Blasting off: Blue Origin’s New Shepard takes flight in April; Defying Gravity: Singer Katy Perry (right) and entrepreneur Mark Rocket (left) have gone to space. Courtesy Blue Origin

Is Space Tourism a Good Idea?

November 24, 2025

Once upon a time, only a select few, highly trained astronauts got the opportunity to see Earth from space.

But since 2021, private companies such as Blue Origin and SpaceX have launched more than 100 paying customers beyond Earth’s stratosphere. Tickets are pricey: The 11-minute trip up and back costs over half a million dollars. But that sum will come down over time, experts say, making space jaunts available to more people.

Criitics say that as flights increase, however, they could spew enough pollution to deplete Earth’s protective ozone layer, speeding up global warming. Others argue that space tourism will help advance science and ensure America’s dominance in space.

So is space tourism a good idea? An aerospace engineer and an atmospheric scientist square off on the question.

Space tourism isn’t just a luxury for the rich. It’s an engine of progress that advances science, strengthens national security, and boosts the space economy.

Any use of space, including tourism, has a democratizing effect. When we spend money on space—whether it’s taxpayer dollars for science and exploration or private money spent on tourism—we’re creating jobs, knowledge, and innovations that benefit everyone.

Private companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin have made access to space more frequent and reliable. Their more affordable, reusable rockets aren’t just taking tourists up for a thrill. They’re also launching satellites, scientific instruments, and military intelligence equipment. And as more private astronauts log hours in space, researchers gain more data about how humans respond to space travel. That’s vital for preparing future missions to the moon and Mars.

In fact, long-term space exploration will depend on these companies’ innovations, whether they’re ways of manufacturing equipment in space, repairing satellites, or building orbital stations. In the past, only governments worked on these things, requiring huge investments in time and money. Now tourism flights are helping to fund these projects.

Space tourism advances science and boosts the space economy.

The specialized parts, launch vehicles, and space stations U.S. companies have helped to develop for the tourist industry lower America’s dependence on foreign technology. So, indirectly, space tourism ensures that the we maintain our leadership in space, bolstering national security.

All of this begins with one small step: exorbitantly expensive holidays for a few. But early air travel seemed like a luxury too, and it paved the way for modern airlines. Today about 90 percent of Americans have flown on a plane at least once. If space tourism is laying the foundation for a thriving future in space, we can look forward to family trips someday on a discount spaceliner.

—MASON PECK
Aerospace engineer, Cornell University

Some rocket launches arguably have benefits for society—for example, deploying satellites. But space tourism doesn’t fall into that category. Besides being extremely exclusive—only the rich can afford them—space tourism launches will cause unprecedented pollution in Earth’s upper atmosphere, one of the last pristine environments, and may worsen climate change.

Rockets emit water vapor, nitrogen oxides, and a range of particles, all of which have contributed to global warming in the lower atmosphere but are new to the upper atmosphere. Soot particles are especially worrying. At altitudes of 38 miles or more, soot is 500 times as effective at causing warming than the typical airplane trip. Just three years of tourism flights at the frequency space companies predict—hundreds, maybe thousands, each year—could more than double the black soot emissions of the past decade of rocket launches. This may hinder the recovery of the ozone layer, which is crucial for filtering out harmful untraviolet radiation.

Space tourism pollution may cause unprecedented warming.

The space industry remains unregulated by international climate treaties. So before space tourism fully takes off, we need to think about what we can do to protect Earth’s atmosphere, including more research into the impact rocket emissions have on climate. We usually justify pollution as a side effect of achieving some positive outcome for humanity. But as space tourism makes no significant contribution to the science of space travel, we have to ask if sending a few wealthy customers to space is worth the potential cost to our environment.

Previous generations thought nothing of dumping pollution into parts of the atmosphere that seemed vast and untouchable. We must not walk blindly into doing the same thing with space tourism.

—ROBERT G. RYAN
Atmospheric chemist, University of Melbourne, Australia