The paradoxes of space tourism^*

Space tourism is widely considered to be the next step in the expansion of tourism. In this article, I focus on several paradoxes inherent in the long-range development of space travel and space tourism within the scope of the wider project of human expansion in the cosmos. I discuss the future of space tourism development from a critical sociological perspective, highlighting specifically four principal paradoxes inherent in that process: (1) the limitations on human cosmic expansion; (2) the subversion of ‘adventure’ in space tourism; (3) the banalisation of the sublimity of the experience of space tourism and (4) the deflowering of the pristinity of other celestial bodies by space exploitation and tourism development. I draw some speculative conclusions regarding the prospects and limitations of the emergent direction of the future expansion of the tourism industry.