The Final Frontier-What Should the Travel Medicine Practitioner Know About Space Flight Participation?

Abstract

Box office movies, such as Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey , have ingrained images of space exploration in the public imagination. Extraterrestrial tourism or, more accurately, personal space flight participation, has been discussed since the late 1960s, when then president of the Hilton hotel group, Barron Hilton, raised the prospect of hotels in space at the American Astronautical Society Conference.1 The Space Tourism Society defines space tourism as a combination of in-Earth orbit experiences; beyond-Earth orbit experiences, including lunar and Martian travel; high fidelity Earth-based simulations and entertainment; and cyber space tourism experiences.2 The so-called Karman line , which is commonly used to demarcate the edge of space, is considered to occur at 100 km of altitude above the Earth,3 or at 10 times the altitude of a cruising commercial airliner. Recreational space visitors who travel beyond this altitude may reasonably be labeled astrotourists. They need to accelerate to speeds of 28,000 kph just to remain in space.4 Several commercial companies have presented plans for transporting tourists into space since the 1980s. Setbacks have delayed progress, including the tragic explosion of the orbiter Challenger in 1986, which meant that the idea of using space shuttles as vehicles for tourist flights was abandoned. The American company, Space Adventures, in cooperation with the Russian space agency, was responsible for flying seven wealthy clients on a Soyuz spacecraft between 2001 and 2009.5 The first personal orbital space flight participant was Dennis Tito, a former NASA employee, who spent a week on board the International Space Station 400 km above Earth, at a reported cost of US$20 million.6 This same firm claims that up to 200 aspiring space tourists have paid deposits of almost US$3 million for the privilege of taking more affordable suborbital flights in …