Space Tourism - Between Competition and Cooperation of States and Non-State Entities

Abstract

The aim of the research is an attempt to answer the question about the inevitability of cooperation between states and commercial entities as part of private-public partnership in the development of astrotourism and the challenges related to it. In the undertaken research and development of materials, the classical method of analysis of existing data information (desk research) was used. In order to indicate similarities and differences, and to achieve the objectives of the research and to verify the hypothesis, a SWOT analysis was performed. A number of safety issues in astrotourism are still unregulated. Among modern countries preferring to maintain a monopoly in space, authoritarian countries dominate, such as Russia, where every sector of space exploration, including space tourism, depends on the state. In democratic countries, private entities are largely the partners or service providers of the states. In the near future, private entities will set the direction of space tourism development. States will abandon their monopoly on regulatory and organizational powers in space exploration. However, for reasons of their own security and safety interests, they will leave themselves in control of this sector. The latter will lead to the development of public-private partnerships.

Astrotourism research landscape: a bibliometric analysis

“…The space tourism and special interest tourism clusters have two and three articles respectively. The first cluster consists of articles on the development and projections of space tourism (Bógdał-Brzezińska & Wendt, 2021;Cater, 2010). The second focuses on the attributes of the destinations that offer astrotourism services (Joseph et al, 2022;Páramo & Sánchez, 2018).…”

Security and Securitization as Topics in Sustainability and Tourism Research

“…Safety has always been one of the most important issues for the existence of every human and their activities in life, work, and recreation. Safety in tourism is also one of the most important factors influencing the choice of destination or form of tourism [1][2][3]. Moreover, sustainable development is closely related to both tourism and security [4][5][6].…”