Space Travel: The Final Frontier-ish! What Would It Be Like Today

The transcription discusses the concept of space vacations, detailing the costs associated with suborbital and orbital flights, potential space accommodations like the Orbital Reef and Voyager Station, advancements in space food, challenges of eating and drinking in microgravity, and activities such as zero gravity experiences and spacewalks. It emphasizes the high current costs of space travel, the potential for reducing prices through reusable technology like Starship, and the transformative impact of space tourism on humanity's perspective. Welcome to the deep dive Okay, so today's mission should you choose to accept it is imagining your perfect space vacation? Like if you could book it today, what would that look like the flight the hotel even the food? It's a great thought experiment, but we kind of have to start with the reality check the cost Right. Yeah, the elephant in the room or maybe the rocket on the launch pad exactly So look a quick trip suborbital just peeking into space for a few minutes Virgin Galactic that kind of thing You're talking around four hundred and fifty thousand dollars Okay, and if you want the full orbital experience You know going all the way up to where the ISS is or where future stations might be Think SpaceX trips that jumps into the tens of millions per ticket tens of millions, right? So not exactly a weekend getaway budget for most of us The hope and what experts compare it to is early air travel remember how flucid that was right only for the super wealthy initially Yeah, so the idea is that technology especially reusability it will eventually bring those costs down, but it's a long game Okay, but let's keep dreaming for a minute Assuming we won the lottery. How do we actually get there? What are the travel options? Well, there are those two main types we mentioned suborbital is like a massive upward hop You go about 60 miles up experience weightlessness and come back down The training is pretty minimal like a safety briefing basically pretty much maybe a bit more for some but yeah Orbital flight though. That's a whole different beast. You're not just going up you're going fast Sideways fast. How fast are we talking around? 17,500 miles per hour that speed is what keeps you in orbit You're essentially falling around the earth but moving so fast you constantly miss it falling but missing Wild way to think about it. Okay, so we're hurtling around the earth. Where are we staying? You can't just be the ISS, right? No, they're designing commercial destinations So one big one is orbital reef think of it like a business park in space Planned for later this decade a business park sounds a bit sterile for a vacation. Well, it has research facilities, but also crew quarters They're using these inflatable life modules plans show like ten cabins a galley even a gym Gym in space. Yeah interesting, but I heard about another concept one that tries to solve the The floating problem lack of gravity. Ah, yeah You're probably thinking of the Voyager station concept from Orbital Assembly Corporation or OAC. That's the one the spinning ring, right? Exactly. It's designed as this huge rotating wheel to create artificial gravity not full earth gravity mind you maybe about 1 6g Like the moon's gravity, but even that little bit makes a difference. Oh, absolutely. I mean toilets showers beds They can function more like we're used to it's a huge plus for guest comfort They're planning for like 440 people with get this a cinema a spa luxury villas Seriously a spa in a spinning space hotel That's the plan aiming squarely at the luxury market first clearly But that artificial gravity is a potential game changer for the whole experience definitely changes things Okay, travel check hotel check. What about food? Please tell me it's not just tubes of paste anymore, huh? No, thankfully space food has come a long long way on the ISS now the menu has over a hundred items But there's a really interesting challenge Which is taste in microgravity fluids in your body shift upwards towards your head It basically feels like you have a constant head cold All right, so everything tastes bland pretty much your sense of smell and taste gets really dulled So space food needs to be well become Intensely flavored think strong spices horseradish chili that kind of thing subtle flavors just get lost so expect spicy food got it and Drinking how does that work without gravity pulling liquids down? It's actually pretty cool liquids naturally form into spheres because of surface tension They just float there like little water balls exactly so usually use a straw to sort of catch the blob and drink it But a very important warning No fizzy drinks Carbonation is a big no-no. Why is that because the gas bubbles don't separate properly from the liquid in your stomach in zero G It leads to something astronauts call Wet burps wet burps, okay, that sounds unpleasant enough to skip the space soda Honey, we don't want that ruins of you. I imagine I bet so after our spicy non carbonated meal. What do we do up there? Five admire the view I mean, oh the zero G activities look amazing You can do incredible backflips just tumbling end over end those stopping takes effort You need a friend or something to grab on to inertia, right? Right astronauts also talk about crawling around on the walls and ceilings like spider-man and apparently they play games like space jam where you kind of Gently push a person like a basketball. Okay human basketball sounds Potentially chaotic but fun and for the really adventurous Some concepts like orbital reef are looking at suit free spacewalks Using a sort of single-person spacecraft like a personal bubble to float outside the station Floating out there Wow, okay brings back to earth for a second. That all sounds incredible, but still incredibly expensive You mentioned reusability. Is that the key to making this affordable someday like that Starship goal of maybe a hundred thousand dollars a ticket That's the big hope. Yeah to hit a price like $100 You need rockets that are truly fully reusable like airliners minimal refurbishment quick turnaround flying very frequently that Drastically cuts the cost per flight. So technology like Starship is essential for that vision. Absolutely We'll likely see commercial stations like orbital reef by the end of the 2020s But that mass market a hundred thousand dollar ticket future that's still further out really dependent on these Next-gen reusable systems proving themselves. So patience is key. Well, let's end on this thought We hear about the overview effect all the time, right how seeing Earth from space changes astronauts perspective Yeah, that sense of all fragility interconnectedness. It's profound by all accounts. So imagine if it wasn't just a handful of astronauts What happens if eventually? Thousands maybe millions of ordinary people get to experience that what kind of I don't know ripple effect did that have on us down here Mm-hmm something to think about