Title: New space tourism industry and sustainable development

Abstract

The excitement of public space exploration was for decades captured only in Hollywood productions, until the 2010s saw the emergence of the New Space industry, combining the space activities of private space companies and governmental actors. As a sector of New Space, recently emerged New Space tourism industry aims to satisfy the postmodern traveller’s desire for new experiences, and is forecast to develop as a multi-billion tourism sector in the future (Toivonen, 2022). The global megatrend of sustainability was furthered by the Intergovernmental Panel Climate Change report´s (2018) concerns over the future impacts of climate change on Earth. The growth of modern tourism has indeed led to a significant increase in its environmental impact, which can no longer be ignored in the current era of climate change, and thus the need for more sustainable focused future planning in the tourism industry. Apart from being an energy- and emissions-related driver for new technological developments, sustainable development has brought responsibility and ethics to the ways of global tourism operations, and influenced the creation of global regulations. Rapidly advanced technological developments also contributed to Finland becoming a new space nation in 2017. One of the objectives of Finland´s space strategy is to provide a sustainable environment for space-related business, and the country´s recently established space legislation advocates such future points of action. Recent academic findings (Toivonen, 2022) suggest that future sustainability in New Space tourism industry could be supported through three alternative future scenarios; through the planning of global space regulations, through improving global fairness and through the implementation of virtual and technological innovations. However, there is a strong need to expand the global academic research on the environmental impacts caused by the New Space tourism industry as it is currently still very limited.

Biography

Annette Toivonen works as a senior lecturer of tourism business at Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences and has pioneered in launching world´s first sustainable space tourism course for university students. She is a renowned Finnish expert on sustainable space tourism and has written a book on the topic titled “Sustainable Space Tourism: An Introduction” (2020, UK). She is also a visiting chief editor of a special space tourism issue of the journal Integrated Environmental Assessment Management (USA).