Better real estate… The new pad would replace Launch Complex 46, which lies within the explosive clear zone of Blue Origin’s nearby Launch Complex 36. Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket exploded on that launch pad during a preflight test last month. LC-46’s proximity to LC-36 means the two pads cannot operate simultaneously without disruption. LC-46 has hosted a handful of small satellite launches and hypersonic missile tests in recent years.

Changes in attitude at Latitude. French launch startup Latitude has removed all mentions of the Zephyr name from its website, now referring to its rocket simply as “Our Launcher,” European Spaceflight reports. The rocket, previously known as Zephyr, is a two-stage launch vehicle that will stand 19 meters (62 feet) tall and is designed to deliver up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds) to low-Earth orbit. The company is currently targeting the second half of 2027 for the rocket’s inaugural flight.

Due diligence… Latitude did not explain the reason for the change, but one plausible explanation is trademark risk. The Zephyr name is already trademarked within the aerospace sector by Airbus subsidiary AALTO, whose solar-powered High Altitude Platform Station aircraft bears the name. The Zephyr trademark filing, which was granted by the European Union Intellectual Property Office in 2005, covers unmanned aerial vehicles, satellites, parts and fittings, and “launching apparatus for the aforesaid goods.”

China’s Zhuque-2E breaks up in orbit. The upper stage from a commercial Chinese rocket that launched last week has broken apart in space, spreading debris in a heavily trafficked part of low-Earth orbit home to the International Space Station and a significant portion of SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network, Ars reports. The breakup occurred shortly after the Zhuque-2E rocket reached orbit on June 9 with two satellites providing direct-to-cell communications, perhaps around the time the upper stage was expected to perform a disposal burn. The US Space Force confirmed the breakup event in a post on space-track.org, a website used by the military to distribute orbit data to the public.

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In fact, polls in Australia, the US and elsewhere indicate around a third of the public believes aliens are here.

However, while what we know about the universe suggests aliens may exist, there are three compelling reasons why they probably aren’t visiting us.

Space is big – very big

To begin with, space is vast – beyond our imagination.

Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our Sun, is about 40 trillion kilometres away, 268,000 times farther than the Sun is from Earth. That’s 4.3 light years as astronomers measure it. A light year is the distance light travels in one year at 300,000km per second.

We can only travel across space at a fraction of the speed of light with current technology. Even our fastest spacecraft, the Parker Solar Probe, travels at a top speed of roughly 191 kilometres per second – 0.064% the speed of light.

At that speed, it would take about 6,650 years to reach Proxima Centauri, and that’s just in our local stellar neighbourhood. So interstellar travel within human lifespans would require much higher velocities.

Let’s assume we did have the means to travel close to the speed of light. That introduces the first problem with travelling at that velocity. Albert Einstein demonstrated that time is relative; the rate of time flow is not the same everywhere in the universe. The faster a spaceship travels from Earth, the slower time will pass for its passengers. This is called time dilation.

For example, when NASA astronaut Scott Kelly arrived back on Earth from a year on the International Space Station, he was milliseconds younger than his identical twin because time moves more slowly for objects in motion, and the International Space Station travels at roughly 28,150 kilometres per hour.

This difference was negligible for the Kelly twins. But for any aliens cartwheeling through our skies, it would be significantly more because of the journey to Earth and back from a distant star system at a necessarily higher speed. They would go home to a planet much older than the one they left – perhaps by a century or more. They would be time exiles.

Unimaginably high energy requirements

Then there’s the unimaginably high energy requirement for interstellar travel.

The mass of the spaceship increases with velocity, so an increasing amount of energy is required to accelerate it.

At the speed of light, the ship becomes infinitely massive, requiring an infinite amount of energy. This is clearly impossible.

Another significant issue is that space is a vacuum – but not completely. There are just enough particles to worry about. They can potentially cause fatal radiation for passengers and the instruments of a high velocity spacecraft, or destroy it. Sparsely spread hydrogen atoms turn into intense radiation at near light speed, and the heat that is generated would ablate and eventually destroy the hull.

Faster-than-light travel, according to physicist Miguel Alcubierre, is possible, but it comes with its own set of issues and a currently impossible energy requirement.

That raises the question of why spend all this energy to travel to Earth? Anything we have, an advanced civilisation (as they would have to be to get here) would be able to make on their planet.

A unique biosphere

Yet another issue is our biosphere, unique to Earth as far as scientists know.

Life and the planet co-evolved. Complex life would not exist on Earth if cyanobacteria, a type of single-celled microbe, had not pumped oxygen into our mostly nitrogen atmosphere 2.4 billion years ago.

It’s therefore not toxic for us, but oxygen is reactive and could be highly corrosive for aliens. And while they could wear protective suits like humans do when going to inhospitable environments, reports of visiting aliens do not include any descriptions of spacesuits.

So, are aliens out there?

If aliens are not here, are they out there?

It’s an interesting question, scientifically and philosophically. Scientists do not have enough information yet, but they are working on the question.

About 6,200 exoplanets have been found in more than 4,700 solar systems, though none are like Earth or our Solar System.

Most stars could have at least one planet, and there are more than 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone. The number of planets is therefore astronomical, and some may be habitable.

Closer to home, there are worlds with potential for microbial life either past or present – Mars, Europa (a moon of Jupiter), and Enceladus and Titan (moons of Saturn). If we discover life began twice in our Solar System, that will increase the odds of life elsewhere.

Since 1960, we’ve had the capability to look for intelligence elsewhere, piggybacking on normal radio astronomy. The biggest search for alien life projects are carried out by the SETI Institute in California and the Breakthrough Listen project based at Oxford University in the United Kingdom.

Nothing has been found across all the searches made. Finding intelligence in our time frame – about a hundred years – in the 13.8-billion-year history of the universe is challenging.

However, as a 1959 Nature paper noted, while it’s difficult to estimate the chance of success, if we don’t search, the chance drops to zero.

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Private commercial operators are launching more rockets into space, carrying more people and pursuing more ambitious missions than ever before.

Space tourism is part of this growth, with 140 paying tourists taking off since American entrepreneur Dennis Tito took the first tourist flight to the International Space Station 25 years ago.

The industry is driven by private companies, including Blue Origin, whose recent rocket explosion was a reminder that commercial spaceflight remains a risky business.

Despite the industry expansion, international space law still relies on treaties drafted in the 1960s and 1970s for a very different era of state-led exploration.

The result is a widening gap between the rapid growth of the sector and the fragmented frameworks overseeing its risks, responsibilities and accountability.

Spectacle, risk and a legal vacuum

US singer Katy Perry’s Blue Origin joyride on board a ten-minute all-female mission in April 2025 received considerable backlash despite its claims of feminist empowerment.

Other celebrities questioned whether a billionaire-backed space hop for famous passengers could seriously be marketed as progress for women or humanity.

However, the criticism was not only about celebrity culture. It exposed a deeper problem. At present, space tourism offers spectacle with little meaningful legal accountability.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty states outer space must be used “for the benefit and in the interests of all countries” and describes it as “the province of all mankind”.

It also makes states responsible for space activities carried out by private companies and requires them to continually supervise activities launched from their territory.

As of June 2026, the treaty has 118 ratifying states parties. While it is legally binding on those states, it does not provide a dedicated enforcement authority or automatic sanctions. Compliance therefore depends largely on principles of state responsibility and diplomatic pressure.

The rules were drafted for the Cold War era, not for celebrity passengers, billionaire branding exercises and luxury trips to the edge of space.

Gaps in space regulation

For example, the Federal Aviation Administration licenses launches and re-entries in the United States. But US Congress has repeatedly prevented the agency from introducing new passenger safety rules for commercial human spaceflight. This moratorium now extends until 2028.

The gap widens further once a mission reaches orbit, where operations fall outside the aviation administraion’s jurisdiction altogether. As a result, one of the world’s fastest-growing prestige industries remains governed largely by launch licences, informed-consent waivers and a striking absence of binding safety rules for those on board.

This light-touch regulatory environment is particularly striking given the exclusivity and commercial scale of the industry. Blue Origin does not publicly advertise a ticket price for New Shepard, but aspiring customers must lodge a refundable US$150,000 deposit merely to enter the process. The first seat on its inaugural crewed mission reportedly sold for US$28 million.

Virgin Galactic reopened seat sales in March 2026 at US$750,000 per passenger.

Orbital missions are even more exclusive. Axiom’s private astronaut flights to the International Space Station have cost more than US$55 million per seat, with some recent missions reportedly priced in the US$60-million range per customer.

This is not democratised access to space – it is luxury consumption for the ultra-rich, softened only by a few symbolic exceptions.

This matters both legally and politically. Although the Outer Space Treaty does not prohibit commercial activity or require equal access, there is an obvious tension between describing space as “the province of all mankind” and building an industry effectively reserved for the ultra-wealthy.

Scholars have increasingly warned that if benefit sharing remains little more than rhetorical, commercial space activity will deepen global inequality rather than deliver benefits to all countries.

What should change

The environmental cost of commercial space flight is also currently minimised.

Blue Origin presents New Shepard as a reusable, hydrogen-fuelled system whose engine emits water vapour rather than carbon during flight. But this does not make it harmless.

Scientists have warned that rocket launches and re-entries release pollutants into the upper atmosphere, where they can affect the climate and delay ozone recovery. Researchers also found rocket soot can warm the atmosphere far more effectively than the equivalent soot produced by aircraft or ground-based sources.

A 2025 study went further, estimating that suborbital space tourism can generate 400 to 1,000 times more carbon dioxide per passenger per hour than commercial aviation.

So, what needs to change? States should adopt binding passenger-safety rules to replace the current reliance on informed consent.

Regulators also need clear authority over commercial activity in orbit, because the current legal gap is hard to justify in a market where private missions now extend well beyond launch and re-entry.

Environmental review must also move beyond local noise and land-use concerns to confront upper-atmosphere pollution, ozone impacts and the cumulative effects of increasing launch rates.

States should take the Outer Space Treaty seriously by developing clearer rules on transparency, equity and benefit sharing. If private companies profit from outer space, they should have to show that its use benefits more than the wealthy elite.

Space tourism is an industry with real consequences for safety, for the environment and for the legal promise that space belongs to everyone.

Without these reforms, space tourism will remain exactly what the New Glenn explosion and the Perry backlash exposed: a risky, weakly regulated luxury industry selling transcendence while evading responsibility.

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