NEED A VACATION? SPACE WILL SOON BE AFFORDABLE

     Sub-orbital flights can cost as cheap as RM15,000 in future which would help develop the space tourism industry, said Prof Dr Patrick Collins, a professor of economics at Azabu University, Japan.
    "Currently space flight costs range from US$100,000 to US$200,000 (RM327,170
to RM654,340), but by doing it on a larger scale, engineers believe it can be as
low as RM15,000 in 2020," said Collin in his talk titled 'From Microgravity to
Orbital Flight' at Planeterium Negara here today.
    A sub-orbital space flight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches
100 kilometres above the sea level. It could boost space tourism besides cutting
cost for microgravity research.
    Sub-orbital flights helps researchers to carry out microgravity research
without going to outer space, hence saving time and cost. 
    Collins also said that space tourism could be commercialised like air travel
and such efforts and research were being carrying out by few countries like the
United States of America (USA), Japan besides a few European nations.
    "In 2000, only 1 billion passengers flew on aircraft, but in 2010, 2.5
billion passengers used aircraft services. So in future, we can expect more
people to travel to space. USA, Japan and Europeans are working on the
possiblities," he said.
    Collins is also a collaborating researcher  with the Institute for Space and
Astronautical Science. He is also an adviser to a number of companies and his
research focus for the past 25 years has been on how to stimulate growth on
commercial space activities, mainly for tourism and energy supply.
    Meanwile, National Space
Agency (ANGKASA) Director General Dr Noordin Ahmad said it its effort to become
a developed nation by the year 2020, Malaysia was not
sidelined on the matter and expected the new technology to reduce costs.
    "We are expecting the concept of sub-orbital flight to be used in expediting
microgravity experiments with the least possible cost compared to using the
older method of sending microgravity experiments to the ISS (International Space
Station) which is very costly," Noordin told Bernama.
    Malaysia has been involved in microgravity research since sending its first
astronaut Datuk Dr Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor into space in 2007. The research was
on five themes namely microbes in space, cells in space, protein in space, food
in space and students suggested experiments. 
    As a continuation, Malaysia continued research in collaboration with
Japan and Russia in the area of parabolic flight, protein crystallization and
space seeds from 2008 until end 2013.
    -- BERNAMA