Job titles of the future: Space travel agent

未来职业：太空旅行代理人

Roman Chiporukha has long turned wild travel dreams into reality. Over two decades as co-owner of the luxury lifestyle firm Roman & Erica, he has orchestrated everything from the construction of a client’s superyacht to vacations in the Bahamas at a location so private that guests must sign an NDA.

长期以来，Roman Chiporukha 一直致力于将大胆的旅行梦想变为现实。作为奢侈生活方式公司 Roman & Erica 的共同所有者，他在过去二十年里策划了各种项目，从建造客户的超级游艇，到在巴哈马群岛安排极其私密的度假行程——私密到客人必须签署保密协议（NDA）。

The experiences earned him “the ear,” he says, “of the ultra-high-net-worth audience.” It also led to a life-changing phone call: In 2018, Axiom Space wanted to find three citizen explorers willing to pay $50 million each to join the first fully private mission to the International Space Station (ISS), slated for April 2022. This showed Chiporukha that the sky was no longer the limit; it was the market. He successfully signed up the private astronauts and then launched SpaceVIP in 2021 to offer celestial experiences that mix culture, science, and purpose. Here’s what it takes to become the Expedia of the cosmos.

他说，这些经历让他“赢得了超高净值人群的青睐”。这也促成了一通改变他一生的电话：2018 年，Axiom Space 想要寻找三位愿意支付每人 5000 万美元的平民探险家，参加定于 2022 年 4 月进行的首次全私人国际空间站（ISS）任务。这让 Chiporukha 意识到，天空不再是极限，而是市场。他成功签下了这些私人宇航员，并于 2021 年创立了 SpaceVIP，旨在提供融合文化、科学和使命感的太空体验。以下是成为“太空版 Expedia”所需的条件。

A willingness to do your homework 愿意做足功课

Chiporukha isn’t an astronaut or aerospace engineer, so he had to fast-track his own education on the nuances of commercial spaceflight. To help private citizens skip the rocket-science headache, he has wrangled the highly fragmented space sector into a single, seamless digital portal, so adventurers can investigate suborbital flights and far-out itineraries as effortlessly as they would a weekend getaway. But he insists they still need an expert fixer who can secure “the perks, the custom requests, and the upgrades.”

Chiporukha 既不是宇航员也不是航空航天工程师，因此他必须快速学习商业航天飞行的细微差别。为了帮助普通公民免受火箭科学的困扰，他将高度分散的航天领域整合到一个单一、无缝的数字门户网站中，让探险者可以像预订周末度假一样轻松地查询亚轨道飞行和遥远的太空行程。但他坚持认为，客户仍然需要一位专家来处理“福利、定制需求和升级服务”。

The power to align wants with reality 将愿望与现实对接的能力

SpaceVIP receives dozens of inquires a month, but Chiporukha helps just a small, exclusive roster design custom adventures based on their budgets and physical comfort zones. Acting as a bridge between starry-eyed dreamers and strict aerospace parameters, he works with operators like Axiom for multiday stays on the ISS, and with Blue Origin, SpaceX, and Virgin Galactic for other excursions. Spacefarers can choose, for example, a zero-gravity parabolic flight or a smooth six-hour voyage aboard a stratospheric balloon 15 miles above Earth—an option he says is “relatively affordable,” if you’re a person for whom a few hundred thousand dollars isn’t that much.

SpaceVIP 每月会收到数十份咨询，但 Chiporukha 只为少数高端客户根据其预算和身体承受范围设计定制探险方案。作为满怀梦想的客户与严苛航天标准之间的桥梁，他与 Axiom 等运营商合作安排国际空间站的多日停留，并与蓝色起源（Blue Origin）、SpaceX 和维珍银河（Virgin Galactic）合作进行其他太空旅行。例如，太空旅行者可以选择零重力抛物线飞行，或者乘坐平流层气球在距离地球 15 英里高空进行平稳的六小时航行——他表示，如果你是一个觉得几十万美元不算什么的人，这个选择“相对实惠”。

Ability to inspire a new generation 激励新一代的能力

Making space travel widespread is an uphill climb in terms of cost and technology. But, Chiporukha adds, more people simply need to be interested. He cofounded the Space Prize Foundation, a nonprofit that runs science competitions for young women and groups underrepresented in STEM. Winners get zero-gravity flights and entry into immersive astronaut-training programs. “Making space more mainstream isn’t just about bringing down the cost of a ticket,” he says. “It’s about creating pathways into the industry and helping people understand that this future shouldn’t belong to a tiny group.”

就成本和技术而言，普及太空旅行是一项艰巨的任务。但 Chiporukha 补充说，关键在于让更多人产生兴趣。他共同创立了 Space Prize Foundation，这是一个为年轻女性和 STEM 领域代表性不足的群体举办科学竞赛的非营利组织。获胜者将获得零重力飞行机会，并进入沉浸式宇航员培训项目。“让太空旅行变得更主流，不仅仅是降低票价，”他说，“而是要开辟进入该行业的途径，并帮助人们理解，这个未来不应只属于极少数人。”