Who Has Been To Space, And Who Hasn’t? Depends On Your Definition

Where does outer space begin? That’s a good question, given all of the recent activity in the aeronautics and space tourism areas, much of it within the private sector.

During the Cold War with the former Soviet Union, it was an orbit of the Earth which the average Joe considered space. Soviet Yuri Gagarin was the first person in space by that standard, reaching an altitude of 203 miles in 1961, although later, the first two NASA Mercury flights by Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom muddied the waters. While they didn’t orbit the Earth like Gagarin, they did reach extreme suborbital altitudes of 116 miles and 118 miles, respectively. In 1962, John Glenn went orbital finally for the U.S on the third Mercury mission, reaching an altitude of 162 miles. All other NASA flights from that point on - including Gemini, Apollo, SkyLab and the Shuttle - were orbital.

Then there were U.S. Air Force X-15 suborbital test pilots who, in 1963, flew their rocket-planes as high as 67 miles. And, most recently, two private space tourism companies - Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin - have begun selling tickets to the wealthy for between $450,000 (VG’s current stated price) and $1 million (Blue’s reported price) each. Their missions are also suborbital, and reach altitudes in excess of 50 miles.

Let’s first say that, according to the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, space begins at the Karman Line, currently defined as 100 km (62 miles) up. This definition has been the international gold standard, and obviously includes orbital flights. It’s supported by the fact that to win the $10-million Ansari X Prize, the same private spacecraft had to be flown above the Karman Line twice within two weeks, carrying a pilot and the equivalent weight of two passengers.

Burt Rutan’s company, Mojave Aerospace Ventures, met the daunting challenge just under the wire of the Prize’s 2004 deadline, with Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie piloting SpaceShipOne to 64 miles and 69 miles up, respectively. SS1 then became the prototype for SpaceShipTwo, billionaire Sir Richard Branson’s scaled-up space tourism vehicle, the flights of which are operated by Virgin Galactic.

Through years of development and several setbacks along the way, including a fatal test crash in 2014, VG finally finessed SS2 to an altitude of 51 miles on a test flight in 2018. Since, a handful of VG test and tourist flights have been completed successfully, one flying Branson himself, the highest of which reached 55 miles.

But those altitudes fall short of the Karman Line. Has VG failed with SS2? Not quite. There is an alternate definition of space, only used in the U.S., which states that the territory begins at just 5o miles up. Under this definition, which the U.S. military and NASA use, the VG touristnauts are eligible. It’s a grey area in space tourism that many folks would rather not discuss. There has been some recent talk about reducing the altitude of the Karman Line, citing its arbitrary nature (look it up), but no decisions have been made.

The VG people, of course, insist that 50 miles is the correct benchmark. But competitor Blue Origin, founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, consistently flies its tourists, one of whom was Bezos himself, above the Karman Line - to as high as 66 miles - in its New Shepard rockets, and considers the generally-accepted 62 miles as the boundary. Blue even uses the altitude discrepancy between itself and VG in its marketing.

In the end, does it really matter how high these space tourists go? Both VG and Blue offer stunning views of the blackness of space, the curvature of the Earth and the thin atmosphere hanging over it, as well as a few minutes of weightlessness. So why are Blue passengers willing to pony up so much more for their experiences?

Perhaps the Blue people prefer a computer-controlled vertical rocket launch versus VG’s piloted rocket-plane approach. Then again, maybe it’s just the age-old idea of one-upsmanship. Bigger is better, richer is better, higher is better, right? Maybe it’s worth a half-million dollars or more to Blue’s passengers for the 10-mile altitude premium, which allows them bragging rights to be recognized as having flown into space by every country in the world, not just by the U.S. You get what you pay for, I guess.

Now remember, none of this includes SpaceX, another private company founded by yet another billionaire, Elon Musk, which is galaxies ahead of Blue and VG. Forget suborbital. They fly a mix of tourists, who pay tens of millions of dollars each, and NASA folks, orbital, mostly to the International Space Station some 250 miles up. No ambiguity there.

Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer mountaineering, with its undisputed summit definition. If you get to the top, you know it, and if you don’t, you know that, too. Mount Kilimanjaro’s summit, Uhuru Peak, is 19,340 feet above sea level, and that never changes. Anything less - say Gillman’s Point - is not the top. There are no agencies to blur the line, pun intended.

(Editor’s Note: The writer of this story is a former VG ticket-holder.)