Space chiefs are being urged to set up a 999 rescue service to save orbit-stranded tourists following the Titanic submarine tragedy.

Though space tourism is rocketing there is currently nothing in place to help if something goes wrong post-launch.

Government advisers and industry experts have long been aware of the need for an emergency rescue system.

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But with most space tourism run by private companies there is no global 999 service in place to zoom in should tragedy strike.

Private astronauts – such as Star Trek actor William Shatner – have to boldly go at their own risk.

The plight of the five Titanic tourists who perished when their submarine imploded on a sight-seeing mission to view the wreckage of the sunken ship on the ocean floor has sparked calls to address 999s in space.

Tourists aboard a spacecraft disabled in orbit would face a similar ordeal to those in a sub – a trapped crew with limited resources facing a race against time to be rescued.

But while the US and Canadian governments dispatched aircraft and ships to search for the missing submarine the response to a stranded disabled spacecraft would be different.

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Though the US signed a treaty in 1967 agreeing to help any stranded spacecraft there are no rockets on stand-by for emergency launch.

Grant Cates, a former NASA engineer who now works for the US Government-funded Aerospace Corporation, said a Space Rescue Service should be set up before orbital tourism takes off.

"It needs to be in place before we need it," he said.

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"The time to put in place the capabilities is not the day that you suddenly discover you had to have it."

His corporation highlighted the 'in-space rescue capability gap' in a report last year (2022).

It noted seafaring explorers traditionally sailed with extra ships and the Apollo missions to the Moon in the 60s and 70s included redundant capsules and crews.

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That proved crucial in saving the Apollo 13 astronauts when their main spacecraft malfunctioned.

NASA also had rescue strategies in place for other risky missions.

Its first space station Skylab had rescue rockets and spacecraft on standby for in-orbit emergencies.

The space agency also had plans to rescue the space shuttle astronauts if they were stranded on the International Space Station or while repairing the Hubble Space Telescope.

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But `neither the US government nor commercial spaceflight providers currently have plans in place to conduct a timely rescue of a crew from a distressed spacecraft in low Earth orbit or anywhere in space,' the Aerospace Corporation report concluded.

Cates said: "We are very close to having the capability for space rescue.

"We can cobble together a limited rescue capability to close the gap.

"It doesn’t need to be all that expensive."

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One option being debated is a new government agency with similar search and rescue capabilities to the Coast Guard.

Others want to see an international agency established.

That would be akin to the International Submarine Escape and Rescue Liaison Office which helps submariners.

But some space chiefs say a 999 service could cost billions to set up.

Kursten O’Neill, vice president at Sierra Space which is building the Dream Chaser space plane told the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics: "There’s a whole infrastructure that requires significant capital to have rockets on standby and to have spacecraft on standby.

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"To me that’s going to require public-private partnership."

O’Neill prefers giving an oversight role to a current agency such as NASA or US's Space Force to make use of the skills and technology already available inside the government.

Experts say one promising model could be the Civil Reserve Air Fleet in which commercial airlines help the military by supplying additional transportation in a crisis.

Federal or international agencies could enlist private spaceflight companies to respond to in-orbit emergencies.

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