It's still fiction ... but reality is getting closer.
In the space of two weeks, the main players in space tourism, a sector often viewed with a certain skepticism, have all advanced their pawns.
Let's start with the most prominent, the company SpaceX, which presented Monday Inspiration4, a mission likely to take place before the end of the year.
On D-Day, four people will fly aboard a Falcon 9 rocket then orbit the Earth for several days in the Crew Dragon capsule.
The only passenger declared at the moment, Jared Isaacman, founder and boss of the company Shift4 Payments, has donated the other three seats to people who will be selected for their generosity or their entrepreneurial adventures.
“It's orbital flight: they're going to stay in space for more than one orbit.
What is planned is fairly new because, until now, in space tourism, we have been talking more about suborbital flights ”, recalls Xavier Pasco, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research.
Last year, SpaceX had already mentioned an extended stay at a dizzying altitude, between 800 and 1200 km, for a few luxury tourists, in partnership with the company Space Adventures.
It could take place during 2022.
Branson in space by the end of March ...
“For their part, companies like Virgin Galactic just plan to take people to the limits of space and make them make a ballistic trajectory.
For a few minutes, the passengers are in zero gravity and return to Earth.
They do not describe a complete orbit, ”continues Xavier Pasco.
Monday, Virgin Galactic has just gone on the offensive.
Billionaire Richard Branson's company has announced it wants to launch its SpaceShipTwo suborbital space plane as early as this month, with a firing window starting on February 13.
During this test flight, the futuristic machine must embark two pilots up to 80 kilometers altitude.
A first attempt was interrupted on December 12, after its engine quickly died out in flight forcing the aircraft to land prematurely.
In a second test, four employees will experience weightless flight.
Then it will be Richard Branson's turn to take a seat in the SpaceShipTwo before leaving the seats to future tourists.
Last November, Virgin Galactic predicted that this inaugural flight of its boss would take place before the end of the first quarter of 2021, a deadline which has not been postponed unlike the date of the first test flight.
"We expect Virgin Galactic to have less than a 50% chance of flying paying passengers in 2021," Aerospace consulting firm Astralytical tweeted Monday.
But a successful flight this month could boost the odds.
… And the Bezos rocket in April?
Blue Origin is not left out since the company of Amazon boss Jeff Bezos successfully completed the 14th test flight of his New Shepard two weeks ago.
On this occasion, internal sources told the American channel CNBC that this reusable rocket, whose configuration should no longer change, could carry its first passengers by early April, after another test which could take place at the end of February.
What the company has taken to be speculation.
Objective displayed: 100 kilometers altitude.
Despite the encouraging signs, Astralytical estimates that the likelihood of a New Shepard commercial flight occurring in the next three years is "moderately low".
As for Axiom Space, a company based in Houston, it communicated at the end of January the composition of the first fully private crew that it will send into space in January 2022. In addition to its vice-president, former astronaut Michael López-Alegria, three businessmen, the Israeli Eytan Stibbe, the Canadian Mark Pathy and the American Larry Connor, will stay ten days in the International Space Station (ISS).
Ticket price: $ 55 million.
Which, for their part, will not fall into the hands of a private company, but of NASA.
Initially scheduled for October, this arrival of private astronauts in the ISS will not be a first since Space Adventures gave this chance to seven VIP tourists in the 2000s. Axiom plans, once these missions have become routine, to create its own space station.