van Horn, Texas. The six are riding aboard mission NS-19, the third human spaceflight for the company which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Within decades, hundreds and perhaps thousands of average civilians will travel, live and work in space . Along with their space suits, they will bring with them their illnesses, chronic health problems and disabilities.

That changes the space story because until recently, career astronauts have been the only travelers in space, aside from the infrequent space tourist . But now that new space businesses are launching , the travelers and workers will be mostly civilians.

This civilian move into space has already started. Ticket-buying or privately funded passengers have traveled into suborbital space, 50 to 60 miles above Earth, during the past couple of years, courtesy of “New Space” firms Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. In September 2021, billionaire Jared Isaacman rented Elon Musk’s Crew Dragon Resilience spaceship to carry him and three other civilians on a three-day journey around the Earth. Even without scientific evidence about health risks of such travel, Isaacman and Musk are willing to push the envelope further: They plan another flight this year called Polaris Dawn that would carry a private crew of four to the highest Earth orbit ever flown; the flight will include a spacewalk, one of space’s most hazardous endeavors. In addition, NASA has awarded incentive grants to three space corporations to build commercial orbital platforms that will start operating by the end of this decade. These space stations will be occupied by civilians as tourists and employees.

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We need to go the extra mile to protect civilians if they are to travel, live and work in space.

NASA’s reports on astronauts before, during and after extended space travel and habitation make this clear : astronauts face chronic motion sickness, neurological disorders, cardiovascular problems, increased risk for blood clotting and vision problems, as well as increased risks of cancer, muscle atrophy and bone loss. That’s despite their excellent health, physical and mental fitness, and years of training. As astronauts, they are fully aware of these risks and willing to take them. As former astronaut and now Senator Mark Kelly once said, “Being an astronaut is a high-risk job.” But average civilians in space should not take such risks, which for them are even more real.

In 2022, the CDC reported that within the U.S. population six in 10 adults have chronic disease , and four in 10 have two or more chronic diseases. Also, one in four have disabilities . These health conditions add a new and challenging dimension to space hazards on the human body. What we have learned from NASA is that the health profiles of astronauts and the health profiles of civilians are notably different.

To get ahead of this problem, a landmark scientific meeting was hosted in 2021 by the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF) with the blessings of the National Space Council. Intended to develop the first ever “Human Research Program for Civilians in the Commercialization of Space,” a workshop of 100 experts, which I co-chaired, identified high-priority human research projects to safeguard civilians in space.

Unfortunately, some of the commercial space companies behind the health research program now appear uninterested. Why the turnaround? We can only speculate, but a host of answers suggest themselves, starting with the space industry hoping to retain a 2004 decision by Congress that imposed a moratorium on new safety regulations on human spaceflight , in the absence of death, serious injury or close call ; this “learning period,” which has been extended several times, gives the industry considerable leeway to experiment with humans. Second, these space companies compete with one another and are in a hurry to realize breakthroughs for their own business without slowing down for safety research. Third, some of the leaders in these companies challenge the cautions about the fragility of civilians in space. They argue that the hazards will have minor or short-term health impact. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk referred to the Inspiration4 spaceflight as “an intense roller coaster ride,” and added that anyone who can tolerate that “should be fine for flying on Dragon,” Musk’s spaceship. Some in the industry prefer to place average civilians in spaceflight, study them during and after flight and then examine ways to protect civilians in future flights. This risk-ridden exploratory approach to discovery should be discouraged.  It returns us to the days of the Wright brothers (who had multiple crashes and the first air passenger death ), where discovery occurs by risking calamity. 

If there is a catastrophic event where civilians become seriously ill, injured or die, only then will we wake up to the proposition that humans in space should travel without harm. Only then will we realize that the best approach is to conduct an unbiased, objective, large-scale, scientific human research program against all the known risks of space travel. 

But given today’s space-race realities, here’s a compromise: While space companies prosper under the moratorium, let them send civilians into space only after each one has undergone a thorough physical, mental and performance examination and preparatory training comparable to what is required of NASA’s career astronauts. Each company should publicize its preflight health and performance testing and training program. In addition, the space industry should publicly support the human research program it originally endorsed. Taking these steps would send civilians into space in the coming months and years in a responsible and safe manner. It would benefit the industry, assure public trust, and help protect civilians in space.

Even without industry support, we need health research now to protect future civilians in space, under the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Space Transportation (AST), Federal Aviation Agency. The AST has the experience, the mission, expertise and organizational setup to do an exceptional job.

The time to act is now by asking the Biden administration and Congress to fund a program of human research for civilians in space before it is too late, and we learn once more that “guinea pig” discoveries are rarely happy ones.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of  Scientific American.

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Astronauts spend years training for missions. How do commercial travelers get ready?

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The Medical School’s Aleksandra Stankovic is an aerospace psychologist and spaceflight biomedical researcher who studies how to optimize human performance and behavioral health in extreme operational environments. We asked her how a person gets ready to travel to space.

The spaceflight environment presents many challenges — technical, physical, and psychological. With more people having access to space travel today than ever before, successful and safe spaceflights require varying levels of preparation before launch day.

For government astronauts, candidates undergo a rigorous two-year initial training period before qualifying for flight assignment. This training includes learning about Space Station and flight vehicle systems, studying orbital mechanics, becoming proficient in emergency procedures (like how to handle scenarios such as fire, cabin depressurization, or medical issues), conducting flight training in T-38 jets (to build quick decision-making skills in high-performance aircraft), and developing Russian language skills (since international space missions involve collaboration among astronauts from various countries).

To prepare for the microgravity environment of space, astronauts also participate in simulations of weightlessness, including parabolic flights and training in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, a large swimming pool where astronauts practice conducting spacewalks and learn to perform tasks in their pressurized spacesuits. Astronauts complete survival training and learn to cope with extreme conditions — a crucial skill in case of an emergency landing back on Earth in the water or in very cold locations like Siberia. They are trained to operate the robotic arm that is used for tasks such as capturing cargo spacecraft.

Once they receive a flight assignment, astronauts complete an additional 18 months of mission-specific training. They simulate various mission scenarios — including launch, rendezvous, and docking — and emergency procedures. Additionally, they undergo extensive training on the scientific experiments they’ll be conducting, like how to work with equipment, collect samples, and handle data.

Anyone who spends prolonged periods in space will need to spend a lot of their day working out to keep their bodies in strong shape to be healthy when they return home.

Since maintaining physical fitness is vital for astronauts to counteract the muscle and bone loss experienced in microgravity, they spend a lot of time preflight working out. At the same time, long-duration space missions can be mentally challenging, given the prolonged isolation, confinement, and separation from family and friends. Astronauts learn strategies to manage stress, maintain psychological well-being, and work effectively in close environments with their fellow crewmembers.

Commercial astronaut training is significantly less intensive than the training government-sponsored astronauts receive, since their missions are often of shorter duration and focus more on providing safe and enjoyable flying experiences. While commercial crews may stay in space for shorter intervals ranging from a few minutes for suborbital flight to several days or even weeks on the Space Station, government astronauts typically spend six months or more on the station. (Astronaut Frank Rubio recently set the record for longest American space mission with 371 consecutive days in space; cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who logged 437 continuous days in orbit on Russia’s Mir space station between 1994 and 1995, still holds the world record.)

Commercial astronauts often receive more generalized training that covers the basics of space travel and safety/emergency procedures. Anyone who spends prolonged periods in space will need to spend a lot of their day working out to keep their bodies in strong shape to be healthy when they return home. Everyday activities can be challenging without gravity, and sleeping can be difficult without the normal light cues from the sun that our bodies rely upon on Earth to regulate our circadian rhythms. A combination of technology and training help space travelers adapt.

As more people travel to space, on an expanding range of flight vehicles and for varying types of missions, spaceflight preparation too will undoubtedly continue to evolve. It’s an exciting time to be studying how to keep humans safe and healthy in space, and researchers like me are thrilled to be a part of enabling this next great wave of human space exploration!

— As told to Anna Lamb/Harvard Staff Writer

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Starliner Sets Off on 1st Flight With NASA Astronauts Aboard

After two previous launch attempts were called off, the Boeing-built spacecraft was headed to the International Space Station. It will stay there until at least June 14.

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• Cape Canaveral, Fla. NASA via Reuters
• The Starliner crew prepares for takeoff. NASA, via Reuters
• The Starliner launching. Chris O'Meara/Associated Press
• Rocket boosters expend and drop off. NASA, via Reuters
• 15,000 miles per hour. NASA, via Reuters
• The Starliner crew before takeoff. Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Kenneth Chang

Here’s what to know about Starliner’s flight.

After two trips to the launchpad that did not end up going to space , two NASA astronauts finally headed to orbit on Wednesday in a vehicle built by Boeing, the aerospace giant . The 15-foot-wide capsule, Starliner, provides NASA with an additional option for flying crews to and from the International Space Station, more than a decade after the space shuttles were retired. The launch is the latest step in NASA’s efforts to rely more heavily on the private sector for its human spaceflight program.

Starliner’s first trip with astronauts on board comes four years and six days after SpaceX, the other company that NASA has hired to provide astronaut rides, launched its first mission with astronauts aboard . A series of costly delays repeatedly kept astronauts from flying on the Boeing vehicle, while SpaceX, once seen as an upstart, has since flown 13 crews to orbit.

Here’s what you need to know about the flight:

At 10:52 a.m. Eastern time, the engines of an Atlas V rocket ignited, lifting the Starliner spacecraft on an arcing path to space . Wednesday’s countdown at a launchpad in Cape Canaveral, Fla., was flawless, proceeding without a hitch.

The only issue that has popped up since launching is with a “sublimator” that provides cooling in Starliner during the ascent to orbit. The device used more water than expected. Officials said it will not affect the current mission. After reaching orbit, Starliner switched to a different cooling system, a radiator, as planned.

The two crew members on board Starliner are Butch Wilmore, the commander, and Suni Williams, the pilot. They are experienced NASA astronauts; Mr. Wilmore has spent 167 days in space, and Ms. Williams 322. They will spend about a day in orbit before docking with the space station on Thursday at 12:15 p.m. They will stay until at least June 14 , maybe longer, depending on weather at the landing sites and testing of the spacecraft.

Starliner is years behind schedule, as the work by Boeing and NASA to confirm that the spacecraft was safe to fly stretched far longer than expected. Technical pitfalls included inadequate software testing, corroded propellant valves, flammable tape, a key component in the parachute system that turned out to be weaker than designed, and, most recently, a helium leak in the spacecraft’s propulsion system. Boeing fixed and studied the problems, allowing Starliner to get back to the launchpad.

The delays have left Boeing facing more than $1.4 billion in unexpected charges . The launch attempt comes during a tough 2024 for the aerospace giant . Just days into the year, a panel on the body of a Boeing 737 Max 9 blew off during an Alaska Airlines flight . The pilots safely landed the plane, and there were no major injuries, but the episode has had widespread repercussions for the company, particularly its aviation division.

A ‘milestone’ flight carried two NASA astronauts in Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft.

After two trips to the launchpad that did not end up going to space, two NASA astronauts finally headed to orbit on Wednesday in a vehicle built by Boeing, the aerospace giant.

The first trip of Starliner, a 15-foot-wide capsule, with astronauts on board comes four years and six days after SpaceX, the other company that NASA has hired to provide astronaut rides, launched its first mission with astronauts to the International Space Station. Boeing is now set to also provide that service, but a series of costly delays repeatedly kept astronauts from flying the company’s vehicle earlier. SpaceX, once seen as an upstart, has flown 13 crews to orbit in total.

The long awaited flight of the Boeing vehicle is the latest step in NASA’s efforts to rely more heavily on the private sector for its human spaceflight program.

“This is another milestone in this extraordinary history of NASA,” Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator said during a news conference after the launch.

When Starliner arrives at the space station on Thursday, it will join a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule already docked there. NASA officials have steadfastly said that they want to have two different American spacecraft capable of taking astronauts to orbit.

“We always like to have a backup,” Mr. Nelson said. “That makes it safer for our astronauts.”

If the vehicle’s mission goes well, it will also provide some good news for Boeing, whose aviation safety record is under heavy scrutiny after a side panel of an Alaska Airlines jet blew out during a flight earlier this year.

The space division of Boeing has also been under pressure, with work on Starliner stretching years longer than either the company or NASA had expected. Technical pitfalls included inadequate software testing, corroded propellant valves, flammable tape and a key component in the parachute system that turned out to be weaker than expected.

A few minutes before launch, Butch Wilmore, the mission commander, said: “Let’s put some fire in this rocket. Let’s push it to the heavens.”

Suni Williams, the other member of the crew who serves as pilot, added, “Let’s go, Calypso, take us to space and back,” referring to the name she had given the capsule, after the ship used by the oceanographer Jacques Cousteau.

“Suni and I are honored to share this dream of spaceflight with each and every one of you. So with that, let’s get going, and let’s put some fire in this rocket and let’s push it to the heavens, while these tough Americans have prepared it to be.” “Let’s go, Calypso. Take us to space and back.”

At 10:52 a.m. Eastern time, the engines of an Atlas V rocket ignited, lifting the Starliner spacecraft on an arcing path to space. The launch and early parts of today’s flight in orbit provided a welcome relief, unfolding smoothly.

“Houston, Starliner. “Roger.”

“I’m smiling, believe me,” said Mark Nappi, the Boeing official in charge of Starliner. “But it’s a little bit of controlled emotion, because there’s a lot of phases to this mission. And we just completed the first one.”

“You got a good throttle up.” “Good throttle.” “Good SRB burnout.” “Good SRB.”

A minor glitch involved a system that provides cooling during the ride to orbit. The cooling system, known as a sublimator, used a bit more water than expected. Once in orbit, the spacecraft switched to a different cooling system, a radiator, and while engineers will investigate what happened, it will not affect the mission.

Mr. Wilmore and Ms. Williams are scheduled to dock with the station at 12:15 p.m. on Thursday.

Along the way, Mr. Wilmore and Ms. Williams will take time to test out manually flying the spacecraft, something that is usually not necessary except in emergencies. The life support systems will also be fully checked.

The astronauts will then spend at least eight days at the space station before returning to Earth. The mission has 87 test objectives altogether. “There’s a lot of, I’ll call them ergonomic types of flight test objectives,” Mr. Nappi said. “How do the seats fit? How do the suits work? How do the displays look?”

After the mission, NASA and Boeing will review data from the flight to complete certification of Starliner. The spacecraft would then be ready to begin once-a-year operational flights to ferry NASA crews for six-month stays at the space station. Each Starliner capsule — Boeing has two for orbital missions — is designed for 10 missions.

The path to Wednesday’s flight was years in the making.

In 2014, NASA awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX , the rocket company run by Elon Musk, to build replacements for the space shuttles that had taken astronauts to and from the space station before being retired in 2011. NASA had started paying Russia to fly its astronauts to orbit on Soyuz rockets.

Congress was skeptical, repeatedly cutting money that NASA had sought for the commercial crew program. At the time, SpaceX was ascendant, but was not the dominant force it has become today in the rocket launch industry. The selection of Boeing helped reassure lawmakers that NASA was making a sound investment.

NASA originally said Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon could be ready by 2017.

Both companies took longer than planned, a not uncommon occurrence in the aerospace industry.

But in December 2019, Boeing appeared to be in the homestretch. Then a test of Starliner with no astronauts on board went awry because of software problems, and a planned docking was called off. NASA labeled the flight a “high-visibility close call,” because the software flaws could have led to the destruction of the spacecraft if they had not been fixed before re-entry.

Boeing and NASA decided to repeat the uncrewed test, but that test was delayed by corroded propellant valves and Starliner did not launch again until May 2022.

More issues then emerged. Protective tape that was wrapped around wiring insulation turned out to be flammable, and a key but weak component in the parachute system could have broken if Starliner’s three parachutes did not deploy properly.

Those delays cost Boeing $1.4 billion, and while Starliner remained on the ground, SpaceX launched nine crewed missions for NASA (one, Crew-8, is currently docked at the station) and four additional commercial missions with non-NASA passengers aboard.

This year’s round of launch attempts started on May 6. That flight was scuttled by a misbehaving valve on the Atlas V rocket. A small helium leak was then discovered in the Starliner’s propulsion system, leading to several weeks of investigation.

A second launch attempt on Saturday ticked down to 3 minutes and 50 seconds before liftoff, until the computers that autonomously handle the final parts of the launch sequence encountered a problem and halted the countdown.

Over the next few days, technicians replaced a faulty power component, setting the stage for the successful launch on Wednesday.

Niraj Chokshi contributed reporting.

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The post-launch news conference is over. For the next day, you won’t see any live video of Starliner. Although there are cameras aboard, there is no communications system for sending it back to Earth in real time. Instead, it will have to be downloaded after Starliner docks at the International Space Station. NASA TV coverage of the spacecraft’s arrival will start at 11:15 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday. Docking is scheduled for 12:15 p.m.

Starliner will remain at the International Space Station until at least June 14. It might stay longer depending on weather at the landing site and how testing of the spacecraft goes.

“So far, the vehicle is doing great,” said Steve Stich, the program manager at NASA for the commercial crew program.

The only issue that has popped up so far during the spaceflight is with the “sublimator,” which provided cooling in Starliner during its ascent to orbit. It used more water than expected. That’s something to investigate, but it’s not a big problem that affects the current mission. Once in orbit, Starliner switched to a different cooling system, a radiator, as planned.

A NASA post-launch news conference is beginning. “This is another milestone in this extraordinary history of NASA,” Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, says.

Starliner is currently at a slightly lower altitude than the International Space Station, which means it is moving faster than the space station and catching up. As it gets closer, it will raise its orbit to match speed.

Elon Musk, chief executive of SpaceX, took some potshots at Boeing and Starliner last month. Today, he was more complimentary .

Congratulations on a successful launch! https://t.co/DiwBo6LheW — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2024

Michael Roston

Musk also has another major spaceflight on his mind. Early on Thursday morning, his company SpaceX will conduct the fourth test flight of Starship, its large, next-generation reusable spacecraft that NASA is relying on to get to the moon. You can look back at the third flight here .

NASA has concluded its official live coverage of the Starliner launch. But if you can’t get enough, NASA will be providing ongoing video coverage of Wilmore and Williams’ flight to the International Space Station, which will take about 24 hours. Docking is scheduled for 12:15 p.m. on Thursday.

This mission is essentially a shakedown flight to verify that the spacecraft is ready for humans. Some systems, notably life support and manual flying, cannot be tested until astronauts are aboard. NASA will use data from this flight to complete certification. If all goes well, that will be finished later this year, and the first operational flight will be in Feburary.

The burn has completed. Flight controllers at launch control are clapping and shaking hands. Starliner is now on its way to the International Space Station. It is scheduled to dock there tomorrow at 12:15 p.m. Eastern time.

Starliner’s orbital insertion burn has started.

Suni Williams is the first woman to take part in the test flight of an American spacecraft taking astronauts to space for the first time. The first four such test flights — Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and the space shuttles — preceded any American women going to space. The fifth, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon in 2020, carried Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. Starliner is the sixth such spacecraft.

How NASA ended up paying for private rides to orbit.

NASA owned the space shuttles.

The shuttles were built by Rockwell International, but NASA’s engineers largely dictated the design, and once the shuttles were delivered, they became the property of the U.S. government — launched and operated by NASA.

That was NASA’s old way of doing business.

Nowadays, the space agency’s human spaceflight program is trying to do more by doing less on its own.

The Boeing Starliner is the latest step in that direction. NASA does not own Starliner but is, in essence, renting the spacecraft from Boeing for about a week so that two NASA astronauts can get to the space station.

The rationale is that private companies can come up with innovative solutions that are better and cheaper, and the companies can then sell those same products to customers other than NASA — a win-win.

That formula has certainly proved to work with SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Elon Musk. When SpaceX first won a NASA contract, it had not yet successfully sent anything to space. NASA was key in the development of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, which not only now launches cargo and astronauts for NASA but also has captured a domineering slice of the commercial satellite-launching business.

In 2014, NASA selected SpaceX and Boeing to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. SpaceX flew its first crewed mission in 2020 and has now launched people to orbit 13 times, including four commercial missions for non-NASA customers.

For Boeing, however, Starliner has turned out to be a long-delayed, costly endeavor, even though NASA is paying more to Boeing than to SpaceX. Back in 2010, Boeing announced that it planned to fly space tourists to the space station. Now, Boeing says it is focused on NASA’s business — six operational flights after the test mission.

“The private astronaut missions are of an interest later in the decade,” said Mark Nappi, program manager of the Starliner program at Boeing.

Despite the mixed results for the companies, NASA has expanded its commercial approach. SpaceX and Blue Origin , the rocket company started by Jeff Bezos, have contracts to build landers to carry NASA astronauts to the surface of the moon in the coming years.

NASA is also looking farther out into the solar system. Last month, the space agency commissioned nine companies to study how they might provide services for future science missions to Mars.

During the launch, the astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, used paper checklists, which are simpler and easier to read than digital versions. Now that they’re in orbit, they’ve switched to tablets.

Some of the astronauts’ luggage is not going to make it to the space station.

On Friday, NASA announced some shuffling of the cargo that Starliner is taking to the space station.

The astronauts on board, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, will give up some personal items during their short stay in orbit to make room for a spare part for a water recycling system on the International Space Station.

The space station receives regular deliveries of supplies and equipment. Much of it arrives packed into cargo vehicles launched from the United States and Russia. That includes a Russian Progress spacecraft that docked Saturday morning with about three tons of food, fuel and other supplies.

Other times, items are packed along with astronaut crews headed to space.

On Wednesday last week, a pump failed in the system on the space station that collects and processes the astronauts’ urine, the first step in turning it back into drinkable water. That pump had been expected to last until the fall, and a replacement was set to be delivered by a cargo spacecraft in August.

“It failed a little bit early, which put us in a position where we’d have to store an awful lot of urine,” Dana Weigel, NASA’s program manager for the space station, said during a news conference on Friday. “Obviously, adding two more crew members to that further constrains the storage capability we have on board.”

The pump equipment, which weighs about 150 pounds, was flown to the Kennedy Space Center and loaded onto Starliner. Two suitcases of clothing and toiletries for Mr. Wilmore and Ms. Williams were removed to make room for it.

“The key for the flight was not to perturb the mass properties,” Ms. Weigel said.

The astronauts will use supplies and clothing already at the space station during their scheduled stay of about a week.

Starliner has successfully separated from the Atlas V second stage. In about 16 minutes, Starliner will fire its thrusters to put itself in a stable orbit around Earth.

The second stage engines have shut down, right on time. Three minutes of coasting before Starliner separates from the rocket.

It is now 96 miles above Earth, moving at more than 15,000 miles per hour.

To reach orbit — that is, to go fast enough in order to not fall back down to Earth — Starliner will need to reach about 17,500 miles per hour. Everything continues to go well.

The spacecraft is now traveling 12,600 miles per hour.

The first stage of the Atlas V rocket has done its job, shutting down and dropping off, and the two engines of the second stage have ignited.

The solid rocket boosters have expended and dropped off. Everything continues to look good.

One minute until liftoff.

Here’s the revised flight plan for the Starliner’s journey.

If all goes well, an Atlas V rocket carrying Starliner will lift off on Wednesday at 10:52 a.m. Eastern time from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It must launch at the exact moment — what is known as an instantaneous launch window — that would allow it to catch up with the International Space Station.

Starliner will detach from the second stage of the rocket 15 minutes after launch. Sixteen minutes later, Starliner will fire its thrusters to enter a stable orbit around Earth.

Starliner will take more than a day to meet up with the space station. During that time, two NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, will perform tests, including manually flying the spacecraft.

On Thursday, the spacecraft will slowly approach the station, with docking scheduled for 12:15 p.m. Eastern time.

Starliner, along with Mr. Wilmore and Ms. Williams, will stay at the space station for about a week, allowing for more tests of the spacecraft and its systems.

“We’re pretty much on a timeline, making sure we’re going to get everything done,” Ms. Williams said during a Q. and A. session before the postponed launch attempt on May 6.

Does NASA need another ride to the space station? Elon Musk says no.

As SpaceX noted on X last Thursday, May 30 was the fourth anniversary of its equivalent of this week’s Starliner mission — the first launch of the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft with two NASA astronauts aboard.

Today marks the fourth anniversary of Falcon 9 launching @NASA ’s Demo-2 mission to the @space_station , returning human spaceflight to the United States pic.twitter.com/jzwyCwam3l — SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 30, 2024

The space agency boisterously celebrated the achievement, which ended NASA’s nearly decade-long dependence on Russian Soyuz rockets for getting its astronauts to orbit.

That has rendered the upcoming debut of Starliner almost an afterthought, with Boeing seemingly light-years behind SpaceX.

Since the first test flight in 2020, SpaceX has flown eight operational missions for NASA, each taking four astronauts to the International Space Station for six-month stays. The SpaceX missions have unfolded smoothly and reliably at a cost much lower than what Boeing will charge.

So why does NASA continue to spend time, effort and money on Starliner? Why not cancel that contract and rely solely on SpaceX?

Indeed, before Starliner’s scrubbed launch attempt on May 6, Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, posted on his social media site, X, “The world doesn’t need another capsule.”

In a separate posting, Mr. Musk sharply criticized Boeing. “Although Boeing got $4.2 billion to develop an astronaut capsule and SpaceX only got $2.6 billion, SpaceX finished 4 years sooner,” he wrote. “Too many non-technical managers at Boeing.”

A Boeing spokeswoman declined to comment.

But while Mr. Musk might think Starliner is superfluous, NASA officials have often said it is important to have contingency options if something goes wrong.

“This will give us that additional capability because we always look for a backup,” Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, said during a news conference on Friday.

Dana Weigel, program manager of the space station for NASA, gave the example of when a Soyuz docked at the space station suffered a coolant leak in 2022 .

Had the Soyuz been the only means of transportation, that could have led to a situation where the lives of the astronauts were genuinely at risk. But a SpaceX Crew Dragon was also docked there, providing a backup.

“If we had to bring the whole crew home on a SpaceX Dragon, we could have done that,” Ms. Weigel said.

For NASA, the more options it has, the better. If Crew Dragon or Starliner suffered a failure and were grounded, the other would still be available. That lessens the possibility that the United States might again have to rely on Russians and the whims of President Vladimir V. Putin for launching people to space.

“The more dissimilar capabilities you have, the more robust you are for dealing with issues,” Ms. Weigel said.

SpaceX has also launched four private astronaut missions using the same Crew Dragons. The first one, Inspiration4, was financed by Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur. While that flight went only to orbit and not to the I.S.S., Axiom Space of Houston has since flown three private astronaut missions to the space station, with a fourth that might launch as soon as August.

Mr. Isaacman is also planning to return to space later this year with another Crew Dragon mission, called Polaris Dawn, which is aiming to perform the first spacewalk during a commercial spaceflight.

Niraj Chokshi

Reporting on Boeing and other companies in the aviation industry.

Starliner has cost Boeing $1.4 billion more than it planned to spend.

Wednesday’s Starliner launch has been almost a decade in the making, but it has not been an easy ride for Boeing. In 2014, NASA awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX to transport astronauts to the International Space Station. SpaceX, which received far less funding, carried astronauts into orbit for the first time in 2020. Boeing hopes to achieve that milestone on Thursday.

Along the way, the aerospace giant has faced many setbacks, including years of delays and more than $1.4 billion in unexpected charges. In securities filings, Boeing has blamed engineering issues and supply chain problems; higher-than-expected costs for development, certification and testing; and even a problem identified in testing by a parachute supplier.

“Building rockets and spacecraft is no trivial task,” said Ron Epstein, a financial analyst at Bank of America. “It’s just taken Boeing longer and cost them more to do than they thought.”

The setbacks underscore a broader frustration for Boeing’s defense and space business: fixed-price contracts, under which contractors bear responsibility for higher-than-expected costs. Under a cost-plus contract, on the other hand, the government is responsible for covering unexpected expenses.

Fixed-price contracts are financially risky for companies if costs rise or delays materialize — and Boeing has struggled under them in recent years. Such contracts accounted for about 58 percent of the revenues coming into its defense and space unit last year, and the company has said that it is working to limit its reliance on them. (SpaceX, by contrast, has thrived on fixed-price contracts.)

“We have a couple of fixed-price development programs we have to just finish and never do them again,” Dave Calhoun, Boeing’s chief executive, said at an investor conference last summer. “It doesn’t work for us, and it doesn’t work for our customers, in my not-so-humble opinion.”

Although the company has faced delays, a Boeing representative said in a statement in May that the company remained “committed to providing NASA with a crew access capability to low Earth orbit” and that it “will continue to fulfill our contractual obligations.”

Boeing’s Starliner capsule has had a long, difficult road to human spaceflight.

In late 2019, Boeing appeared to have a good chance at beating SpaceX to become the first private U.S. company to take astronauts to orbit.

But in the four and a half years since, a lot has gone wrong. Here’s a timeline of the setbacks that have caused Boeing to fall so far behind SpaceX in providing American astronauts a ride to low Earth orbit.

December 2019: A ‘high-visibility close call’

On Dec. 20, 2019, Boeing looked to be in the homestretch.

A Starliner capsule — the same spacecraft that is to take the NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the space station on Saturday — was on the launchpad atop an Atlas V rocket.

The test flight to the space station had no astronauts on board, and its mission was to assess the spacecraft’s navigation, propulsion and docking systems. If the flight were to pass this last technical hurdle, a trip with astronauts aboard could take place within months.

The Atlas V rocket launched flawlessly, releasing Starliner.

And then the mission immediately went awry .

The spacecraft’s clock was set to the wrong time, making Starliner think it was in the wrong location. The capsule fired its thrusters to try to get to where it thought it should be. At the same time, a communications glitch thwarted efforts by flight controllers at mission control to diagnose and fix the problem.

Starliner used up too much propellant, and the planned docking at the space station was called off.

During the troubleshooting process, Boeing engineers discovered another software error that would have fired the wrong thrusters during a maneuver leading up to re-entry. NASA labeled the incident a “high-visibility close call” that could have destroyed the spacecraft if the errors had not been patched from the ground during the flight.

An investigation revealed multiple failures in Boeing’s processes that should have caught the mistakes before the launch. An exhaustive audit reviewed one million lines of software code.

NASA officials admitted that maybe they had placed too much trust in Boeing, which had decades of experience working with NASA.

Summer 2021: Corrosion on the launchpad

NASA and the company decided that a second uncrewed test was needed before a flight could be made with astronauts aboard. The spacecraft was rolled onto the launchpad in July, but a problem aboard the space station prompted a delay to early August. Then, ahead of an Aug. 4 launch attempt, mission managers discovered corroded propellant valves on Starliner that would not open. The test flight was called off, and another lengthy round of troubleshooting followed.

May 2022: Another launch, more problems

The second uncrewed test finally launched on May 19, 2022.

During a maneuver to put Starliner in a stable orbit, two thrusters failed, but the spacecraft was able to compensate. It proceeded to dock at the space station and returned to Earth successfully.

July 2023: Parachutes and tape

Before the test flight with astronauts aboard, then scheduled for July 2023, two more issues emerged. Protective tape that was wrapped around wiring insulation turned out to be flammable, and a key component in the parachute system was weaker than designed, meaning it could break if Starliner’s three parachutes did not deploy properly.

About a mile of the tape was replaced, and the parachute design was upgraded, strengthened and retested.

May 2024: Still not ready to fly

“We’ve been taking our time to go through everything methodically, because it is a test flight and we want it to go well,” Steve Stich, the program manager for NASA’s commercial crew program, said during a news conference on May 3.

Mark Nappi, the program manager at Boeing for Starliner, said: “We are ready to perform the test flight. And I’ve never felt readier on any mission that I’ve ever participated in.”

But Starliner was still not quite ready.

The countdown on May 6 was proceeding smoothly until a balky valve on the second stage of the Atlas V rocket — unrelated to Starliner — started acting up, vibrating audibly about 40 times per second.

The launch was called off, and the rocket needed to be taken off the launchpad for the valve to be replaced. That work was completed within a few days.

But a thornier issue emerged.

As the propellants were drained from the tanks of the Atlas V rocket, engineers discovered a small helium leak in Starliner’s propulsion system.

Helium, an inert gas, is used to push propellants to the thrusters. If too much is lost, the thrusters may not work properly.

The leak was traced to a seal on a helium line leading to one of 28 small thrusters known as reaction control system engines.

“Much like you would have on any piece of your plumbing at home, a faucet or anything like that,” Mr. Stich said during a telephone news conference on May 24. “There’s a seal that keeps that interface tight.”

Tests showed no leaks in the seals leading to the other 27 reaction control system engines, and engineers were confident that the single leak was manageable. There are no plans to replace the seal, which would require pulling Starliner off the Atlas V rocket and would lead to an even lengthier delay for the flight.

“We could handle this particular leak if that leak rate were to grow even up to 100 times,” Mr. Stich said.

The helium leak led NASA and Boeing to take a wider look at Starliner’s propulsion system, which revealed a “design vulnerability,” Mr. Stich said. If a series of unlikely failures occurred, the spacecraft might not be able to bring the astronauts safely back to Earth.

If there were problems with the larger engines intended to be fired for a maneuver to drop the spacecraft out of orbit, one of the backup plans was to use eight of the smaller thrusters. However, the analysis showed that an additional failure might mean there would be only four available.

The engineers then developed another backup plan to bring Starliner out of orbit with only the four thrusters. NASA and Boeing officials said that, after weeks of studying the problem, they were confident they could manage problems that might arise from the leak.

On Saturday, Mr. Wilmore and Ms. Williams were ready to fly. Starliner was ready too, but the computers controlling the final minutes of the countdown encountered a problem, and the launch was called off again.

Everyone is back for another attempt on Wednesday.

Space is a small but important part of Boeing’s business.

Boeing is best known for its airplanes, but it has a long history of space-related work. That includes substantial contributions to the first crewed mission to the moon and to the International Space Station.

Today, the company is helping to build an essential component of NASA’s Space Launch System, or S.L.S., a rocket designed to carry spacecraft, cargo and astronauts to the moon. In 2022, the agency successfully launched Artemis I, a test flight with no astronauts aboard, which included a mammoth booster stage built by Boeing. The booster helped the rocket to reach orbit. The company is working on similar sections for future missions involving S.L.S., too. The next, Artemis II, could send four astronauts around the moon in 2025.

In addition to that work, Boeing and Lockheed Martin have a joint venture known as United Launch Alliance, or U.L.A., which was founded in 2006 and employs about 2,700 people. That company’s rockets have sent more than 100 satellites into space, and its Atlas V vehicle is lifting the Starliner into orbit on Wednesday.

Boeing also makes satellites of all sizes for government and commercial operators, as well as missile warning and other satellite systems.

That space-related work is distinct from Boeing’s other endeavors. The company is divided into three units: one focused on making commercial airplanes; another focused on making military aircraft, missiles and space programs; and a third that provides services and maintenance to Boeing’s customers.

The units share some broad similarities, but are run independently, with different processes, products and cultures. Much of the company’s commercial-plane assembly takes place in the Seattle area or in North Charleston, S.C. Work on Boeing’s space programs is more diffuse and carried out across the country, including in Alabama, California, Louisiana, Colorado, Texas and Florida.

“They’re basically businesses within a business,” Ken Herbert, an analyst with RBC Capital, said of Boeing’s space programs.

Those programs, including Boeing’s work on Starliner, are prestigious, but still account for a small fraction of the business generated by Boeing’s defense unit, which itself is smaller than its commercial airplane business.

What is Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft?

At first glance, the Boeing Starliner looks much like the command module used by NASA during the Apollo moon missions in the 1960s and the 1970s.

That’s not a random coincidence. The ability of that cone-shaped vehicle to keep astronauts safe during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere is well documented.

At 15 feet in diameter, Starliner is slightly bigger than the Apollo spacecraft. The capsule and the service module — the part of the spacecraft that provides power and propulsion during the flight before being discarded just before landing — are together 16.5 feet in height.

The spacecraft is large enough to carry up to seven astronauts, but NASA missions will carry a crew of four. Boeing has the option of selling a fifth seat to a private customer who wants to tag along.

Each Starliner capsule is designed to be used for up to 10 missions; by contrast, the service module — the cylindrical component below the capsule, containing power, propulsion and life support systems — burns up in the atmosphere, and a new one is needed for each trip.

Boeing has built three Starliner capsules. The first was used only to demonstrate the ability to quickly fly astronauts to safety in case of an emergency on the launchpad. That capsule will not be used for any missions to orbit.

The Starliner used for this mission previously flew in space in 2020 during the first test flight with no crew, which was cut short because of technical problems. Suni Williams, the pilot for this mission, has named the spacecraft Calypso, a nod to the research ship used by Jacques Cousteau, a French undersea explorer.

The third Starliner, still unnamed, was used for the second test without crew in 2022 and will fly four astronauts to the International Space Station for the first operational mission, scheduled for next year.

History of Space Travel

Learn about the history of humans traveling into space.

The first earthling to orbit our planet was just two years old, plucked from the streets of Moscow barely more than a week before her historic launch. Her name was Laika. She was a terrier mutt and by all accounts a good dog. Her 1957 flight paved the way for space exploration back when scientists didn’t know if spaceflight was lethal for living things.

Humans are explorers. Since before the dawn of civilization, we’ve been lured over the horizon to find food or more space, to make a profit, or just to see what’s beyond those trees or mountains or oceans. Our ability to explore reached new heights—literally—in the last hundred years. Airplanes shortened distances, simplified travel, and showed us Earth from a new perspective. By the middle of the last century, we aimed even higher.

Our first steps into space began as a race between the United States and the former Soviet Union, rivals in a global struggle for power. Laika was followed into orbit four years later by the first human, Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin. With Earth orbit achieved, we turned our sights on the moon. The United States landed two astronauts on its stark surface in 1969, and five more manned missions followed. The U.S.’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched probes to study the solar system. Manned space stations began glittering in the sky. NASA developed reusable spacecraft—space shuttle orbiters—to ferry astronauts and satellites to orbit. Space-travel technology had advanced light-years in just three decades. Gagarin had to parachute from his spaceship after reentry from orbit. The space shuttle leaves orbit at 16,465 miles an hour (26,498 kilometers an hour) and glides to a stop on a runway without using an engine.

Space travel is nothing like in the movies. Getting from A to B requires complex calculations involving inertia and gravity—literally, rocket science—to "slingshot" from planet to planet (or moon) across the solar system. The Voyager mission of the 1970s took advantage of a rare alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune to shave off nearly 20 years of travel time. Space is also dangerous. More than 20 astronauts have died doing their job.

That hasn’t stopped people from signing up and blasting off. NASA’s shuttle program has ended, but private companies are readying their own space programs. A company called Planetary Resources plans to send robot astronauts to the Asteroid Belt to mine for precious metals. Another company named SpaceX is hoping to land civilian astronauts on Mars—the next human step into the solar system—in 20 years. NASA and other civilian companies are planning their own Mars missions. Maybe you’ll be a member of one? Don’t forget to bring your dog.

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Virgin Galactic to Launch Space Tourism Flight as Waiting Lists Grow

Jesse Chase-Lubitz , Skift

June 7th, 2024 at 1:51 PM EDT

Virgin Galactic joins Blue Origin and Space Perspective in aspiring to make the final frontier open to all who can afford it. That's good news for travel agencies like RocketBreaks.

Jesse Chase-Lubitz

Virgin Galactic plans to send a handful of paying passengers to the edge of space on June 8 as the space industry continues to grow and diversify.

“So far, there are about 3,000 to 4,000 people on the waiting lists for these trips,” said David Doughty, co-founder of the space travel agency RocketBreaks . His agency has secured contracts with seven tourists looking to launch into orbit and has set a date for one. 

Virgin Galactic’s flight will take off from New Mexico on Saturday and carry three private passengers from California, New York, and Italy. Tuva Cihangir Atasever , a researcher-astronaut from infrastructure company Axiom Space, and two commanders will accompany them.

Virgin Galactic has not released the identities of the private passengers. 

In an email to Skift, the company said, “We don’t consider our mission to take people to space, “tourism.” Those who fly with us become astronauts in what is a very thoughtful, purposeful journey that begins when they purchase a ticket.”

The passengers, whose identities were not disclosed, will enjoy a roughly 90-minute journey to the edge of space that includes a few minutes of zero gravity.

The company’s website states that spaceflight tickets cost $450,000, though it doesn’t disclose what passengers truly paid. On a recent earnings call, executives said the average price per seat on this flight is over $800,000 hope to charge a ticket price of $600,000 . Blue Origin doesn’t publicize its prices, but they have been said to range between $200,000 and over $1 million .

The space tourism industry

Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are known for their shorter suborbital flights, while SpaceX focuses on bringing tourists into orbit and to the International Space Station.

In August 2023, Virgin Galactic brought a health and wellness coach and her 18-year-old daughter who had won a fundraising competition by Space for Humanity, a non-profit that seeks to democratize space travel to space.

BlueOrigin , which is owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, has sent more than two dozen passengers into space. SpaceX , founded by Elon Musk, brought an all-tourist crew back from space in 2021.

The industry is growing and diversifying. One company, called Space Perspective , is offering an even more luxurious experience, with VIP seating, a toilet, Michelin-star catering, and WiFi. Rather than a 90-minute round trip, this experience would last closer to six hours.

A space travel agency

“This is our number one product,” said Doughty. “People don’t necessarily want this fast 15-minute adrenaline field journey. They want a full experience. There are people that are planning to get married and have the first weddings in space.”

The waiting list for Space Perspective is already about 800 names long, according to Doughty. The first flight is scheduled to launch in 2027.

Virgin Galactic plans to retire its current spacecraft after this flight and start developing a new generation of Delta spaceships, which the company hopes will have the capacity to launch up to eight times per month and carry more passengers. Private astronaut flights are expected to resume in 2026. But the company will have to find a way to stay financially viable in the meantime .

The future of space tourism

RocketBreaks sees the industry widening to different types of experiences. “You can really personalize the experience and we help people find the journey they want,” said Doughty. “We could plan anything from a child meeting an astronaut for his birthday, a bucket list trip in your 70s and you don’t like G-Force, something for a premier league footballer who wants to feel the adrenaline.”

The technology is developing rapidly and confidence is slowly building, said Barry Shanks, director at RocketBreaks. “There’s going to be a great deal of marketing going on, so then I think we will see a rise,” he said. 

“In the long term, like 10 years time, we’re looking at doing a trip around the moon that will be no different than flying from London to Australia,” said Shanks of RocketBreaks.

CORRECTION : This article originally said Virgin Galactic’s latest flight on June 8 would be its second with paying passengers. It will be its seventh. We’ve also added this statement: “On its latest earnings call, the company said the average price per seat on this flight was over $800,000.”

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Tags: space , space tourism , spacex , Travel Experiences , Travel Trends , virgin galactic

Photo credit: Virgin Galactic's first mission carrying passengers in August, 2023. Virgin Galactic

Space Travel Calculator

Table of contents

Ever since the dawn of civilization, the idea of space travel has fascinated humans! Haven't we all looked up into the night sky and dreamed about space?

With the successful return of the first all-civilian crew of SpaceX's Inspiration4 mission after orbiting the Earth for three days, the dream of space travel looks more and more realistic now.

While traveling deep into space is still something out of science fiction movies like Star Trek and Star Wars, the tremendous progress made by private space companies so far seems very promising. Someday, space travel (or even interstellar travel) might be accessible to everyone!

It's never too early to start planning for a trip of a lifetime (or several lifetimes). You can also plan your own space trip and celebrate World Space Week in your own special way!

This space travel calculator is a comprehensive tool that allows you to estimate many essential parameters in theoretical interstellar space travel . Have you ever wondered how fast we can travel in space, how much time it will take to get to the nearest star or galaxy, or how much fuel it requires? In the following article, using a relativistic rocket equation, we'll try to answer questions like "Is interstellar travel possible?" , and "Can humans travel at the speed of light?"

Explore the world of light-speed travel of (hopefully) future spaceships with our relativistic space travel calculator!

If you're interested in astrophysics, check out our other calculators. Find out the speed required to leave the surface of any planet with the escape velocity calculator or estimate the parameters of the orbital motion of planets using the orbital velocity calculator .

One small step for man, one giant leap for humanity

Although human beings have been dreaming about space travel forever, the first landmark in the history of space travel is Russia's launch of Sputnik 2 into space in November 1957. The spacecraft carried the first earthling, the Russian dog Laika , into space.

Four years later, on 12 April 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin became the first human in space when his spacecraft, the Vostok 1, completed one orbit of Earth.

The first American astronaut to enter space was Alan Shepard (May 1961). During the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to land on the moon. Between 1969 and 1972, a total of 12 astronauts walked the moon, marking one of the most outstanding achievements for NASA.

In recent decades, space travel technology has seen some incredible advancements. Especially with the advent of private space companies like SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and Blue Origin, the dream of space tourism is looking more and more realistic for everyone!

However, when it comes to including women, we are yet to make great strides. So far, 566 people have traveled to space. Only 65 of them were women .

Although the first woman in space, a Soviet astronaut Valentina Tereshkova , who orbited Earth 48 times, went into orbit in June 1963. It was only in October 2019 that the first all-female spacewalk was completed by NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch.

Women's access to space is still far from equal, but there are signs of progress, like NASA planning to land the first woman and first person of color on the moon by 2024 with its Artemis missions. World Space Week is also celebrating the achievements and contributions of women in space this year!

In the following sections, we will explore the feasibility of space travel and its associated challenges.

How fast can we travel in space? Is interstellar travel possible?

Interstellar space is a rather empty place. Its temperature is not much more than the coldest possible temperature, i.e., an absolute zero. It equals about 3 kelvins – minus 270 °C or minus 455 °F. You can't find air there, and therefore there is no drag or friction. On the one hand, humans can't survive in such a hostile place without expensive equipment like a spacesuit or a spaceship, but on the other hand, we can make use of space conditions and its emptiness.

The main advantage of future spaceships is that, since they are moving through a vacuum, they can theoretically accelerate to infinite speeds! However, this is only possible in the classical world of relatively low speeds, where Newtonian physics can be applied. Even if it's true, let's imagine, just for a moment, that we live in a world where any speed is allowed. How long will it take to visit the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest galaxy to the Milky Way?

We will begin our intergalactic travel with a constant acceleration of 1 g (9.81 m/s² or 32.17 ft/s²) because it ensures that the crew experiences the same comfortable gravitational field as the one on Earth. By using this space travel calculator in Newton's universe mode, you can find out that you need about 2200 years to arrive at the nearest galaxy! And, if you want to stop there, you need an additional 1000 years . Nobody lives for 3000 years! Is intergalactic travel impossible for us, then? Luckily, we have good news. We live in a world of relativistic effects, where unusual phenomena readily occur.

Can humans travel at the speed of light? – relativistic space travel

In the previous example, where we traveled to Andromeda Galaxy, the maximum velocity was almost 3000 times greater than the speed of light c = 299,792,458 m/s , or about c = 3 × 10 8 m/s using scientific notation.

However, as velocity increases, relativistic effects start to play an essential role. According to special relativity proposed by Albert Einstein, nothing can exceed the speed of light. How can it help us with interstellar space travel? Doesn't it mean we will travel at a much lower speed? Yes, it does, but there are also a few new relativistic phenomena, including time dilation and length contraction, to name a few. The former is crucial in relativistic space travel.

Time dilation is a difference of time measured by two observers, one being in motion and the second at rest (relative to each other). It is something we are not used to on Earth. Clocks in a moving spaceship tick slower than the same clocks on Earth ! Time passing in a moving spaceship T T T and equivalent time observed on Earth t t t are related by the following formula:

where γ \gamma γ is the Lorentz factor that comprises the speed of the spaceship v v v and the speed of light c c c :

where β = v / c \beta = v/c β = v / c .

For example, if γ = 10 \gamma = 10 γ = 10 ( v = 0.995 c v = 0.995c v = 0.995 c ), then every second passing on Earth corresponds to ten seconds passing in the spaceship. Inside the spacecraft, events take place 90 percent slower; the difference can be even greater for higher velocities. Note that both observers can be in motion, too. In that case, to calculate the relative relativistic velocity, you can use our velocity addition calculator .

Let's go back to our example again, but this time we're in Einstein's universe of relativistic effects trying to reach Andromeda. The time needed to get there, measured by the crew of the spaceship, equals only 15 years ! Well, this is still a long time, but it is more achievable in a practical sense. If you would like to stop at the destination, you should start decelerating halfway through. In this situation, the time passed in the spaceship will be extended by about 13 additional years .

Unfortunately, this is only a one-way journey. You can, of course, go back to Earth, but nothing will be the same. During your interstellar space travel to the Andromeda Galaxy, about 2,500,000 years have passed on Earth. It would be a completely different planet, and nobody could foresee the fate of our civilization.

A similar problem was considered in the first Planet of the Apes movie, where astronauts crash-landed back on Earth. While these astronauts had only aged by 18 months, 2000 years had passed on Earth (sorry for the spoilers, but the film is over 50 years old at this point, you should have seen it by now). How about you? Would you be able to leave everything you know and love about our galaxy forever and begin a life of space exploration?

Space travel calculator – relativistic rocket equation

Now that you know whether interstellar travel is possible and how fast we can travel in space, it's time for some formulas. In this section, you can find the "classical" and relativistic rocket equations that are included in the relativistic space travel calculator.

There could be four combinations since we want to estimate how long it takes to arrive at the destination point at full speed as well as arrive at the destination point and stop. Every set contains distance, time passing on Earth and in the spaceship (only relativity approach), expected maximum velocity and corresponding kinetic energy (on the additional parameters section), and the required fuel mass (see Intergalactic travel — fuel problem section for more information). The notation is:

• a a a — Spaceship acceleration (by default 1   g 1\rm\, g 1 g ). We assume it is positive a > 0 a > 0 a > 0 (at least until halfway) and constant.
• m m m — Spaceship mass. It is required to calculate kinetic energy (and fuel).
• d d d — Distance to the destination. Note that you can select it from the list or type in any other distance to the desired object.
• T T T — Time that passed in a spaceship, or, in other words, how much the crew has aged.
• t t t — Time that passed in a resting frame of reference, e.g., on Earth.
• v v v — Maximum velocity reached by the spaceship.
• K E \rm KE KE — Maximum kinetic energy reached by the spaceship.

The relativistic space travel calculator is dedicated to very long journeys, interstellar or even intergalactic, in which we can neglect the influence of the gravitational field, e.g., from Earth. We didn't include our closest celestial bodies, like the Moon or Mars, in the destination list because it would be pointless. For them, we need different equations that also take into consideration gravitational force.

Newton's universe — arrive at the destination at full speed

It's the simplest case because here, T T T equals t t t for any speed. To calculate the distance covered at constant acceleration during a certain time, you can use the following classical formula:

Since acceleration is constant, and we assume that the initial velocity equals zero, you can estimate the maximum velocity using this equation:

and the corresponding kinetic energy:

Newton's universe — arrive at the destination and stop

In this situation, we accelerate to the halfway point, reach maximum velocity, and then decelerate to stop at the destination point. Distance covered during the same time is, as you may expect, smaller than before:

Acceleration remains positive until we're halfway there (then it is negative – deceleration), so the maximum velocity is:

and the kinetic energy equation is the same as the previous one.

Einstein's universe — arrive at the destination at full speed

The relativistic rocket equation has to consider the effects of light-speed travel. These are not only speed limitations and time dilation but also how every length becomes shorter for a moving observer, which is a phenomenon of special relativity called length contraction. If l l l is the proper length observed in the rest frame and L L L is the length observed by a crew in a spaceship, then:

What does it mean? If a spaceship moves with the velocity of v = 0.995 c v = 0.995c v = 0.995 c , then γ = 10 \gamma = 10 γ = 10 , and the length observed by a moving object is ten times smaller than the real length. For example, the distance to the Andromeda Galaxy equals about 2,520,000 light years with Earth as the frame of reference. For a spaceship moving with v = 0.995 c v = 0.995c v = 0.995 c , it will be "only" 252,200 light years away. That's a 90 percent decrease or a 164 percent difference!

Now you probably understand why special relativity allows us to intergalactic travel. Below you can find the relativistic rocket equation for the case in which you want to arrive at the destination point at full speed (without stopping). You can find its derivation in the book by Messrs Misner, Thorne ( Co-Winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics ) and Wheller titled Gravitation , section §6.2. Hyperbolic motion. More accessible formulas are in the mathematical physicist John Baez's article The Relativistic Rocket :

• Time passed on Earth:
• Time passed in the spaceship:
• Maximum velocity:
• Relativistic kinetic energy remains the same:

The symbols sh ⁡ \sh sh , ch ⁡ \ch ch , and th ⁡ \th th are, respectively, sine, cosine, and tangent hyperbolic functions, which are analogs of the ordinary trigonometric functions. In turn, sh ⁡ − 1 \sh^{-1} sh − 1 and ch ⁡ − 1 \ch^{-1} ch − 1 are the inverse hyperbolic functions that can be expressed with natural logarithms and square roots, according to the article Inverse hyperbolic functions on Wikipedia.

Einstein's universe – arrive at destination point and stop

Most websites with relativistic rocket equations consider only arriving at the desired place at full speed. If you want to stop there, you should start decelerating at the halfway point. Below, you can find a set of equations estimating interstellar space travel parameters in the situation when you want to stop at the destination point :

Intergalactic travel – fuel problem

So, after all of these considerations, can humans travel at the speed of light, or at least at a speed close to it? Jet-rocket engines need a lot of fuel per unit of weight of the rocket. You can use our rocket equation calculator to see how much fuel you need to obtain a certain velocity (e.g., with an effective exhaust velocity of 4500 m/s).

Hopefully, future spaceships will be able to produce energy from matter-antimatter annihilation. This process releases energy from two particles that have mass (e.g., electron and positron) into photons. These photons may then be shot out at the back of the spaceship and accelerate the spaceship due to the conservation of momentum. If you want to know how much energy is contained in matter, check out our E = mc² calculator , which is about the famous Albert Einstein equation.

Now that you know the maximum amount of energy you can acquire from matter, it's time to estimate how much of it you need for intergalactic travel. Appropriate formulas are derived from the conservation of momentum and energy principles. For the relativistic case:

where e x e^x e x is an exponential function, and for classical case:

Remember that it assumes 100% efficiency! One of the promising future spaceships' power sources is the fusion of hydrogen into helium, which provides energy of 0.008 mc² . As you can see, in this reaction, efficiency equals only 0.8%.

Let's check whether the fuel mass amount is reasonable for sending a mass of 1 kg to the nearest galaxy. With a space travel calculator, you can find out that, even with 100% efficiency, you would need 5,200 tons of fuel to send only 1 kilogram of your spaceship . That's a lot!

So can humans travel at the speed of light? Right now, it seems impossible, but technology is still developing. For example, a photonic laser thruster is a good candidate since it doesn't require any matter to work, only photons. Infinity and beyond is actually within our reach!

How do I calculate the travel time to other planets?

To calculate the time it takes to travel to a specific star or galaxy using the space travel calculator, follow these steps:

• Choose the acceleration : the default mode is 1 g (gravitational field similar to Earth's).
• Enter the spaceship mass , excluding fuel.
• Select the destination : pick the star, planet, or galaxy you want to travel to from the dropdown menu.
• The distance between the Earth and your chosen stars will automatically appear. You can also input the distance in light-years directly if you select the Custom distance option in the previous dropdown.
• Define the aim : select whether you aim to " Arrive at destination and stop " or “ Arrive at destination at full speed ”.
• Pick the calculation mode : opt for either " Einstein's universe " mode for relativistic effects or " Newton's universe " for simpler calculations.
• Time passed in spaceship : estimated time experienced by the crew during the journey. (" Einstein's universe " mode)
• Time passed on Earth : estimated time elapsed on Earth during the trip. (" Einstein's universe " mode)
• Time passed : depends on the frame of reference, e.g., on Earth. (" Newton's universe " mode)
• Required fuel mass : estimated fuel quantity needed for the journey.
• Maximum velocity : maximum speed achieved by the spaceship.

How long does it take to get to space?

It takes about 8.5 minutes for a space shuttle or spacecraft to reach Earth's orbit, i.e., the limit of space where the Earth's atmosphere ends. This dividing line between the Earth's atmosphere and space is called the Kármán line . It happens so quickly because the shuttle goes from zero to around 17,500 miles per hour in those 8.5 minutes .

How fast does the space station travel?

The International Space Station travels at an average speed of 28,000 km/h or 17,500 mph . In a single day, the ISS can make several complete revolutions as it circumnavigates the globe in just 90 minutes . Placed in orbit at an altitude of 350 km , the station is visible to the naked eye, looking like a dot crossing the sky due to its very bright solar panels.

How do I reach the speed of light?

To reach the speed of light, you would have to overcome several obstacles, including:

Mass limit : traveling at the speed of light would mean traveling at 299,792,458 meters per second. But, thanks to Einstein's theory of relativity, we know that an object with non-zero mass cannot reach this speed.

Energy : accelerating to the speed of light would require infinite energy.

Effects of relativity : from the outside, time would slow down, and you would shrink.

Why can't sound travel in space?

Sound can’t travel in space because it is a mechanical wave that requires a medium to propagate — this medium can be solid, liquid, or gas. In space, there is no matter, or at least not enough for sound to propagate. The density of matter in space is of the order 1 particle per cubic centimeter . While on Earth , it's much denser at around 10 20 particles per cubic centimeter .

Dreaming of traveling into space? 🌌 Plan your interstellar travel (even to a Star Trek destination) using this calculator 👨‍🚀! Estimate how fast you can reach your destination and how much fuel you would need 🚀

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ol{padding-top:0px;}.css-4okk7a ul:not(:first-child),.css-4okk7a ol:not(:first-child){padding-top:4px;} Spaceship and destination 👩‍🚀👨‍🚀

Spaceship acceleration

Spaceship mass

Mass of spaceship excluding fuel.

Destination

Select a destination from the list or type in distance by hand.

Which star/galaxy?

If you want to input your own distance, select the 'Custom destination' option in the 'Which star/galaxy?' field.

Calculation options

Do you want to stop at destination point? If yes, the spaceship will start decelerating once it reaches the halfway point.

Calculations mode

You can compare Einstein's special relativity with non-relativistic Newton's physics. Remember that at near-light speeds only the former is correct!

Travel details 🚀

Time passed in spaceship

Time passed on Earth

Time passed in the resting frame of reference. It could be an observer on Earth.

Required fuel mass

Assuming 100% efficiency.

Maximum velocity

Note that our calculator may round velocity to the speed of light if it is really close to it.

Additional parameters

Fuel energy equivalent

Required fuel mass multiplied by c².

Maximum kinetic energy

Beta parameter for the maximum velocity.

γ [1/√(1 - β²)]

Lorentz factor for the maximum velocity.

Elektrostal, Moscow Oblast, Russia

Elektrostal is a city in the Moscow Oblast of Russia, located around 30 km east of Moscow. It is home to around 160,000 inhabitants and is an important industrial and cultural center in the region. The city is known for its vibrant night lights, which are a major attraction for both tourists and locals alike.

The amount of light pollution in Elektrostal is quite significant, due to the large number of industrial facilities and residential buildings. The city's industrial sector, which includes metallurgical plants, chemical factories, and power stations, is one of the main sources of light pollution in the area. The city's residential areas also contribute to the problem, as many people leave their lights on throughout the night.

One of the most well-known landmarks in Elektrostal is the Monument to the Conquerors of Space, which was built in 1964 to commemorate the achievements of the Soviet space program. The monument is illuminated at night and is visible from many parts of the city. Another notable landmark is the Elektrostal Museum of Local Lore, which is housed in a historic building and features exhibits on the city's history and culture.

In addition to its industrial and cultural attractions, Elektrostal is also known for its vibrant nightlife. The city has a large number of bars, restaurants, and nightclubs, many of which are open until late into the night. The city's residents are known for their love of music and dancing, and the local nightlife scene reflects this.

Despite the significant amount of light pollution in Elektrostal, there are efforts underway to reduce the problem. The city government has implemented a number of initiatives aimed at promoting energy efficiency and reducing waste, including a program to replace traditional streetlights with LED lights. The city also encourages its residents to conserve energy by turning off lights when they are not needed.

Elektrostal is a vibrant and dynamic city in the Moscow Oblast, with a rich industrial and cultural heritage. While its night lights are a major attraction, they also contribute to the problem of light pollution in the area. However, efforts are underway to address the issue, and the city's residents and government are working together to promote sustainable and energy-efficient practices.

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Israel to require American visitors to apply in advance for electronic travel authorization

Israel is joining the Western nations requiring an advance online application and a fee for citizens from visa-exempt countries, including the United States.

Until now, Americans who want to travel to Israel haven’t needed to do anything other than purchase a plane ticket and pack their bags.

But starting Aug. 1, electronic travel authorization through a designated website will be required, Israel’s Ministry of Tourism announced this week. A pilot program, with the NIS 25 ($7) fee waived, will launch Saturday for travelers from the United States and Germany and will extend to all visa-exempt countries on July 1.

Travelers are advised to apply 72 hours before booking flights and lodging. Travelers without the authorization will not be permitted to board planes headed to Israel, and Interior Ministry spokeswoman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The ETA-IL program is similar to others that have been put in place in recent years in Europe, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. Their goal is to screen out travelers suspected of posing a security threat or of potentially violating tourist visa restrictions through work or overstaying before they land at ports of entry.

Most countries that have launched similar programs advise a 72-hour heads-up, although the authorization frequently arrives via email within hours. The United States warns that people who do not apply in advance for travel authorization can face delays boarding flights or be turned away at the border, even if they come from countries that participate in the U.S. visa-waiver program. ( Israel was added to the program only last September .)

Citizens of visa-exempt countries who are citizens or permanent residents of Israel are not required to request authorization. Citizens of nonexempt countries will still need to complete a more arduous visa application process. The authorization will last for two years and will allow multiple entries of up to 90 days.

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Holiday-goers set to travel on one of British Airways new fleet of short-haul planes this year will notice their boarding experience is a little more relaxing than usual.

The eight next generation aircrafts arriving in 2024 have been redesigned – with one under-the-radar, yet very important, change.

We’ve all experienced the joy of trying to find space in the overhead storage on a busy flight and felt our blood pressure rise as we desperately attempt to wedge a case in somewhere nearby, for fear of it being taken far from where we’re sat otherwise.

However, the brains behind these new planes understood just how real our struggle was and have made one simple change: the size of the overhead bin. 

Now, if you’re heading on a short-haul hol on one of these new BA planes, you can actually store your bag on its side rather than face down in the extra-large overhead bins, creating more storage space all round.

Yet, most of the passengers who have used it so far, haven’t realised it even exists.

Having been on one of the plane’s recently alongside the man behind the new design, BA’s Chief Customer Officer Calum Laming, Metro.co.uk saw just how much travellers had become used to quickly putting their cases in flat to avoid any dramas, even though the space was there to use. 

Thankfully, the cabin crew knew the drill and quickly made sure all bags were stored in much a more space-saving way, making room for even more luggage – and less last-minute storage dramas.

And the new and improved over-head bins isn’t the only change on the new A320neo and A321neo aircrafts, which have been redesigned to ‘reflect a British modern yet classic interior, combining a progressive approach with traditional elements that draw inspiration from the flag carrier’s rich heritage.’

The ‘timeless look that reflects the sophistication and elegance of British craftsmanship’, will feature seats made from Scottish leather and curtains and carpets from Dublin.

Talking of overhead dramas, one cabin crew member recently revealed the single worst thing a passenger can do on an airplane – and it involves the overhead bin.

‘Putting any type of bottle that has liquid in it in the overhead bin,’ an American flight attendant who goes by Cher declared on TikTok, in a video which has been viewed more than 73,000 times.

@cherdallas Raise your hand if youve been personally victimized by a waterbottle in the overhead bin #flightattendantlife #falife✈️ #stewardess #travel #traveltiktok #aviationdaily #aviationlovers #travellover #flightreacts #flights #falifestyle✈️ #stewardess #flightattendant #flightattendants #fa ♬ Moonlite Love – Abir’yah

‘Every single time, without fail, that water bottle, as soon as we take off, is going to leak inside the bin.’

Cher, who has been cabin crew for five years, hates this so much, that she described it as ‘heinous, evil and diabolical.’

While she admits it’s an easy mistake to make, saying, ‘it’s tempting to do this if it’s in the outer pocket of your backpack,’ she’s adamant it’s poor plane behaviour.

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So why is it so awful? ‘Not only does that soak everybody else’s bags, the water always picks one person and it’ll follow a stream and completely dump out of the bin onto one person,’ explains Cher.

What else do the new BA planes have?

Extra features on the new A320neo and A321neo aircrafts which will fly out of Hethrow include:

Enhanced sidewalls

Welcome ‘halo’ light and mood lighting

Mounted USB-C power at every seat

The adjustable headrest and pre-reclined seat have been reintroduced to increase space. 

A bridge has been reintroduced between the seats in Club Europe, leaving an area for passengers to place things on, away from their tray table.

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Money blog: Victorian island forts - complete with helipads and nightclubs - up for sale

Two Victorian island forts that were used to defend the Portsmouth dockyards during the Second World War have been listed for auction for £1m each. Read this and the rest of today's consumer news in the Money blog.

Friday 7 June 2024 20:55, UK

• 100,000 reportedly due to remortgage onto higher rates before election - here's what you need to know
• Victorian island forts - complete with nightclub - up for sale
• Does Wetherspoons buy lose to out-of-date beer?
• Rents fall in some big cities
• How much a last-minute Taylor Swift ticket will set you back

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• Why you should consider swapping chicken breasts out of your shopping basket
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• Ed Conway : Claim of £2k tax rise under Labour is over four years - same maths suggests Tories have raised taxes by £13k in last four years
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• Best of the Money blog - an archive

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Ever wanted to own your own Victorian island fort?

Well now you can - with two being listed with a guide price of £1m.

Spitbank Fort in Hampshire and No Man's Land Fort off the Isle of Wight have been listed for auction and can be bought separately - or as a pair if you can't pick between the two.  

During the Second World War, the forts were used to defend the Portsmouth dockyards. 

No Man's Fort is substantially bigger and probably presents itself more as a business opportunity, but Spitbank offers nine large bedroom suites across three floors and could potentially work as a private home to the right buyer. 

No Man's Fort has its own traditional English pub, a nightclub, and a helipad, while Spitbank Fort naturally boasts a wine cave plus a swimming pool and spa complex.

"Throughout my career as an auctioneer I've seen several sea forts hit the market that have achieved impressive prices as buyers have sought to pursue these trophy assets," said Robin Howeson, head of Savills Auctions.

"Having been carefully restored by the current owners, No Man's and Spitbank Fort represent exceptional market value, each guided at £1m. 

"Both offer an opportunity like no other; a waterfront location, up to 99,000sq ft of space and a chance to champion the heritage and legacy of these iconic maritime structures."

The auction takes place on 18 June. 

The BBC's content arm is among the suitors vying to buy the television production company which owns the rights to The Gruffalo.

Sky News has learnt that BBC Studios is participating in a sale process for Magic Light Pictures, which has won three BAFTAs and secured a quartet of Oscar nominations.

The auction is being run by Gotham Street, a specialist media deals boutique.

A number of other bidders are also said to be involved in the process given the quality of Magic Light's content library, which includes a number of works by The Gruffalo's creators, Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler.

The Gruffalo has become one of Britain's best-known children's characters, telling the story of an adventurous mouse that fends off a series of would-be predators by telling them about a supposedly imaginary creature called a gruffalo.

In the 2011 sequel, The Gruffalo's Child, the mouse then scares off a young gruffalo by using shadows to project a giant version of itself.

The two films have been distributed internationally by Magic Light, and along with the original Gruffalo books have sparked substantial merchandising revenues as well as a theme park attraction at Chessington World of Adventures.

The woman alleged to be the inspiration for the stalker in hit Netflix series Baby Reindeer is suing the streaming platform for $170m (£133m).

The show is said to be based on the real-life experiences of writer Richard Gadd, who plays himself as he copes with stalker Martha Scott.

Fiona Harvey, 58, claims she is the inspiration for Martha, who begins stalking Gadd after he serves her a free cup of tea in the pub where he works.

In the lawsuit, Ms Harvey has accused Netflix of spreading "brutal lies", including that she is a "twice convicted stalker who was sentenced to five years in prison".

"Defendants told these lies, and never stopped, because it was a better story than the truth, and better stories made money," it states.

"As a result of defendants' lies, malfeasance and utterly reckless misconduct, Harvey's life had been ruined."

Sky News's US partner network NBC News reports the lawsuit described the show's claim "this is a true story" as "the biggest lie in television history".

"Netflix destroyed a woman, claiming, among many allegations, that she was a convicted woman," Richard Roth, a lawyer for Ms Harvey, wrote in an email.

"It never contacted her. It never checked the facts. It never made any effort to understand the truth of its 'true story!'"

The lawsuit seeks actual damages and compensatory damages at $50m (£39m) each, punitive damages at $20m (£16m); as well as "all profits" from Baby Reindeer at $50m (£39m).

A Netflix spokesperson told Sky News: "We intend to defend this matter vigorously and to stand by Richard Gadd's right to tell his story."

Administrators to The Body Shop are aiming to clinch a sale of the stricken cosmetics retailer by the end of the month, even as its former owner veers away from making an offer for it.

Sky News' city editor Mark Kleinman has learnt that FRP Advisory, which was appointed to handle the chain's insolvency in January, has asked for indicative bids by next Tuesday.

British entrepreneur Mike Lynch has been cleared of all charges by a US jury in the high-profile fraud case related to the sale of his software company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2011.

Dr Lynch, who was extradited to the US to face trial just over a year ago, was acquitted alongside a former finance executive Stephen Chamberlain who had faced the same charges.

They were accused of conspiracy and attempted fraud over the £8.3bn sale to HP - a deal that has been the subject of costly legal action since.

Labour is promising to get more young people on the housing ladder as it announces its "freedom to buy" scheme on Friday.

The party is pledging to make the existing mortgage guarantee scheme - which sees the government act as a guarantor for people unable to save big deposits - into a permanent fixture if it wins the election on 4 July.

Meanwhile, the Tories are promising a tax cut for parents by raising the threshold for when families have to pay a levy on their child benefit.

The current system means if either parents or a parent's partner earns more than £60,000, they begin paying the high income child benefit tax charge, and lose the benefit altogether when a salary hits £80,000.

But if the Tories win the election on 4 July, they have promised to increase the threshold to £120,000 before any tax is paid, and to £160,000 before the benefit is withdrawn, as well as base it on a household income, rather than an individual.

If you missed out on the general sales but want to bag yourself a last-minute ticket to Taylor Swift's show in Edinburgh tonight , it could set you back a whopping £4,000. 

Not to fear, however, as it is currently possible to land yourself a ticket for as little as £271 - if you settle for a somewhat restricted view. 

We've checked resale giant Viagogo for the latest prices, accurate as of 10.30am. 

As is often the case with popular tours listed on resale sites, many of the tickets are sold individually - so if you're happy to go alone tonight, you're more likely to get a ticket. 

For context, a ticket at general sale cost somewhere between £80-£160 depending on where you sit/stand. 

As it stands, the cheapest seat with an unrestricted view of the stage is currently up for sale at £323.

Just one ticket is up for £271, but has a "restricted view". 

Bringing a crowd

If you're looking to take someone with you, the cheapest pair of tickets without any restricted view will cost you a combined £1,706.

However, if you're happy with a restricted or limited view, you can pay the cheaper price of £538 for the pair (£269 each). 

You can buy up to four tickets in the same area for £303 each (£1,212 together) for a restricted view, or £555 each (£2,220 together) for an unobstructed view of the stage. 

Getting closer to the action 

Standing tickets are much sought after given their proximity to the stage. 

As alluded to at the top of this post, one frankly optimistic reseller has listed four general admission tickets for a staggering £4,256 each (in the "floor" section shown in the map below). 

However, you can get even closer - with one ticket remaining in the separate section to the left of the stage at £651 and another to the right at £559. 

A word of caution

Ticket resale sites, including Viagogo, have previously been accused of "ripping off" consumers amid concerns customers could be turned away at venues because of restrictions on some resold tickets.

The company was told in 2019 that it was required to make a number of changes to the way it collects and presents information about tickets on its site.

It has since pledged to be compliant with UK watchdogs and now offers a "100% order guarantee [which] covers both buyers and sellers".

If you're happy paying over the odds for last-minute tickets, make sure you're buying through a site with such a guarantee and always beware of scams!

House prices in the UK dropped by 0.1% between April and May, data from mortgage lender Halifax shows.

Analysts had expected a drop of around 0.2%, while last week, rival lender Nationwide said its measure of house prices rose in May after falling in the previous two months.

In the 12 months to May, prices rose by 1.5%, Halifax said - faster than the median forecast in a Reuters news agency poll for an annual increase of 1.2%.

"Market activity remained resilient throughout the spring months, supported by strong nominal wage growth and some evidence of an improvement in confidence about the economic outlook," Halifax's head of mortgages, Amanda Bryden, said.

The stable picture for property prices over the last three months was likely to give more confidence to buyers and sellers, she added. 

Sir Keir Starmer will shortly promise to get more young people on the housing ladder as Labour announces its "freedom to buy" policy. 

We've now got some reaction from business leaders, who've been speaking to Newspage.

Justin Moy, managing director at EHF Mortgages, was not impressed. 

"Freedom to buy looks great on the first read, but then you realise it’s actually been in place since 2021 and many lenders don't use it anyway," he said. 

"Labour are effectively promoting something that already exists and isn't used," he added. 

Andrew Montlake, managing director at Coreco, disagreed, saying it marked a "promising" first offering from Labour. 

"This can allow lenders to take a longer-term approach in their offerings and ensure that competitive products are continually available for those with lower deposits. 

"Whilst it doesn't solve the long-term housing issues overnight, Labour have at least shown they understand them and have already shown they are willing to speak and engage with those on the front lines, which is more promising for the housing market as a whole should the next government be a red one."

However, many more had a negative outlook. 

Lewis Shaw, owner of Shaw Financial Services, was scathing in his assessment, saying: "This policy is about as useful as a chocolate teapot. 

"Prior to the pandemic, 95% loan-to-value mortgage lending was the norm. 

"It happened without any political interference or putting the taxpayer on the hook - has everyone forgotten that? 

"If Labour really wants to help young people buy a home, then do the things that we all know are needed: Tax the super-rich, reduce wealth inequality and build more houses. It's not rocket science."

Katy Eatenton, mortgage and protection specialist at Lifetime Wealth Management, said it was "yet another scheme with no real substance", which was echoed by Stephen Perkins, managing director at Yellow Brick Mortgages.

"This policy will not hugely impact the property market," he said. 

Shortly, we're expecting Sir Keir Starmer to promise to get more young people on the housing ladder as Labour announces its "freedom to buy".

He's set to speak in the coming hours. 

The party will pledge to make the existing mortgage guarantee scheme - which sees the government act as a guarantor for people unable to save big deposits - into a permanent fixture if it wins the election on 4 July.

Sir Keir will also commit to an overhaul of the planning system, including reintroducing housing targets, claiming his measures will see 1.5 million more homes built over the next five years.

Among the planning changes, the party will promise to tax foreign buyers "pricing out young people" from the housing market in order to pay for new planning officers, which it claims will help increase projects being signed off.

It will bring back house-build targets - scrapped by the Tories in 2022 - as well as fast-track permissions to build on brownfield sites, and reform compulsory purchase orders to "stop speculators frustrating housebuilding".

They will also promise to offer "first dibs" on new developments to local people looking for a home and reiterate their pledge to create "the next generation" of new towns.

Read more in our dedicated Politics Hub :

GAME are set to end their long-running rewards programme on 31 July and have urged customers to use their remaining credit whilst they still can.

Both the company's standard GAME Reward scheme and their Elite membership tier will cease to exist, while no further reward points will be earned from purchases made in store or online after July 15.

You can currently redeem 400 reward points for £1 off of a purchase. The end of GAME Elite will mean the end of its monthly offers and prize draws. Any outstanding paid Elite membership months will be eligible for a refund.

"We would strongly urge you to redeem your GAME reward points prior to the closure date on purchases in store or online to avoid disappointment," said GAME.

"After the closure date, GAME reward points will be reset to zero and the GAME reward account will be closed, you will no longer be able to access it and you will no longer be able to redeem your GAME reward points."

The end of GAME's reward programme is the latest move from the company to make changes to their business model.

The chain has already closed several of their own bespoke high street stores and instead taken up residence within Sports Direct and other Fraser Group outlets.

By Sarah Taaffe-Maguire , business reporter

We've now had the first interest rate cut in the UK, US and EU for years. 

Yesterday the European Central Bank (ECB) brought down the cost of borrowing in the countries using the euro - the first reduction since 2019.

Sterling stayed roughly where it has been against the euro for the last two weeks - one pound buys more euro than it has done for most of the last year, €1.1740. 

Oil prices have ticked up through the week but are still just below $80 a barrel for Brent crude, the benchmark price. 

That's cheaper than the vast majority of this year and good news for motorists.  

Signs of stabilisation can be seen in the housing market with the news that house prices fell just 0.1% in May, equivalent to a £170 drop in the average house, according to mortgage lender Halifax. 

But renting is still becoming more expensive, just at a slightly slower rate than before, according to property portal Zoopla.

The average rent costs £80 more a month compared with a year earlier.

Higher housing costs have also shown through in a market update from British homebuilder Bellway, which said it expects to sell houses at a higher price point than it previously thought.

The company is a constituent of the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 250 index of 101st to 350th most valuable companies on the London Stock Exchange which is down 0.22% this morning. 

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