KUALA LUMPUR, March 28 (Bernama) -- Sub-orbital flights can cost as cheap as RM15,000 in future which would help develop the space tourism industry, said Prof Dr Patrick Collins, a professor of economics at Azabu University, Japan.

"Currently space flight costs range from US$100,000 to US$200,000 (RM327,170 to RM654,340), but by doing it on a larger scale, engineers believe it can be as low as RM15,000 in 2020," said Collin in his talk titled 'From Microgravity to Orbital Flight' at Planeterium Negara here today.

A sub-orbital space flight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches 100 kilometres above the sea level. It could boost space tourism besides cutting cost for microgravity research.

Sub-orbital flights helps researchers to carry out microgravity research without going to outer space, hence saving time and cost.

Collins also said that space tourism could be commercialised like air travel and such efforts and research were being carrying out by few countries like the United States of America (USA), Japan besides a few European nations.

"In 2000, only 1 billion passengers flew on aircraft, but in 2010, 2.5 billion passengers used aircraft services. So in future, we can expect more people to travel to space. USA, Japan and Europeans are working on the possibilities," he said.

Collins is also a collaborating researcher with the Institute for Space and Astronautical Science. He is also an adviser to a number of companies and his research focus for the past 25 years has been on how to stimulate growth on commercial space activities, mainly for tourism and energy supply.

Meanwhile, National Space Agency (ANGKASA) Director General Dr Noordin Ahmad said it its effort to become a developed nation by the year 2020, Malaysia was not sidelined on the matter and expected the new technology to reduce costs.

"We are expecting the concept of sub-orbital flight to be used in expediting microgravity experiments with the least possible cost compared to using the older method of sending microgravity experiments to the ISS (International Space Station) which is very costly," Noordin told Bernama.

Malaysia has been involved in microgravity research since sending its first astronaut Datuk Dr Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor into space in 2007. The research was on five themes namely microbes in space, cells in space, protein in space, food in space and students suggested experiments.

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