China Begins Space Travel Lyrics To Compete With Jeff Bezos And Richard Branson

China intends to be a lucrative market for billionaires who want a once-in-a-lifetime vacation to Tiangong. (photo: Doc. Wikipedia.org)

JAKARTA - Following the trend in the United States (US), China will also open its space station, Tiangong, as a new tourist spot in the next decade.

According to the country, it's a race to compete with the private US space tourist businesses owned by Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson.

China launched the Tiangong space station in 2021. This is its first long-range space station project with the final module set to launch later this year.

The country's announcement also comes as China continues to produce new billionaires at a rapid rate, much faster than any other country on Earth. By 2022, China has more billionaires, with 1,133, while the US has only 716.

Unfortunately, it's not known exactly how the planned space tours will go, but it's likely people without formal astronaut training could be launched into orbit soon.

The first Chinese astronaut in 2003, Yang Liwei, said tourists visiting Tiangong were not a matter of technology but of demand. In fact, China is also thought to be working on a more tourist-friendly and reusable spacecraft that can carry up to seven astronauts into space at once.

The first part of the Tiangong modular will launch in April 2021, with the first crew arriving in July to set up and prepare for the next module.

Tiangong, which means Palace in the Sky, will eventually have three modules, including the Tianhe core module, which is already in orbit, and two laboratories. It is designed to be completely modular, like the International Space Station (ISS) and its predecessor, the Soviet-era Mir space station with modules added as needed.

It is unclear whether the visitors will stay in the Tianhe live module, with three crew members or a new module will be launched.

The T-shaped space station will require six more missions, over the course of this year, to become fully operational, including two cargo missions, and two crew missions. These two crewed missions are also expected to be the first to see crew exiting and entering the station simultaneously.

This means that there are six astronauts in Tiangong who are piloting for future situations that might see paying passengers dock at the station in the future.

Vehicles That Tourists Will Use

Launching DailyMail, Monday, March 28, China's chief human space program designer, Zhou Jianping also once stated that the Shenzhou spacecraft could be used to carry paying passengers to Tiangong in the future.

This shows China is intent on becoming a lucrative market for billionaires looking to take a once-in-a-lifetime vacation to Tiangong.

Options for flights to Tiangong are currently limited to Shenzhou, the crewed spacecraft that launched the Long March 2F rocket from Jiuguan in the Gobi Desert. But China is also working to develop other options.

However, new reports suggest China's space agency is developing a reusable rocket specifically designed for human spaceflight, along the path of the US space shuttle.

Shenzhou can carry three astronauts at once, while the new generation aircraft developed by China is estimated to be able to carry up to seven astronauts, more than SpaceX's Crew Dragon.

For information, China has stepped up its space program in recent years, including becoming the third country to land a rover on the surface of Mars, and the first to place a rover on the far side of the Moon.

The country is also the first to return samples of lunar rock to Earth for the first time since the end of the Apollo missions in the 1970s.