The bassin of Arcachon on the Atlantic coast west of Bordeaux is otherworldly, and the Dune of Pilat at its southeastern tip—the tallest sand dune in Europe—is the best place to experience its Stars Wars views of endless sand and the intersection of wild ocean and tranquil bay. Now, that spot is also home to an embryonic experience of transcendence of a magnitude so much greater, it literally boggles the mind: trips to outer space for just plain folks.
Last week, Orbite, a French-American venture, took a giant step toward the outermost frontier of adventure, announcing $4 million in financing, partnerships with design guru Philippe Starck and the French multi-national hotel and resort company Accor, and programs designed to make space travel accessible to the average, if wealthy, Jill and Joe. Behind it is an unlikely pair of entrepreneurs who came together when one sought the other’s help with an absurdly Quixotic venture: launching a case of Chateau Petrus 2000 into orbit to store it for a year in a temperature-controlled environment.
That idea came from Nicolas Gaume, great-grandson of the founder and developer of a luxury resort community at the foot of that French dune. An outer-space enthusiast, in 2014, Nicolas co-founded Space Cargo Unlimited to develop commercial ventures that could take advantage of scientific advances and the declining cost of trips outside Earth’s atmosphere. Seeking to send that case of claret into orbit, he met Jason Andrews, founder of Spaceflight Industries, a sort of Uber for outer space, offering transport for people and things through every existing space company. Demonstrating an ecumenical approach, its first two launches were on Russian and American vehicles.
Though their Petrus project never got off the ground, Gaume did fly the wine bottles with another organization. But meanwhile, he and Andrews envisioned Orbite as a platform to provide professional astronaut training for amateur enthusiasts. The pair next planned Orbite to offer professional astronaut training to amateur individuals, the sort of luxurious space experiences those who could afford them could only dream of, and advance the lofty linked ideas of a permanent off-planet presence for mankind and the discovery of ways to preserve and protect the Earth. “Passionate about human space flight,” says Gaume, they aim to pioneer a new industry by combining it with luxury hospitality. Orbite has already run an Astronaut Orientation program at La Co(o)rniche, a five-star Pyla hotel owned by the Gaumes, in partnership with Novaspace, which offers zero-gravity flights out of Bordeaux airport, an hour from Arcachon. It is now taking reservation for four more out-of-this-world experiences.
“Living in Space,” a four-day program based at an Accor property in Paris, will focus on space habitats, sustainable living, and gastronomy, with astronaut training sessions, a visit to the National Centre for Space Studies and the Interstellar Labs BioFarm, a human physiology course, a private space food tasting and cooking class at L’Ecole Ducasse, and a dinner party at Stellar, an immersive space-themed restaurant, starting at $19,500 per person. For the same price, “Space Health,” a four-night wellness retreat on Curaçao, offers space health and nutrition guidance, daily fitness training sessions, meditation and visualization practices, a Virtual Reality spaceflight experience and meals designed to optimize well-being and recovery.
Also in Curaçao, the four-night “Sea-Space Odyssey” offers three submarine dives, guided by expert astronaut instructors and submersible pilots, highlighting the similarities between ocean and space. It starts at $29,500 per person. Further afield, the most financially adventurous program, is “Antarctic Analog,” an eight-day trip to Echo Base Camp in the frozen continent’s interior, where six bedroom pods with floor to ceiling windows, designed for space training, immerse guests in a frozen moon-like landscape. The experience, which starts at $215,000 per person, includes a flight across Antarctica, and visits to an Emperor Penguin colony, a glacier and an ice cave, and a survival simulation.
Orbite plans to start construction on its first Spaceflight Gateway Campus designed by Philippe Starck in the next year at a location near Cape Canaveral. The complex will boast a centrifuge, neutral buoyancy facility, proprietary virtual reality training, commercial spacecraft vehicle simulators, a space suit familiarization lab, and a space food lab. Its web site hints that a second campus will follow at the Neom development in Saudi Arabia.
And then, there is space itself. “Orbite has relationships with all current human spaceflight providers,” say Andrews and Gaume, and will eventually offer “custom mission packages to its clients based on their specific goals and objectives.” So, whether you’re a Musk/SpaceX man or a Bezos/Blue Origin bro’, the race to space is on. Start your rocket engines.
By Michael Gross