EU Official Critical of Space Tourism

The European Union’s industry commissioner on Thursday blasted companies’ plans to offer space flights to tourists, calling them a gimmick for the privileged elite. “It’s only for the super rich, which is against my social convictions,” European Commission Vice President Guenter Verheugen said.

EADS Astrium, the space division of the European aerospace consortium, said this week it planned to build a craft that would be able to carry a handful of tourists on brief forays outside the earth’s atmosphere from 2012.

Other groups are considering similar ventures including British entrepreneur Richard Branson, whose Virgin Galactic service expects to make its first commercial flight next year.

The EADS aircraft, about the size of an executive jet, would be able to carry four passengers around 100 kilometers from the earth, where they would be able to experience about three minutes of weightlessness and see the curve of the earth.

At a price of $200,000 to $265,000, the experience would be reserved for a small number of rich sensation-seekers, although as many as 15,000 passengers a year are expected to be ready to pay for a trip by 2020, according to consultants Fultron.

That would represent a considerable expansion from the tiny number of truly rich adventurers so far who have been willing to pay as much as $20 million for a place on a Russian Soyuz rocket to see space. Verheugen, a German center-left politician who holds the industry and enterprise portfolio within the EU Commission, said the new space race left him uneasy.