With Space Tourism a Reality, Will Civilians Travel to Space? And When?
Majd Mayyasi (GRS’09,’13), a BU Center for Space Physics senior research scientist, discusses the future of civilian space travel and how it would impact the study of space with BU Today editor Doug Most. She also shares her experience training for suborbital flight as part of an inaugural program for scientists.
Transcript
Dana Ferrante: This is Question of the Week, from BU Today.
With space tourism now a reality, will civilians travel to space, and when? This summer, billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson each took a suborbital flight in their respective supersonic rockets, launching a new era of space travel, where a ticket to space is available to anyone who can afford it.
In this episode, Doug Most asked Majd Mayyasi, a senior research scientist at the Center for Space Physics at Boston University, about the future of civilian space travel. Mayyasi also shares her experience training for suborbital flight as part of an inaugural program for scientists.
Doug Most: Hi, Majd. Okay, let’s talk space.
So when I read the stories about Bezos and Branson, I admit that I wondered, if given the opportunity, would I want to go up to space? Seeing Earth from above and experiencing weightlessness would be incredible, that’s not really debatable, but is that enough? What do you think? Will space tourism become a real thing?
Majd Mayyasi: Well, Doug, this is a really good question. And one that I’ve been thinking about for a long time, way before Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson made interesting flights. About 11 years or so ago, there was an opportunity for scientists to train for suborbital flight. And the reason they were doing this was because they knew that ultimately this would become a reality, space tourism and space travel.
And also they wanted to get scientists engaged in this opportunity, so it’s been a project that has been in the workings for a very long time. And I actually partnered up with a group that was training scientists to do these suborbital flights. And so I was lucky to be a member of one of the first groups of scientists that got the train for this.
And we trained for the Virgin Galactic module, so it’s been something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. And since that time, you know, would I actually go to space if I had the opportunity? And the answer is most definitely yes. It is by far one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.
It’s extremely engaging to talk about with other people, especially when I do outreach to communities. And in talking to children about what you can do as an astronomer, or how to engage them in astronomy, it’s super fun to tell them that you can potentially go to space someday—if that’s something that you’re interested in—without having to go through all the rigorous training that an astronaut would go through [to become] a full-fledged astronaut.
And so there’s a lot of cool opportunities, and I’m happy to see that this is starting to become more and more of a tangible reality.
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With Space Tourism a Reality, Will Civilians Travel to Space? And When?