How adrenaline junkies turned space in to a dive

Back in the year 2010, mankind was on the brink of a space travel revolution. The first private suborbital flights were just a couple of years away, the first private space flight lay just beyond 2015 and the first space hotel was stepping out from the drawing board and into reality.
Of course, the first private space trips were the reserve of the very wealthy but, by the mid 2020s, the trips cost little more than a conventional family holiday. As ever, with affordability it didn’t take long for the adrenaline junkies to stake their claim on space. By the end of 2029, thousands of tourists had tried the new sport of space scuba and a few daredevils were experimenting with space dives all the way back to Earth.
We take a look back at how these space-sports took hold.

Thrill seekers move into space

Felix Baumgartner’s iconic dive of 36,500m (120,000ft) in 2011 was a turning point in the history of extreme sports.American company Orbital Outtters (who designed Baumgartner’s record-breaking suit), created a space super-suit (diagram right) which was originally designed as an emergency escape outt for use on board space hotels. The suit was designed to not only survive the vacuum of space but also the massive stresses and colossal temperatures involved in re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere. It didn’t take long for the adrenaline junkies of the 2020s to see the outfit’s potential.

A case of cabin fever

Privately owned space hotels, such as the CSS Skywalker, built by Bigelow Aerospace, rst began taking in paying guests in 2015. But once the novelty of weightlessness wore off, and guests became bored of just staring at the Earth through very small windows, they began to crave something more physical to entertain themselves with. Diving back to Earth was a little extreme for some, so space scuba (a fusion of space walking and scuba) was born...

Scuba-duba doo

Waay back in the 1950s comic books, such as Eagle, envisioned a world where, by the 1990s, Dan Dare and his chums could jump out of their spacecraft and swim among the stars with the speed and grace of a late 20th century scuba diver.When the new age of private space travel made the 1950s dream a reality, newcomers to the sport were justifiably nervous and usually had a few questions to ask before they threw themselves into the cold vacuum of space...

Will I get lost?

In orbital space you will be visible for hundreds of thousands of metres. You also have the luxury of crystal-clear communications and differential GPS data that can locate your position to within a centimetre.

What if I go too far?

Get rid of the idea that one slip will send you tumbling helplessly through innite space – it won’t. In low Earth orbit you don’t drift very far. Even if you jump off a space station you will nd yourself in an independent orbit that will intersect the spacecraft’s orbit once or twice every 90 minutes. So, even a determined jump will only send you a few kilometres before you come drifting slowly back.

How do I move around?

Compared to its Earth-bound cousin, moving about in space scuba is bit more complicated. With no air – let alone water – to push against, no amount of limb ailing will push you forward. Hand-held thrusters are needed to get you from A to B. But with a little practice you will be doing stunts in no time. You will also have the luxury of automated safety systems. Should you nd yourself tumbling out of control, one touch of a panic button will activate gyroscopically regulated thrusters to level you out.

What if something hits me?

With no sharks or swift currents to contend with, surely the biggest worry when floating about in space is getting hit by chunks of space debris traveling at thousands of kilometres an hour. Such a ‘super bullet’ could punch a hole right through you with terminal results. Fortunately a ‘typical’ impactor for a space craft-size object is about the size of a poppy seed. Instead of punching holes through an object, these actually create a tiny crater a mere 5mm in diameter. The largest impactor likely to hit a human-sized space diver is smaller still. Such an object, travelling at 10km per second, would take only a 1mm wide bite out of your esh once in over 10,000 hours – at worst a painful bug bite – hardly life threatening.

Will I run out of air?

If you were to pressurise your suit to 60 per cent of sea-level air pressure you would be able to breathe pure oxygen without the risk of toxicity. One litre of liquid oxygen will keep you breathing for 48 hours – so if you do get into trouble, you have two days to be rescued.

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