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Space Tourism
March 1st, 2007
Richard Branson and a bunch of his billionaire cronies are in a race to see who can be the first commercial non-governmental entity to send people into space and allow them to experience the effects of zero-G first hand. I’m very skeptical of the entire concept, granted the research that goes into this may perhaps someday enable us to escape Earth and settle on Mars or some other distant solar landscape. My reason for skepticism is not because I think humans in space is a far fetched idea, its because, given current global circumstances the money spent in this endeavor would probably be better spent elsewhere, say in Africa for instance. Space flight has been a human fascination for many a decade, but I must question, why this sudden urgency, why the sudden need?
The goal of all this outpouring of money is to make it viable for your average joe-schmo to go into orbit in his lifetime. That’s more like a really expensive amusement park ride. If humans have to go to space in droves there has to be something economically or environmentally viable out there. Just going to space to have the brief fleeting feeling of what its like to be an astronaut, is not going to drive or justify this kind of investment.
Some people just don’t know what to do with all their money.
