Ticket Price Strategy for Space Tourism

 It is important for any new space tourism launch system to develop a successful pricing strategy and to optimize launch system parameters to receive a high economic profit. A question arises, what will happen when an existing suborbital flight market is interfered by a new established orbital flight market for space tourism. There is a risk that the suborbital space tourism market would be almost instantly displaced when a product capable of reaching orbit was introduced.

This can be best discussed with the following three cases which results are presented in this paper. Case A presents the ticket price strategy for a suborbital and orbital vehicle if the two vehicles would not compete in the same market. Case B shows necessary ticket price strategy for a suborbital vehicle if there would be competition from an orbital flight operator. However, the suborbital vehicle could not keep up with decrease in ticket prices due to its obsolete characteristics. Thus, the suborbital vehicle would be forced to stop operation in that year, when flight costs are higher than flight receipts as shown in case C.

More details about this and similar research can be found at: www.robert-goehlich.de.

Short CV:
Robert A. Goehlich was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1975. He received his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Technical University Berlin. His investigations are focused on cost engineering (economical optimization of vehicle systems, aerospace industry and organizations). He worked at Israel Institute of Technology (Israel), University of Washington (USA), Kourou Spaceport (French Guiana). Currently, he is lecturing “Space Tourism” (first worldwide lecture about this topic) and “Cost Engineering” at Keio University and working at JAXA in Japan.