SpaceVR Makes It Easy To Become An Astronaut With 360-Degree Tours Of the International Space Station

It'll still be a while before you can book an actual ticket to space for your next vacation. Space tourism is still in its infancy, and flights on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft cost too much, unless you happen to be a multimillionaire. That's where a company like SpaceVR can help, as it aims to give average citizens the chance to live out their dream of becoming astronauts, by taking the first-ever fully immersive and virtual tour of the International Space Station.

California-based SpaceVR launched a Kickstarter Monday to send a 360-degree camera up to the International Space Station to create a virtual tour of life in space. The camera, dubbed Overview One, will be made from components from Earth and 3D-printed parts from space. Overview One will be assembled aboard the International Space Station. SpaceVR has partnered with Made In Space -- manufacturer of the Zero-G Printer currently aboard the space station -- to develop its camera.

"Being in space and looking down at the Earth, astronauts are hit with an astounding reality: Our planet is a tiny, fragile ball of life, 'hanging in the void,' shielded and nourished by a paper-thin atmosphere. Astronauts refer to this as the Overview Effect. The idea of national boundaries vanishes, the conflicts that divide people become irrelevant, and the need to come together as a civilization to protect this 'pale blue dot' becomes both obvious and imperative," reads SpaceVR's Kickstarter page.

The $500,000 SpaceVR wants to raise (by Sept. 10) will go to the development and testing of the Overview One 3D camera. While the camera is based around 12 GoPros, each of those cameras has to be modified and approved for space travel, according to Wired. Coated glass lenses, special batteries, a way to cool the camera and surviving the launch are just a few challenges the Overview One has to manage during its journey.

"Electromagnetic radiation, if your camera makes certain types of signal noises, it’s scrubbed altogether. And then they’ve got other interesting tests, like the kick test. Any object that floats around freely in the space station has to survive a kick test," Isaac DeSouza, co-founder and CTO of SpaceVR, said to Wired.

SpaceVR wants to send the Overview One to the International Space Station aboard Orbital Sciences' Cygnus spacecraft in December. There's no tentative date for when the footage will be available. The company hopes to provide live streams aboard the space station in the near future. A VR camera could be launched to the moon in 2017, and a trip to an asteroid could happen in 2022. A journey to Mars may happen as early as 2026.