When will space travel be more like air travel?
The private human spaceflight industry will need to scale up and find new markets to reach its goal of resembling the airline industry to take people to space.SpaceX and others have already begun selling their dream of rockets launching thousands of people to orbit, the Moon, Mars and even beyond.
Instead of having potential customers buy full missions — like the dearMoon mission around the Moon — this allows those with the money to buy single seats for a lunar flight. The demand for human spaceflight and activity in low-Earth orbit, planetary exploration and planetary settlement "at the moment is largely created by government policy, and by the vision and spending of individuals as opposed to a very broad-based market pull," Carissa Christensen, founder and CEO of BryceTech, tells Axios.
Today, every American rocket launch has to be licensed through the FAA, a process that can be lengthy with a lot of red tape and logistical hurdles.