Space Tourism and Industry

Space tourism is already real. Suborbital flights from Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic have ranged from roughly $250,000 to over $700,000 per seat, and SpaceX has already flown private citizens to orbit. The next step is orbital hotels: companies like Axiom Space and Vast are building commercial space stations to replace the ISS after it retires around 2030. Industry may follow tourists upward, because microgravity allows superior fiber optics, pharmaceuticals, and metal alloys that are impossible to make on Earth.