After helping billions of people plan their trips around the world, Tripadvisor is ready to do the same for those looking to travel beyond the planet.
“Destination Space,” presented with the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), is a new subsection of Tripadvisor that is focused on space tourism and exploration.
“Everyone deserves to experience the marvels of space, with or without a rocketship,” reads the Tripadvisor website. “So, we’re making it our mission to help curious travelers from all corners of the Earth explore this lesser-known part of our universe.”
“From real-life astronaut reviews to out-of-this-world family trips that let imaginations soar, we’re making space more accessible than ever,” the site reads.
Like the terrestrial version of Tripadvisor, where travelers can read about others’ experiences before booking for themselves, “Destination Space” publishes the comments from previous space tourists, including Victor Vescovo and Marty Allen, who each flew on Blue Origin New Shepard launches in 2022.
Related: New Shepard: Rocket for space tourism
Tripadvisor’s first full review of “space,” though, is offered by Sian Proctor, who in 2021 became the first African American woman to pilot a spaceship on SpaceX’s Inspiration4 commercial mission. She did not pay for her seat, but rather she won it through a sponsor of the flight.
“The atmosphere was out of this world!” raved Proctor, ranking the “Location” — Earth orbit — five out of five. “We were 585 kilometers [360 miles] above the Earth’s surface, higher than the International Space Station, so we could see a large section of the planet surrounded by the darkness of space.”
Proctor dreamed of being an astronaut since her childhood, so it is not surprising she was equally enthusiastic about almost all of the other details of her trip, from her means of transportation and the food to the ambiance and amenities.
“We had iPhones and iPads, which allowed us to document our science experiments, capture special moments, listen to music, watch a movie (my favorite is “Contact“) before drifting off to sleep and, of course, take the ultimate selfies from space!” she shared in her review.
In fact, Proctor only ranked one part of her flight as less than a full five out of five. She dinged the cleanliness aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft, which she shared with four others for three days.
“We did a great job of keeping our capsule tidy. There are storage bins for pretty much everything,” she wrote, rating the category four out of five. “The only issue was our water bottles — each bottle had a tiny velcro dot that you used to stick your water bottle to the wall of the capsule, but they’d often get dislodged and float around.”
“Destination Space” differs from the main Tripadvisor site, in that it does not provide the tools to book flights into space, nor does it compare prices between the services offered by SpaceX, VIrgin Galactic, Blue Origin and others. The site does offer a link to NASA‘s website, though, for help in spotting the International Space Station when it passes overhead.
Visitors can also find suggestions for ground-based space experiences, such as visiting the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Alabama and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida.
But outer space is really where it is at, says Proctor.
“I highly recommend everyone go to space! There is nothing more magical or awe-inspiring than floating in space while being bathed in Earthlight,” she says. “When you do go, request a minimum of five days. Three days is just too short!”
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