With the lack of the submersible and her five passengers garnering round the clock media attention because it went missing June 18, those working within the emergent private space travel industry should pay close attention.
The ultimate assessment and adjudication of this mishap in regulatory and legal spheres will clearly impact the direction of how private space calamities shall be handled.
While the , privately owned and operated by OceanGate Expeditions, was designed for exploring the deep ocean, there are similarities to crewed spacecraft. OceanGate offers once-in-a-lifetime opportunities just like a growing number of personal spaceflight experiences available to paying passengers. The Everett, Washington-based company’s board of directors includes former NASA astronaut Scott Parazynski, who joined OceanGate’s inaugural expedition to the wreckage of the in 2021.
For those latest to this issue, travel into space by fee-paying private residents first occurred in 2001 when wealthy American entrepreneur Dennis Tito paid some $20 million to fly to the International Space Station on a Russian spacecraft. Rather more recently, firms like Axiom Space, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin have been making space jaunts with paying passengers onboard. While a few of the few dozen individuals to earn business astronaut wings since 2021 have been contest winners or employees of the businesses carrying out these missions, the paying passengers have been extremely well-off individuals.
That’s exactly the client demographic OceanGate targeted with their excursions to go to the wreckage site of the . In actual fact, considered one of the passengers aboard Hamish Harding, flew to suborbital space last 12 months on Blue Origin’s fifth crewed Latest Shepard mission.
It must also be noted the methods of conveying such an experience are conceptually similar. Bespoke vehicles enduring unimaginable stresses in hyper-extreme environments are designed to be as secure as possible, but when something catastrophic occurs, the failure scenarios leave little room for a secure recovery for a crew aboard. The business space flight industry has already had losses of life. In 2007, an explosion during an engine test for Virgin Galactic resulted in three staff’ deaths. Then in 2014, Virgin Galactic suffered one other fatal mishap when its suborbital spaceplane broke up during a test flight, killing one pilot and seriously injuring the opposite.
Most people understands the danger of spaceflight and has seen what can go fatally improper. Roughly one in five Americans living today are sufficiently old to have witnessed the Apollo 1 fire in 1967 and the very public losses of the Space Shuttle in 1986 and in 2003. Those were with individuals who were trained astronauts and knew full well, as did their family members, what was plainly in danger. Same for the Virgin Galactic calamities, where those involved were trained employees conscious about dangers. Two of the passengers of the are a father and his 19-year-old son. Except for having the ability to afford the Titan’s $250,000 tickets, they were summer tourists on the lookout for a thrill.
One other grim and uncomfortable aspect of this dreadful event is the deployment of U.S. government assets, namely the U.S. Coast Guard, within the seek for the Sooner or later, there shall be a morbid discussion concerning the recovery of those lost. How will that be done, if it could be? How long will it take? Is that an affordable use of taxpayer money? What happens when there’s a personal space mishap that strands paying passengers in orbit or on the moon? Will Space Force and NASA be expected to perform search and rescue or recovery?
The general public is used to lives being lost within the pursuit of such thrills as skydiving and mountaineering. Going to the deepest parts of the ocean or into outer space on a business vessel is different. These undertakings are still novel enough to warrant widespread media attention, especially if something goes improper.
Here ends the analogy between the deep ocean and outer space. Nobody within the deep ocean enthusiast community seriously advocates for human settlements at the underside of the ocean. Nearly every space enthusiast, in contrast, pines for a future where normal, on a regular basis people do call a personal, off-world locale home.
Within the weeks and months ahead, we’ll learn concerning the vehicle, maintenance records, quality control mechanisms in place at OceanGate, passenger training and liability issues. Wrenching scrutineering will lead to baleful findings.
Government regulators, private operators, insurance firms, lawyers and lawmakers should listen to how this deep ocean disaster plays out and take serious lessons learned for when the private space tourist industry eventually has its “ moment.”
If not, and the private human spaceflight community willfully avoids preparing for the worst, those of us who need to see human expansion into space will only have ourselves guilty for an absence of morose-yet-honest imagination, steely preparedness, adamantine resilience and enriching progress.