The Wax Rocket

Since spaceflight began, there have been fewer than 5,500 launches into orbit, and only about 300 of those have carried astronauts. These endeavors have always been risky. Indeed, the failure rate for space launches over the past five decades has hovered around 8 percent. Early aircraft were also subject to frequent accidents, but private industry invested billions in development, and these machines grew steadily safer over time. Without a mass market to drive a similar evolution, space travel has remained exceedingly dangerous. No wonder it still takes a good dollop of "the right stuff" to be an astronaut. Soon, though, the advent of suborbital space tourism may finally do what decades of government-sponsored R&D could not. Companies such as Airbus Defence & Space, Armadillo Aerospace, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and Xcor Aerospace are planning to offer suborbital flights for prices that ordinary people- or at least ordinary wealthy people- can afford.