English World Documentary: Space tourism

Hello from the studios at Pascual Bravo University. A few minutes of weightlessness, or maybe even a few days. A short hop above the Earth’s atmosphere or a journey to the moon and back. The era of space tourism is upon us, and – for those who can pay – it comes with many options. Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, multi-billionaires, have opened space to commercial flights and tourism. Richard Branson’s project, Virgin Galactic, is an experience that launches its passengers from the earth in a gig

antic carrier plane, which takes off from a normal runway, reaches a high altitude, then drops a rocket-powered space-plane into the sky, which then accelerates towards space. After the first successful space flight with four non-astronauts, Branson remarked, “Just imagine a world where people of all ages, all backgrounds, from anywhere, of any gender, of any ethnicity, have equal access to space,” Branson said on returning. “Welcome to the dawn of a new space age!” Another highly publicized com

mercial space project is from Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos. He has founded the company, Blue Origin, to realize his childhood dream of reaching space. In July of 2020, Jeff was among the first 4 passengers to orbit earth from space in his reusable spacecraft. So what is the price tag to travel to space? For a ride on Virgin Galactic, the cost is a mere $250,000.00. There is already a waiting list of 600 customers for the experience. If you wish to experience space with Blue Origin, you will have t

o outbid your fellow amateur astronauts, as seats are auctioned off on its website. The seats on the inaugural flight were going for about 2.8 million dollars. However, the highest price tag goes to the 3-day space flight aboard the NASA built spacecraft, SpaceX. Although the experience was paid for entirely by billionaire, Jared Isaacman, it had a total cost of over 220 million dollars. Thus, the average price for the adventure averaged out to roughly 55 million dollars per passenger. As you ca

n see, commercial space travel and tourism is in its infant phase, but just like Charles Lindbergh, the first pilot to fly across the Atlantic Ocean alone, famously helped propel commercial aviation from its infancy in the 1920s and 1930s to the multi-billion dollar industry that it is today, or Steve Jobs or Bill Gates at the dawn of the commercial desktop computer industry at the end of the 20th century, a few intrepid souls, with deep pockets, are opening a market that will surely one day be

as mainstream as a Delta Airlines flight or a Dell computer. I am Gary Vernier and this has been a Pascual Bravo English documentary. Until next time, good luck with English.