The Peculiar Realities
The concept of space tourism has officially shifted from speculative fiction to commercial reality. Private citizens, who are not government-trained astronauts, can now purchase tickets to leave Earth. This new industry, led by high-profile companies like Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and SpaceX, captures the public imagination with images of sleek rockets, smiling passengers in custom-fit suits, and breathtaking views of the planetary curve.
Yet, beneath this polished veneer lies a collection of strange, counter-intuitive, and distinctly unglamorous facts. The realities of leaving Earth’s atmosphere, even for a few minutes, involve bizarre physical sensations, peculiar legal voids, and psychological phenomena that are far removed from the sterile luxury often portrayed. This article explores the stranger side of commercial space travel, moving beyond the launchpad excitement to the mundane, uncomfortable, and fascinating details of being a tourist in the final frontier.
The Unspoken Physical Toll
Travel advertisements rarely focus on motion sickness, but in space, it’s a dominant and expected part of the experience. The glamour of floating weightlessly is often preceded by a period of intense physical misery.
The Near-Certainty of Space Sickness
The most common ailment for new space travelers isn’t fear or excitement; it’s nausea. This condition is known as Space adaptation syndrome, or SAS. It’s not a rare side effect but a standard physiological response. Estimates suggest that 60 to 80 percent of all astronauts experience it during their first few days in orbit. For space tourists on shorter orbital spaceflight missions, this means a significant portion of their multi-million dollar vacation could be spent feeling unwell.
The syndrome is caused by a significant sensory conflict. On Earth, the inner ear’s vestibular system tells the brain which way is “down” by sensing the pull of gravity. In the microgravity (or “weightlessness”) of space, those signals cease. The brain continues to receive information from the eyes. If a tourist turns their head, their eyes report the cabin spinning, but their inner ear reports no motion at all. This mismatch between vision and the vestibular system sends the body into a state of confusion, triggering vertigo, headaches, intense nausea, and vomiting.
While professional astronauts have days to acclimate, orbital tourists on a ten-day trip to the International Space Station (ISS) must adapt quickly. Anti-nausea medication is standard issue, but it’s not always completely effective. Suborbital tourists on 10-minute flights avoid the worst of SAS, as the adaptation (or sickness) doesn’t have time to fully set in. They trade this for the intense, chest-crushing G-forces of ascent and reentry.
The Mundane Mechanics of Microgravity
Daily life in space is a constant battle against physics. Every simple task becomes a complex, and often strange, procedure. The “freedom” of floating is, in practice, a mess of inconvenient and hazardous realities.
Eating is one of the strangest adjustments. Food can’t simply be placed on a plate; it would float away. Crumbs are a serious hazard. A stray breadcrumb, floating idly, could be inhaled by a crewmate or drift into a delicate piece of computer hardware, short-circuiting a vital system. For this reason, bread and granular seasonings like salt and pepper are often banned. Instead, salt and pepper are delivered in a liquid solution, and many foods are served in paste form or in tortilla wraps, which don’t produce crumbs.
Drinking is equally odd. Liquid doesn’t “pour” in space. It coalesces into floating globules due to surface tension. To drink, tourists must use specially designed pouches with straws or sealed bulbs that force the liquid out. A spilled drop of water doesn’t fall to the floor; it becomes a silvery, wobbling orb that must be chased down with a towel before it damages equipment.
The Infamous Space Toilet
Personal hygiene is perhaps the least glamorous aspect of orbital tourism. On the ISS or a Dragon 2 capsule, there is no shower. Water doesn’t flow down. Instead, astronauts and tourists alike must take “sponge baths” using a washcloth with a small amount of no-rinse soap and water, all while hovering near an air vent to capture any escaped droplets. Washing hair involves a special no-rinse shampoo that is massaged in and then toweled out.
The most notorious piece of equipment is the toilet. The reality of waste management in microgravity is a complex feat of engineering that bears no resemblance to its terrestrial counterpart. The toilets on the ISS or orbital capsules are multi-million dollar devices that use air suction, not water, to function.
There are two separate systems: a funnel with a vacuum for liquid waste (for both men and women) and a small, plate-sized hole for solid waste. Using the solid waste system requires intense precision. The user must create an airtight seal with the seat to ensure the fan-driven suction works properly. Misalignment is not a pleasant scenario. All solid waste is vacuum-sealed in bags and stored for eventual disposal – often by burning up in the atmosphere with other trash on a cargo ship. Liquid waste is collected, filtered, and processed by the station’s advanced water reclamation system, which famously recycles urine and sweat back into pure, drinkable water. For an orbital tourist, the idea that yesterday’s “coffee” might literally become tomorrow’s “coffee” is a strange fact of life.
Suborbital flights, like those on New Shepard or SpaceShipTwo, are so short – lasting only 10 to 15 minutes – that they have no toilet facilities at all. Pre-flight preparation is the only solution.
The Smell of Space
Space itself is a near-perfect vacuum, so it has no smell. However, the inside of a spacecraft or space station develops a very distinct and peculiar odor. When astronauts return from a spacewalk and remove their helmets, they consistently report a strong, unique scent.
It’s often described as “burnt steak,” “hot metal,” “welding fumes,” or the smell of ozone after a lightning strike. This smell is believed to be caused by atomic oxygen – individual oxygen atoms – clinging to the fabric of the spacesuit. Once inside the airlock, these highly reactive atoms combine with other molecules, creating the sharp, metallic tang.
Inside the station, the air is a constantly recycled blend of smells. It’s a mix of human sweat (which doesn’t evaporate and dry, but rather clings to the skin and clothes), the faint chemical tang of electronics and filters, the odor of specific experiments, and the lingering aroma of rehydrated food. It’s often described as a unique, not-entirely-unpleasant but ever-present “locker room in a machine shop” smell.
You’re Not an ‘Astronaut’… Or Are You?
One of the strangest facts about space tourism is that there is no universal agreement on what to call the people who do it. The title “astronaut” is the source of a surprising amount of semantic, legal, and corporate debate.
Where Does Space Actually Begin?
Part of the confusion stems from the fact that there isn’t one, single, legally defined “edge of space.” The most widely accepted definition is the Kármán line, an altitude of 100 kilometers (about 62 miles) above sea level. This is the boundary recognized by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the world governing body for aeronautics. Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, designed its New Shepard rocket to specifically cross this 100-km line, allowing its passengers to claim they have officially “been to space.”
However, the United States government, including NASA and the U.S. military, has historically used a different boundary. The U.S. often awards astronaut wings to anyone who flies above 50 miles (about 80 kilometers). This definition is convenient for Virgin Galactic, founded by Richard Branson, as its SpaceShipTwo vehicle flies to an altitude of around 80-90 kilometers.
This creates a bizarre scenario: a Virgin Galactic passenger is recognized as an astronaut by the U.S. government but may not be recognized as one by the FAI. A Blue Origin passenger, flying just a few kilometers higher, meets both definitions. For the emerging tourist, the very “product” they are buying – a trip to space – is defined differently depending on which company they fly with and which organization is doing the defining.
The FAA’s Evolving Title
For decades, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which regulates commercial spaceflight in the U.S., awarded “Commercial Astronaut Wings” to pilots and crew members who flew above 50 miles.
But in 2021, just as the billionaire founders Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson launched themselves on their own rockets, the FAA abruptly changed the rules. The new requirements stated that to receive official wings, a person must not only fly above 50 miles but also “demonstrated activities during flight that were essential to public safety, or contributed to human space flight safety.”
This change effectively created a two-tier system. The pilots flying the craft would be astronauts, but the paying customers in the back would simply be “spaceflight participants.” The change was seen by many as a move to preserve the prestige of the title, preventing it from becoming a simple participation trophy for the wealthy.
The FAA ended the entire Commercial Astronaut Wings program just a few months later. Now, the agency simply lists all individuals who have flown above the 50-mile mark on a public website. This leaves the title in a strange limbo. Companies like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic award their own custom-designed “astronaut wings” to their passengers, but the official, government-recognized title remains elusive. A space tourist is, officially, just a spaceflight participant.
The Hidden Rigors and Surprising Dangers
The marketing of space tourism emphasizes safety, comfort, and ease. The reality is that it remains an inherently high-risk activity, and even the “easy” suborbital flights involve training and physical stresses far beyond a commercial airline flight.
The ‘Informed Consent’ Grey Area
When you buy an airline ticket, you are protected by a massive body of law and decades of safety regulations. When you buy a ticket to space, you are operating in a legal wilderness.
Current U.S. law, which governs companies like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, is built on the concept of “informed consent.” This is a regulatory “learning period” where the FAA does not certify the space vehicles as safe for passengers. Instead, the law requires companies to do one thing: inform their passengers, in writing, that the U.S. government has not certified the rocket as safe and that “launch and reentry are hazardous” and could result in serious injury or death.
In simple terms, passengers must sign a waiver acknowledging they are boarding an experimental vehicle and that if the worst happens, they have no legal recourse. This “fly-at-your-own-risk” framework is strange for a multi-hundred-thousand-dollar commercial experience. The FAA’s primary role in these launches is not to protect the passengers, but to protect the “uninvolved public” – people on the ground.
Training for a Ten-Minute Flight
You can’t just show up and strap in. While suborbital spaceflight doesn’t require the months of rigorous simulation that orbital astronauts endure, it’s not a simple briefing. Virgin Galactic passengers, for example, undergo several days of training.
This training is less about science and more about survival. Passengers must learn how to properly strap into and out of their custom-fitted seats. They practice emergency procedures, such as how to use the onboard oxygen masks and how to respond to a cabin depressurization. Most importantly, they train for the G-forces. During ascent, passengers are pressed back into their seats with a force of around 3 G’s (three times their body weight). During reentry, they can experience up to 5 or 6 G’s, a crushing sensation that makes it difficult to breathe or even lift one’s arms. This is a violent, visceral experience, and passengers must be trained on how to breathe and position their bodies to avoid blacking out.
Orbital tourism is another level entirely. Private astronauts flying with a company like Axiom Space to the ISS must train for months, or even a year. They learn the complex systems of their Dragon 2 capsule, how to use the space toilet, how to conduct experiments, and how to respond to fires, medical emergencies, or toxic spills on the space station. They are not just passengers; they must become competent temporary crew members.
The Bullet of a Paint Fleck
The single greatest and strangest danger in orbit isn’t a rocket failure; it’s a fleck of paint. Decades of space activity have left low Earth orbit a junkyard of space debris. This junk ranges from dead satellites and spent rocket boosters to tiny, untrackable objects like lost bolts, frozen droplets of coolant, and flecks of paint that have chipped off older spacecraft.
In orbit, these objects travel at speeds exceeding 17,000 miles per hour. At that velocity, a centimeter-sized aluminum sphere has the kinetic energy of a hand grenade. A tiny paint fleck can strike with the force of a .50-caliber bullet, capable of shattering a window or puncturing a spacesuit.
The International Space Station (ISS) is the most heavily armored object ever flown in space, with Whipple shielding designed to vaporize small impacts. Even so, its windows are routinely pockmarked by micro-impacts. Several times a year, the ISS must fire its thrusters to move out of the way of a larger, trackable piece of debris.
For an orbital tourist on a “free-fly” mission – one that isn’t docked to the ISS – the risk is very real. A capsule like SpaceX’s Dragon is shielded, but a strike from an untracked piece of debris is a statistical possibility that could end a mission instantly. It’s a bizarre threat: the deadliest thing in the vast emptiness of space is the tiny trash left behind by those who came before.
The Bizarre Economics and Logistics
The price tag of a space ticket is the most-discussed fact, but the surrounding economics are even stranger. The industry is built on a logistical and financial framework that exists nowhere else.
The First Tourist and the $20 Million Price Tag
The era of space tourism didn’t begin with a private rocket company. It began with an American businessman, Dennis Tito, and the Russian space agency. In 2001, Tito paid a reported $20 million to the Russian agency, Roscosmos, for a seat on a Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS.
The arrangement was brokered by a company called Space Adventures, which effectively acted as a travel agent for seats on government-run missions. NASA was furious. The agency, which was a partner in the ISS, felt that a paying, untrained civilian had no place on a professional research station and was a safety risk. NASA officials tried to block Tito’s trip, but Roscosmos, which needed the cash, held firm. Tito flew, becoming the world’s first orbital space tourist and establishing the strange precedent of private citizens buying seats on taxpayer-funded, government vehicles.
For nearly a decade, this was the only model for space tourism: billionaires paying tens of millions of dollars to Roscosmos for a week-long stay on the ISS.
You Can’t Just Buy a Ticket
Even today, with multiple companies flying, getting a ticket is not a simple transaction. You can’t go to SpaceX’s website and book a seat to orbit. Elon Musk’s company doesn’t sell individual tickets; it sells entire missions. A private astronaut must either be a billionaire who can charter an entire flight for himself and his chosen companions (like the Inspiration4 mission) or be a client of a third-party company like Axiom Space, which buys a full SpaceX launch and then sells the individual seats for tens of millions of dollars each.
The suborbital market is more direct but is defined by scarcity. Virgin Galactic has a waiting list of hundreds of people who have paid deposits for tickets costing $450,000 or more. Blue Origin has been even more opaque, with most of its first seats going to invited guests or winners of a high-profile auction. The price is not fixed; it’s whatever the market will bear.
This creates a strange economic model where the “list price” is almost meaningless. The cost is a combination of astronomical wealth, personal connections, and a willingness to wait years for a flight.
The Strange Logistics of Space Hospitality
The first orbital tourists with Space Adventures were, for all intents and purposes, cargo. They were flying on a Soyuz spacecraft designed in the 1960s, a vehicle famous for its effectiveness and its complete lack of comfort. It’s an automotive-sized capsule where the crew is strapped into form-fitting seat liners, knees-to-chest, for a multi-hour or even multi-day journey. There is no room to stand up, no hot food, and the “toilet” is a rudimentary system of tubes and bags.
The new generation of vehicles, like the Dragon 2 capsule, are comparatively luxurious with their tablet-screen controls and minimalist white interiors. But even here, the logistics are bizarre. When a non-functional toilet system caused a waste leak on one all-civilian mission, it highlighted the mundane, unglamorous realities that persist.
The most famous logistical stunt remains the “pizza delivery” to the ISS in 2001. A pizza chain paid Roscosmos a reported $1 million to have a vacuum-sealed, 6-inch pizza delivered to the station on a resupply rocket. It was a publicity event, but it perfectly captured the strange intersection of capitalism and space exploration. The logistics of space tourism aren’t just about rockets; they are about figuring out how to deliver a “luxury” experience (like a pizza) in an environment that is fundamentally hostile to it.
The Psychological and Philosophical Oddities
Perhaps the strangest facts about space tourism are not physical or financial, but psychological. Leaving the planet, even for a few minutes, can fundamentally alter a person’s perception of themselves and the world.
The Overview Effect
This is the most widely reported psychological shift. Coined by author Frank White, the Overview Effectdescribes the significant cognitive change that many astronauts experience when they see the Earth from space.
From orbit, the Earth is seen not as a map of countries and borders, but as a single, unified, and incredibly fragile object. It’s a “tiny, blue marble” suspended in an impossibly vast blackness. Astronauts report an overwhelming sense of awe, a feeling of connection to all humanity, and a sudden, intense understanding of the planet’s fragility. Borders and national conflicts appear absurd and arbitrary. Many return to Earth with a newfound sense of environmentalism and humanitarian purpose.
This isn’t a minor feeling; it’s described as a life-altering, quasi-spiritual experience. For a space tourist, it may be the most valuable – and strangest – thing they bring back. They pay millions for the G-forces and the floating, but they return with a permanent change in perspective.
The “Break-Off” Phenomenon
A much rarer and more unsettling phenomenon is “break-off.” This was first reported by high-altitude test pilots in the 1950s and 60s, including some of the first astronauts. When flying at extreme altitudes, alone, with the Earth far below and surrounded by a black, featureless sky, some pilots reported a feeling of significant sensory disconnection.
They felt a strange detachment, as if they were “breaking off” from Earth and reality itself. It’s a form of sensory deprivation, where the lack of normal visual and physical cues (like a horizon, clouds, or the feeling of wind) leads to a disorienting, sometimes frightening, feeling of isolation.
While orbital tourists are in a capsule with others, the sheer alien nature of the view out the window – the black void on one side and the silent, turning planet on the other – can be deeply unsettling. It’s the inverse of the Overview Effect: not a feeling of connection, but one of significant, existential solitude.
The First Suborbital Crisis
The very first American in space, Alan Shepard, was a suborbital space tourist by today’s definition. His 1961 flight lasted just 15 minutes and didn’t complete an orbit. It was, in effect, the same profile as a Blue Origin flight.
And on that very first flight, one of the strangest “emergencies” in space history occurred. Shepard was strapped into his Mercury capsule, Freedom 7, on the launchpad. The launch was delayed for hours. Shepard, having had a large breakfast and coffee, suddenly had a very human problem: he needed to urinate.
At first, NASA flight control told him to “hold it.” The mission was too complex to scrub for such a reason. Shepard, famously, informed them that was not an option. He had been in the suit for hours. After a frantic debate, mission control gave Shepard permission to urinate in his multi-million dollar, sensor-covered spacesuit. The flight controllers watched in horror as their delicate medical sensors shorted out one by one.
Shepard flew his historic mission sitting in a damp suit. It was an unglamorous, slightly ridiculous, and perfectly human moment – the ultimate strange fact of space travel. Even at the pinnacle of human achievement, the most basic, mundane bodily functions remain a problem.
The Wild West of Space Law
The new era of space tourism is operating almost entirely in a legal and ethical void. The foundational laws of space were written in the 1960s and never anticipated paying customers.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty
The primary law governing all space activity is the Outer Space Treaty. It was signed in 1967 by the United States and the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. Its main purpose was to prevent the militarization of space. It bans placing nuclear weapons in orbit, forbids any nation from claiming sovereignty over the Moon or any celestial body, and states that space is the “province of all mankind.”
What it doesn’t mention, at all, is private companies, tourism, or commercial activity. This has led to a host of bizarre legal questions. For example, the treaty states that nations are responsible for all space activities, whether by “governmental agencies or by non-governmental entities.” This means that if a SpaceX tourist mission causes an accident – say, crashing into a Chinese satellite – the United States government could be held liable for the damages.
Who Is in Charge?
Jurisdiction in space is a legal nightmare. If a space tourist commits a crime while on the ISS, whose laws apply? The station is a patchwork of modules owned by different nations. If a Japanese tourist assaults an American astronaut in a European-owned module that was launched by a Russian rocket, which country has jurisdiction?
The current ISS agreement handles this by applying national law to personnel. An American is always under U.S. law, a Russian under Russian law, and so on. But this has never been truly tested with a serious crime.
For a private tourist on a private vehicle, it’s even murkier. Is the crime governed by the laws of the company’s home country (U.S.), the passenger’s home country, or the nation from which the rocket launched? And who would make the arrest? These questions remain entirely theoretical, making commercial space capsules one of the strangest legal “no-man’s-lands” accessible to humanity.
Summary
Space tourism is an industry of significant contrasts. It offers access to the most sublime experience a human can have – seeing the home planet from the outside. Yet it demands that its participants endure physical discomfort, crushing G-forces, and the constant, mundane inconveniences of microgravity. It’s an experience that costs hundreds of thousands or even tens of millions of dollars but comes with a legal waiver stating it is an experimental, uncertified, and inherently dangerous activity.
The strangest facts of this new industry are not in the rocket science, but in the human details: the sensory conflict that causes space sickness, the hazardous potential of a single crumb, the legal debate over the title “astronaut,” and the humbling, undignified reality of a malfunctioning space toilet. As this industry grows, it will be defined less by its technology and more by how it grapples with these strange, inconvenient, and deeply human realities.
