"Space Tourism"
Reading Lesson

Key Words

Below you will find a list of key vocabulary you need to know to understand the lesson. Click on each word to hear it and practice its pronunciation.

scenic: having beautiful views
tourist: a person who travels for pleasure
multimillionaire: a person with many millions of dollars
research: careful study to learn new information
manage: to control or take care of something
payload: the people or items carried by a spacecraft or rocket
congressmen: members of the U.S. government who make laws
garner: to get or collect something
support: help or approval
shuttle: to transport people or things back and forth
passenger: a person who travels in a vehicle but does not drive it
orbit: the path an object follows around a planet or star
spacecraft: a vehicle designed to travel in space
atmospheric: related to the air around the Earth
optional: not required; you can choose to do it or not
inflatable: able to be filled with air
habitat: a place where people or animals live
cargo bay: a space used to carry equipment or supplies
reasonable: fair and not too expensive or extreme
level: an amount or degree of something

Exercise - Key Words

Read the definition and select the word that was defined.

Reading

Space Tourism

How does a vacation on Mars sound? How about a scenic flight past Saturn? Space tourism sounds like a thing of the future but it's already happening today. The first space tourist was Dennis Tito, an American multimillionaire, who in 2001 paid 20 million dollars in for an 8-day stay on the International Space Station.

The cost for the space tourists is usually between 20 and 35 million dollars so you'd better start saving now. Many of the space tourists bring the cost down by signing up to do research activities while they're in space. Most of the opportunities for space tourism have come from the Russians, but the Americans have allowed non-government representatives from companies to manage their payloads in space. Also, two congressmen have flown on space missions to garner congressional support for the NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) space program.

Only a few companies are currently involved in space tourism. SpaceX is a private U.S. company which has developed its own rockets that may someday shuttle passengers to space stations in orbit. In May of 2012, SpaceX became the first private company to send a spacecraft to the space station when their Falcon 9 rocket carried a payload in its Dragon capsule.

Space Adventures is an American company that works with the Russian Federal Space Agency to provide seats on Russian space missions for paying passengers. They offer atmospheric and orbital flights with an optional spacewalk. In the future they may even offer trips to the moon for $100,000,000.

Excalibur Almaz is another company that is planning on offering moon trips in the future. Other companies have even experimented with inflatable space habitats that may develop into space hotels in the future. To get to these space hotels, Rockwell International has developed an experimental passenger cabin that can go in the cargo bay of the space shuttle. It can carry up to 74 passengers.

Space tourism is expected to expand in the future but it'll take a while for the price to come down to a reasonable level. Unless you're a multimillionaire, you'll have to find a vacation destination down here on Earth.

► Listen to the reading

Question

Writing

Would you like to travel in space? Why? Where would you travel to?

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