Business Jet Interiors International • September 2021 • Space tourism

The advent of space tourism presents interior designers with a whole new brief

Even the most jaded frequent flyers will surely be excited by the promise of public-access space travel. A handful of the world’s richest and most entrepreneurial humans certainly believe so and are ramping up their various long-running private business (and scientific) ventures. This could see wider access – from as early as 2022 – to an experience previously reserved for professional astronauts.

Just this summer, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos flew to space in their respective craft – Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity and Blue Origin’s New Shepard. Meanwhile Elon Musk has been steadily investing in his SpaceX programme since 2002, and ultimately wants to visit other planets too. All of them, to varying degrees, are seeking to pioneer space tourism – while furthering access to scientific knowledge for research parties. But their approaches – and the crafts’ interior spaces – are diverse, due to their ultimately differing long-term aims. Musk’s SpaceX Dragon capsule, powered by separate rockets, can fit up to seven crew members. Kitted out in space suits, they sit in tilted bucket seats affixed to the walls and have access to screens and data, as they’re directly involved in the mission.

Bezos’s Blue Origin craft are also rocket-propelled and capsule-shaped, but the flight process is fully autonomous. The interior is specifically designed for space tourists, and space suits are not necessary. Each of the six passengers has a tilting and shock-absorbing recliner seat, a five-point harness, screens to monitor progress, and a large window. Supporting comfort in the zero-gravity section of the flight, the capsule walls are padded in a triangular-quilted design, and there are grab handles on the upper areas of the capsule to help crew navigate when unharnessed. The space flight itself is 11 minutes long.

Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity is perhaps the closest to an existing business jet experience, given its tube-like cabin, within a winged ‘spaceplane’ that flies at slightly lower sub-orbital altitudes than a spacecraft capsule with rockets beneath. SpaceshipIII Imagine, now in preparation for test flights in 2022, can accommodate six passengers and two pilots. Spaceship Unity has seating for four passengers and two pilots. Imagine’s seats are designed to recess, allowing more space for passengers when experiencing weightlessness. Unity’s seats currently do not recess to a flat position. Both spaceplanes are crewed by two pilots at all times.

The zero-gravity experience has no precedent in conventional air travel and made for a key design challenge, embraced by Virgin Galactic’s design partner, Seymourpowell. “Working on the Unity project was all about creating an interior where the view of the Earth from space is the hero moment,” says Caroline Jacob, colour, material and finish design strategist at Seymourpowell.

To that end, a full-size interior mockup of the cabin and the seat was created at the firm’s site in London, UK, but virtual reality (VR) was also employed, as walking around the model, however realistic, clearly couldn’t get close to replicating weightlessness in space. “Our creative technology team built a floating cube within a spaceship, in VR, and that was enough to get a sense of floating through the design,” says Jacob.

VR was used throughout the design process, including for the lighting and colour and trim. “VR really helped us to refine the palette,” says Jacob. “We realised some of the original colours appeared very differently through this light, so we needed to choose colours that would preserve their saturation levels throughout the journey.”

Those colours include metallic gold (to represent the desert), teal (the ocean) and celestial blue (space). Colour is also used to support wayfinding in the cabin. The lower area is white, while upper parts are a darker grey, to indicate which way is up when passengers experience zero gravity. “This way you instinctively know how to get back to your seat,” Jacob reasons.

The seats are a mixture of very lightweight materials – aluminium, carbon fibre and 3D-knitted seat upholstery produced by sportswear brand Under Armour. The knit is particularly unusual. “We’re used to dealing with weight challenges in aircraft design, but the Galactic programme pushed that challenge to the extreme,” says Jacob. “The 3D-knit seat upholstery came from the activewear industry and really pushed the standards of the aviation industry. We had to find certified yarns that would behave the same way as a traditional knitwear yarn. We used our Sense Lab at Seymourpowell and worked closely with Under Armour to maximise human breathability and lightweight performance from that industry. It was like nothing I had done for aircraft or a transportation project before.”

Knitted seatbacks are quite often seen in creative conceptual car interiors but seldom, if ever, used for production. But Jacob reckons they will work for space tourism purposes, as the material won’t see as frequent or active use. The seat is adjustable to enable a tailored fit for each passenger. “The seat design is really bespoke,” she says. “But because it’s essentially six passengers flying every month or so, wear and tear will be nothing like you’d get on a normal aircraft.”

Even the window surrounds saw intense design scrutiny. They have embedded multicolour LED lighting to create a very high contrast to the sparkling view of space. They also have embedded cameras to catch all the action, so customers don’t have to worry about losing their smartphones while attempting zerogravity selfies. There is also a large circular mirror at the back of the cabin, so customers can witness their own zero-gravity moments. The flex and tint of the mirror film had to be carefully judged so as not to cause unwanted reflections that might distract the pilot, who sits within the same space – albeit at the other end of the cabin – rather than behind a solid bulkhead.

Blue Origin flew its first paying customer in July 2021, and commercial flights are slated to start in 2022 for Virgin Galactic. For those who would prefer a perhaps more leisurely flight, another operator plans to fly from late 2024. Space Perspective’s eight-person, one-pilot capsule, Spaceship Neptune, is designed to be pulled space-ward via a spaceballoon, but only up to 20 miles high. In this scenario, no serious g-forces have to be factored into the design, the view above 99% of the Earth’s atmosphere should still be spectacular, and there will be a captain, champagne bar and bathroom on board. The flights are planned to be six hours long. Lower altitude means lower cost too, with Space Perspective quoting US$125,000 (€105,296) per ticket, rather than double that for Virgin Galactic. The exterior of Space Perspective’s capsule has been designed by PriestmanGoode. A final decision has yet to be made about the cabin designer.

One way or another, a new ultimate bucket-list journey will soon be realisable – if your funds allow.

Space hotels

Once going to space and coming back down almost as quickly becomes passé, there may be a market for somewhere tourists can stay a bit longer. One company already looking to build such a ‘space hotel’ is Orbital Assembly. The firm constructs, develops and manages space platforms in orbit that are capable of simulating gravity – a crucial factor for reasonable space-dwelling, even for short periods of time. Its Gravity Ring is slated to be its first scalable platform to simulate Mars-level artificial gravity for up to 90 minutes and is due to be operational in 2023.

Meanwhile it is planning its Pioneer Class space stations to be “the first habitable platforms capable of providing artificial gravity”. The proposed specification for the Pioneer Class station is to include Lunar-level simulated gravity for 56 crew members, and up to eight habitable modules that are 375m3 (13,243ft3) each.

The third and flagship Orbital project is the Voyager Class station, designed to offer 11,600m2 (124,861ft2) of habitable space. Orbital proposes that the artificial gravity on board could be controlled by increasing or decreasing the rate of the station’s rotation.

Star laws

The space industry already has its own specific legislation covering everything from the roles of each human occupant, to risk consent and cyber security. Despite the greater constraints (and risks) of space travel, Virgin Galactic is keen to not only meet the existing experiential flight standards but also ones for commercial flights too, in line with its ambition to be more like an airline in space for casual tourists. To give just one example on Virgin’s craft, for takeoff, landing and more, the seat recline is controlled by the pilot, not the passenger. This to ensure the position of the seat is never left to chance.

How high is high enough?

The definition of what constitutes outer space directly affects the design of space tourism vessels. For Blue Origin, getting past the Kármán line is significant. At 62 miles (100km) above sea level it is the internationally recognised boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. The Federation Aeronautique Internationale also uses this line to define the boundary between aeronautics and astronautics.

Virgin Galactic cites the US Armed Forces’ definition of an astronaut – a person who has flown higher than 50 miles (80km) – as its marker, given that at its highest altitudes, the Earth’s atmosphere gets so thin it barely exists. So far the highest Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity spaceplane has travelled is 55.4 miles (89.2km).