Space Tourism: Marketing Difficulties

The earth-based tourism industry is a trillion-dollar industry. The National Aerospace Laboratory in Japan surveyed citizens in Japan, Canada, the United States, and Europe throughout the 1990s to gauge their interest in space tourism. These surveys confirmed wide personal interest in space tourism (60 to 80%, depending on the country), and a willingness to spend upwards of a month’s salary just to get into space once. Clearly this is not a “far out” scheme without connection to earthly reality—space tourism will expand an already thriving industry into a new and potentially very lucrative arena.