Preface

This eBook explores the benefits of a commercial space tourism industry and describes the contemporary state of development in 2012. In addition, the impediments to space tourism enterprise are identified and documented. My central purpose is to describe strategic communication solutions to space tourism industrial impediments through consideration of salient strategic communication functions and tactics.

The initial chapter discusses the potential benefits of a space tourism industry. In the second chapter the case is made that contemporary space tourism efforts should be considered as significant, while the third chapter presents the contrary position, that commercial space tourism is currently insignificant. The contradictory cases and factual basis for both chapters are presented to document the complexity and equivocal nature of current space tourism activity, as well as future industrial uncertainty.

The impediments and obstacles to development of commercial space tourism are the subject of the second section of this eBook. Chapter four quantifies primary impediments to space tourism such as investment insufficiency and space dangers. Secondary obstacles include legal issues and insurance and are presented in chapter five.

The third part of the eBook discusses the purposes behind space tourism strategic communication. The sixth chapter notes that space tourism enterprises may not develop, and suggests strategic communication solutions. Primary strategic communication functions or purposes are discussed in chapter seven and chapter eight covers the secondary functions. These communication functions address the obstacles to commercial space tourism industrial development.

Tactics, the focus of the final part of this work, are the building-blocks of strategic communication. The most typical space tourism strategic communication tactics like partnerships and media releases are the subject of chapter nine with the midincidence tactics explored in the ninth chapter. The occasional and atypical tactics are quantified in chapter ten, where the tactics are also categorized by channel variables.

It should be noted that a very recent development might dramatically alter the commercial space tourism status quo. In late May of 2012 a commercial space firm named SpaceX successfully replenished the ISS, under a $1.6 billion contract with NASA. The Dragon capsule may alter the previous reality of commercial space access.