6 ms·

Space Tourism Isn’t Frivolous, or Impossible

73 points by austinz 12y ago

sanxiyn 12y ago
It isn't frivolous, or impossible, but it is not ready to take customers. Rocket launch failure rate is about 5%. http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/11/space-tourism-still-not-ready-for-flight.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/11/spa...
- Shivetya 12y ago
  Its wholly frivolous at the current time, there is no destination other than up. How more frivolous can you get. Once there are orbital and lunar destinations where you can stay more than a few days with a reasonable number of other people then it might get past frivolous.
  - dasmoth 12y ago
    "Up" does still bring a unique viewpoint. Waiting for space-stations/moon-bases/whatever before working on cheaper ways to get people there leads to a massive chicken-and-egg problem. We do have a reasonable idea of how to build space stations, once the demand is there.
  - ecopoesis 12y ago
    The destination isn't the point. Yes, some rich folks go to go to almost space, and that's awesome for them. But what's awesome for the rest of us is the rich folks are subsidizing research into spaceplanes, and some day stepping into a spaceplanebto go to the Lunar colony will be just like stepping onto a 747 to go to London is today.
    - dghf 12y ago
      Pretty much exactly what I came to say. Also, as well as ponying up the cash, they will also be risking their skins. We need human guinea pigs, and the super-rich are volunteering.
  - Malarkey73 12y ago
    Sorry is anyone who offers the contrary opinion - no matter how politely- that space tourism is frivolous, going to be voted down just because its an unpopular view about here?
- gus_massa 12y ago
  I think they are mixing manned and unmanned missions. The deadly failure rate in manned space missions is less than 1/50. For example, the Space Shuttle had 2/135 deadly failures. The Soyuz spacecraft had 2/128 deadly failures, but it's probably safer now. They have no deadly accident in space since 1971. Nevertheless, they have a few "recent" non deadly incidents in 2003 and 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_acc...
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  > Rocket launch failure rate is about 5%. That's not too far off Everest's death rate, for which customers happily line up in hordes.
  - afarrell 12y ago
    600 people isn't really a horde; its a light cavalry unit you could easily lose with an accidental command. More relevantly, At what year did the number of people flying aircraft reach 600?
    - ceejayoz 12y ago
      600 people a year on Everest is more annually than have been in space in all of human history.
    - dreamweapon 12y ago
      It's definitely a "horde" in terms of the impact Everest (and the families of tour guides regularly sacrificed so rich tourists can get their kicks) can actually sustain.
      - davvolun 12y ago
        "Sacrificed" seems a little hyperbolic, considering no one is forcing anyone to take these jobs. Compare e.g. crab fishing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaskan_king_crab_fishing#Danger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaskan_king_crab_fishing#Dange...
        dreamweapon 12y ago
        Since you brought up stats: Annual Fatality Rates by Profession (Deaths per 100,000 full-time equivalents) Miners (2000-2010): 25 Commercial Fisherman (2000-2010): 124 Alaskan Bush Pilots (1990-2009): 287 *Alaskan crab fishers: 300 U.S. military in Iraq (2003-2007): 335 Everest Sherpas (2000-2010): 1,332 Everest Sherpas (2004-2014): 4,053 Source: [1], except for your entry, marked with a *. Anyway, the "no one is forced" argument has been used to justify (or minimize the negative image of) all manner of free-market labor abuses since the beginning of time. Of course, it ignores the crushing poverty levels which drive people to "choose" most high-risk professions on the first place.[2] Which tend to be basically unimaginable to most people making the "no one is forced" argument. [1] http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/climbing/mountaineering/By-the-Numbers-Everest-Fatality-Rates.html http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/climbing/moun... {2] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140418-everest-avalanche-sherpas-killed-culture/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140418-evere...
32faction 12y ago
Aerospace Engineering major here. People may be quick to dismiss space travel, and overall innovations and advancements in space technology due to its high cost and (seemingly) dangerous tests that companies do to test new technologies. Take the very recent Antares launch failure and Virgin Galactic's tragic crash. But don't dismiss it too soon. There are an astounding amount of safety checks, safety factors, test runs, check runs, and more safety checks before an actual launch or test flight is performed. But these tragedies and tests were experienced in the early stages of within-the-atmosphere flight. While we are still learning about creating a safer and more efficient airliner, we had some bumps and tragedies we had to overcome in the past to get it to where it is now. Take for example the De Havilland Comet aircraft. It was the very first production jet airliner, but within a year of its commercial service, it had tragic accidents that led to 13 crashes with about 440 deaths total. We later learned that the stress in the edges of the square windows compromised the structural integrity of the fuselage which led to catastrophic failure. This is why the windows on your 737, 747, etc are now rounded. But through these tragedies and innovation, we not only gained knowledge on how to build a better aircraft, ticket prices also decreased substantially in price. Space travel right now is right where the air travel industry used to be when it was just starting out: we are still working out the kinks, and to quote Sir Branson, "Space flight is hard, but worth it".
- pmoriarty 12y ago
  Compare the number of people lost in exploration of space vs exploration of the seas. Of course every person lost is a tragedy, but in sheer numbers there's no comparison. The media blows it completely out of proportion, and people freak out over it while many far worse tragedies (numerically speaking) happen every day without them noticing or caring.
  - electromagnetic 12y ago
    Look at the number of people lost every day on the roads: in the US alone that's 92. Look at the number of people who've died during space flights: 18 total; 7 from Challenger and 7 from Columbia, 3 from a decompression in a Soyuz 11 and 1 cosmonaut from a failure in a parachute system. More people die during the "safe" operation of tested equipment like cars, trains, boats, planes and helicopters. The biggest issue in space flight is the inbetween. You're strapping yourself to a rocket that with a very small flaw turns into a bomb, or you're hitting the atmosphere at upwards of Mach 10 and expected to stop in what amounts to about 10m of water (that's the rough measure used for meteorite impacts). By the realities, space flight is extremely safe because we do take so many precautions.
Thlom 12y ago
How much carbon emission does one trip to space generate (I have no idea)?
- lmm 12y ago
  In a hydrogen-burning rocket, zero (at least directly). (SpaceX has some sort of plastic-fuelled hybrid rocket though).
  - ceejayoz 12y ago
    Virgin uses the plastic hybrid, not SpaceX.
- icebraining 12y ago
  "The company says that SpaceShipTwo has shorter rocket burns and is debris free, with CO2 emissions per passenger will be equivalent to approximately 60-percent of a per-passenger New York-London roundtrip."
- brent_noorda 12y ago
  About a half billion pounds per passenger. Whatever liquid fuel is actually in the rocket, it is produced via hydrocarbon.
mzl 12y ago
Recent tweet from Hans Rosling on space tourism: "Thoughts from Liberia: Space tourism is like Ebola; it's lethal, it's costly and the world is better without it!" (https://twitter.com/HansRosling/status/528308903873089538 https://twitter.com/HansRosling/status/528308903873089538) Personally I'm all for space exploration, but space tourism seems like a non-needed luxury.
- Ntrails 12y ago
  Luxury? This isn't government funded, and it's no more of a luxury than private jets, or a supercar or whatever else you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on. Most of the first world live their lives based on non-needed luxury and it just seems mad to try and suddenly impose "need" as a requirement of a product.
  - avz 12y ago
    Time and again, the luxury of one era becomes a basic need of the next. Legal protection, education, electricity, health care...
    - morsch 12y ago
      And time and time again they don't: Having your own tiger petting zoo, milk baths, private chef... So now we know that luxuries may or may not turn out to be considered basic needs.
      - bencoder 12y ago
        Not disagreeing with the overall point of your comment, but: > private chef I can purchase a pre-prepared meal and heat it up in my microwave by pressing two buttons. That's pretty close!
        morsch 12y ago
        Agreed, and a similar point can be made regarding private zoos (first world citizens have access to zoos) and milk baths (most of us could afford it but we have even better hygiene products). Some past luxuries were just fads and go out of fashion, others address a lasting need but fail to scale up and remain extravagant luxuries only available to the ultra rich, others still also address a lasting need and are transformed into something that works on a societal level.
coldtea 12y ago
Well, tourism is "frivolous" in itself, so...
ck2 12y ago
Except what Virgin is doing isn't "spaceships" or "space tourism". It's just a high flying plane. Its max altitude is still within the outer limits of the earth's atmosphere for pete's sake. It can only hit 100km (62 miles): International law defines the lower boundary of space as the lowest perigee attainable by an orbiting space vehicle ... Due to atmospheric drag, the lowest altitude at which an object in a circular orbit can complete at least one full revolution without propulsion is approximately 150 km
- tiddlydum 12y ago
  True, but they're one of a few investigating new ways of launching rockets without having to go through the thick lower atmosphere and from stationary. Everything they're learning could be used to build a launch system that drops rockets from very high in the atmosphere -- imagine how much more efficient they'll be.
- melling 12y ago
  Sure it is. It's a company selling a trip to "space". If they succeed they can reinvest the revenue into R&D to build better "spaceships", and so on. Additionally, other people will see a profitable company and try to enter the market. There's a whole snowball effect. Tesla is doing the same thing with the electric car. By the way, outer space does begin at 100 kilometers. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kármán_line http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kármán_line
  - ck2 12y ago
    What part of "atmosphere up to 150km" makes 100km space? At 100km it is dark and cold but there is atmosphere. That's not "space" in my book.
    - msl 12y ago
      The International Space Station, orbiting at around 420km is dragged down by atmosphere[1], so I'm going to call that 150km limit an arbitrary one. Also, the Wikipedia article on the subject[2] doesn't appear to consider it worthy of even mentioning. You are, of course, entitled to define "space" however you want in your own book, but be adviced that a lot of people will disagree with your definition. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Glider_mode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Glider_mode [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth
wahsd 12y ago
Edit: Seems people don't like being faced with reality. Screw it. Let's burn this mother down, we only have one, right. YOLO ---- It may not be impossible, albeit debatably frivolous, but it sure as hell is dangerous as it will increase exponentially more damaging pollution and degradation of the upper atmosphere. I don't think people quite appreciate the risk with which we really are frivolously toying. Understand, there is no fall-back, no fail-safe, no do-overs, no mulligans. Once the atmosphere is damaged, once the already engaged process of global climate change is exasperated by millionaires and billionaires who want to fly into space simply to take a looksie at the planet from high up because of their narcissistic impulse for exclusivity and domination is blind and self-destructive; there is a point of no return, where the system of a human habitable ecosystem starts collapsing. There will be no god to save us, no god to fix anything. Once it's done, it's done. Finished, Fin, Ende, Finito.... Game Over... no lives left. Some people claim, well, we'll just populate other planets. Again, a psychopathic and narcissistic mentality. So billionaires will ruin this planet and then jet off to another planet, leaving this one do wither and die along with the billions of people who you will surely also belong to? Is that the plan? I hate to be the bearer of bad news that pops your fantasy dream bubble. Reality is that this whole idea of space tourism and inter-planetary travel and terra-forming is really the equivalent of a cat hoarder living in a squalid shit and trash smeared shack venturing out to figure out how to take on a predatory loan to buy a nice new car. The priorities are so delusional and screwed up, it's incomprehensible to anyone with any bit of a level head.
- eksith 12y ago
  Their problem may not be with what you said, but how you said it. I fear the particular "brand" of space tourism offered by Virgin is probably frivolous in that it's at a level not too far removed from the "Vomit Comet" that astronauts, and paying customers, frequently use. Space tourism that does reach Low Earth Orbit is probably a play-thing for the rich as well, but I see that as a stepping stone to a greater voyage in our solar system and beyond. We're getting better at recycling our waste products and there is already a ton of research coming from the ISS on long-duration living in space. These alone have already contributed immensely to our understanding of the world around us and have lead to new technologies that are already in use or are about to enter the market soon. Likewise, space tourism will bring its share of productive advances. Let's not forget that it took millennia after the invention of sailing to get to flight. Although it only took decades from flight to space travel, it's unrealistic to expect such exponential advances in the next phase of our exploration. I doubt we'll have humans landing on Mars in my lifetime, but I wouldn't put it past the lifetime of the next generation.
dreamweapon 12y ago
Whether space tourism is frivolous or not is question of personal taste and values. But this opinion piece is definitely very frivolous indeed, in that it misses (by light years) the main argument against space tourism -- the amount of energy and resources needed (both in flight, and in on-ground support), is far greater than that of land-based travel, and will necessarily always be so (whatever improvements may be seen in terms of industrial efficiency, a gravitational well is still a gravitational well). The article doesn't even mention carbon footprint, in fact. As if the author is unaware of the fact that even regular air travel is seen by many experts as an essentially unsustainable industry, in terms of carbon impact (on the scale that it exists, and in the unrestricted, no-penalties sense as we know it today).
- pavel_lishin 12y ago
  Can't space tourism be seen as an investment? Sure, the carbon footprint is huge, but the money spent on space tourism is going towards the space industry, which could result in cleaner sources of energy. (Imagine huge solar collectors beaming power down to surface collectors in the desert. Doesn't get much cleaner than that, after everything is manufactured and launched - unless I'm grossly underestimating the maintenance.)
  - dreamweapon 12y ago
    Yeah, one can imagine various piggybacking effects or other tradeoffs by which luxury space travel might be more feasible. But what got me was the the opinion piece didn't consider environmental impact at all. It was just "C'mon, it's the human spirit! Ya gotta believe!"
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]

73 points by austinz 12y ago

It isn't frivolous, or impossible, but it is not ready to take customers. Rocket launch failure rate is about 5%. http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/11/space-tourism-still-not-ready-for-flight.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/11/spa...

Shivetya 12y ago
Its wholly frivolous at the current time, there is no destination other than up. How more frivolous can you get. Once there are orbital and lunar destinations where you can stay more than a few days with a reasonable number of other people then it might get past frivolous.
- dasmoth 12y ago
  "Up" does still bring a unique viewpoint. Waiting for space-stations/moon-bases/whatever before working on cheaper ways to get people there leads to a massive chicken-and-egg problem. We do have a reasonable idea of how to build space stations, once the demand is there.
- ecopoesis 12y ago
  The destination isn't the point. Yes, some rich folks go to go to almost space, and that's awesome for them. But what's awesome for the rest of us is the rich folks are subsidizing research into spaceplanes, and some day stepping into a spaceplanebto go to the Lunar colony will be just like stepping onto a 747 to go to London is today.
  - dghf 12y ago
    Pretty much exactly what I came to say. Also, as well as ponying up the cash, they will also be risking their skins. We need human guinea pigs, and the super-rich are volunteering.
- Malarkey73 12y ago
  Sorry is anyone who offers the contrary opinion - no matter how politely- that space tourism is frivolous, going to be voted down just because its an unpopular view about here?
gus_massa 12y ago
I think they are mixing manned and unmanned missions. The deadly failure rate in manned space missions is less than 1/50. For example, the Space Shuttle had 2/135 deadly failures. The Soyuz spacecraft had 2/128 deadly failures, but it's probably safer now. They have no deadly accident in space since 1971. Nevertheless, they have a few "recent" non deadly incidents in 2003 and 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_acc...
ceejayoz 12y ago
> Rocket launch failure rate is about 5%. That's not too far off Everest's death rate, for which customers happily line up in hordes.
- afarrell 12y ago
  600 people isn't really a horde; its a light cavalry unit you could easily lose with an accidental command. More relevantly, At what year did the number of people flying aircraft reach 600?
  - ceejayoz 12y ago
    600 people a year on Everest is more annually than have been in space in all of human history.
  - dreamweapon 12y ago
    It's definitely a "horde" in terms of the impact Everest (and the families of tour guides regularly sacrificed so rich tourists can get their kicks) can actually sustain.
    - davvolun 12y ago
      "Sacrificed" seems a little hyperbolic, considering no one is forcing anyone to take these jobs. Compare e.g. crab fishing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaskan_king_crab_fishing#Danger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaskan_king_crab_fishing#Dange...
      - dreamweapon 12y ago
        Since you brought up stats: Annual Fatality Rates by Profession (Deaths per 100,000 full-time equivalents) Miners (2000-2010): 25 Commercial Fisherman (2000-2010): 124 Alaskan Bush Pilots (1990-2009): 287 *Alaskan crab fishers: 300 U.S. military in Iraq (2003-2007): 335 Everest Sherpas (2000-2010): 1,332 Everest Sherpas (2004-2014): 4,053 Source: [1], except for your entry, marked with a *. Anyway, the "no one is forced" argument has been used to justify (or minimize the negative image of) all manner of free-market labor abuses since the beginning of time. Of course, it ignores the crushing poverty levels which drive people to "choose" most high-risk professions on the first place.[2] Which tend to be basically unimaginable to most people making the "no one is forced" argument. [1] http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/climbing/mountaineering/By-the-Numbers-Everest-Fatality-Rates.html http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/climbing/moun... {2] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140418-everest-avalanche-sherpas-killed-culture/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140418-evere...

32faction 12y ago

Aerospace Engineering major here. People may be quick to dismiss space travel, and overall innovations and advancements in space technology due to its high cost and (seemingly) dangerous tests that companies do to test new technologies. Take the very recent Antares launch failure and Virgin Galactic's tragic crash. But don't dismiss it too soon. There are an astounding amount of safety checks, safety factors, test runs, check runs, and more safety checks before an actual launch or test flight is performed. But these tragedies and tests were experienced in the early stages of within-the-atmosphere flight. While we are still learning about creating a safer and more efficient airliner, we had some bumps and tragedies we had to overcome in the past to get it to where it is now. Take for example the De Havilland Comet aircraft. It was the very first production jet airliner, but within a year of its commercial service, it had tragic accidents that led to 13 crashes with about 440 deaths total. We later learned that the stress in the edges of the square windows compromised the structural integrity of the fuselage which led to catastrophic failure. This is why the windows on your 737, 747, etc are now rounded. But through these tragedies and innovation, we not only gained knowledge on how to build a better aircraft, ticket prices also decreased substantially in price. Space travel right now is right where the air travel industry used to be when it was just starting out: we are still working out the kinks, and to quote Sir Branson, "Space flight is hard, but worth it".

pmoriarty 12y ago
Compare the number of people lost in exploration of space vs exploration of the seas. Of course every person lost is a tragedy, but in sheer numbers there's no comparison. The media blows it completely out of proportion, and people freak out over it while many far worse tragedies (numerically speaking) happen every day without them noticing or caring.
- electromagnetic 12y ago
  Look at the number of people lost every day on the roads: in the US alone that's 92. Look at the number of people who've died during space flights: 18 total; 7 from Challenger and 7 from Columbia, 3 from a decompression in a Soyuz 11 and 1 cosmonaut from a failure in a parachute system. More people die during the "safe" operation of tested equipment like cars, trains, boats, planes and helicopters. The biggest issue in space flight is the inbetween. You're strapping yourself to a rocket that with a very small flaw turns into a bomb, or you're hitting the atmosphere at upwards of Mach 10 and expected to stop in what amounts to about 10m of water (that's the rough measure used for meteorite impacts). By the realities, space flight is extremely safe because we do take so many precautions.

Thlom 12y ago

How much carbon emission does one trip to space generate (I have no idea)?

lmm 12y ago
In a hydrogen-burning rocket, zero (at least directly). (SpaceX has some sort of plastic-fuelled hybrid rocket though).
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  Virgin uses the plastic hybrid, not SpaceX.
icebraining 12y ago
"The company says that SpaceShipTwo has shorter rocket burns and is debris free, with CO2 emissions per passenger will be equivalent to approximately 60-percent of a per-passenger New York-London roundtrip."
brent_noorda 12y ago
About a half billion pounds per passenger. Whatever liquid fuel is actually in the rocket, it is produced via hydrocarbon.

mzl 12y ago

Recent tweet from Hans Rosling on space tourism: "Thoughts from Liberia: Space tourism is like Ebola; it's lethal, it's costly and the world is better without it!" (https://twitter.com/HansRosling/status/528308903873089538 https://twitter.com/HansRosling/status/528308903873089538) Personally I'm all for space exploration, but space tourism seems like a non-needed luxury.

Ntrails 12y ago
Luxury? This isn't government funded, and it's no more of a luxury than private jets, or a supercar or whatever else you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on. Most of the first world live their lives based on non-needed luxury and it just seems mad to try and suddenly impose "need" as a requirement of a product.
- avz 12y ago
  Time and again, the luxury of one era becomes a basic need of the next. Legal protection, education, electricity, health care...
  - morsch 12y ago
    And time and time again they don't: Having your own tiger petting zoo, milk baths, private chef... So now we know that luxuries may or may not turn out to be considered basic needs.
    - bencoder 12y ago
      Not disagreeing with the overall point of your comment, but: > private chef I can purchase a pre-prepared meal and heat it up in my microwave by pressing two buttons. That's pretty close!
      - morsch 12y ago
        Agreed, and a similar point can be made regarding private zoos (first world citizens have access to zoos) and milk baths (most of us could afford it but we have even better hygiene products). Some past luxuries were just fads and go out of fashion, others address a lasting need but fail to scale up and remain extravagant luxuries only available to the ultra rich, others still also address a lasting need and are transformed into something that works on a societal level.

coldtea 12y ago

Well, tourism is "frivolous" in itself, so...

ck2 12y ago

Except what Virgin is doing isn't "spaceships" or "space tourism". It's just a high flying plane. Its max altitude is still within the outer limits of the earth's atmosphere for pete's sake. It can only hit 100km (62 miles): International law defines the lower boundary of space as the lowest perigee attainable by an orbiting space vehicle ... Due to atmospheric drag, the lowest altitude at which an object in a circular orbit can complete at least one full revolution without propulsion is approximately 150 km

tiddlydum 12y ago
True, but they're one of a few investigating new ways of launching rockets without having to go through the thick lower atmosphere and from stationary. Everything they're learning could be used to build a launch system that drops rockets from very high in the atmosphere -- imagine how much more efficient they'll be.
melling 12y ago
Sure it is. It's a company selling a trip to "space". If they succeed they can reinvest the revenue into R&D to build better "spaceships", and so on. Additionally, other people will see a profitable company and try to enter the market. There's a whole snowball effect. Tesla is doing the same thing with the electric car. By the way, outer space does begin at 100 kilometers. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kármán_line http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kármán_line
- ck2 12y ago
  What part of "atmosphere up to 150km" makes 100km space? At 100km it is dark and cold but there is atmosphere. That's not "space" in my book.
  - msl 12y ago
    The International Space Station, orbiting at around 420km is dragged down by atmosphere[1], so I'm going to call that 150km limit an arbitrary one. Also, the Wikipedia article on the subject[2] doesn't appear to consider it worthy of even mentioning. You are, of course, entitled to define "space" however you want in your own book, but be adviced that a lot of people will disagree with your definition. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Glider_mode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Glider_mode [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth

wahsd 12y ago

Edit: Seems people don't like being faced with reality. Screw it. Let's burn this mother down, we only have one, right. YOLO ---- It may not be impossible, albeit debatably frivolous, but it sure as hell is dangerous as it will increase exponentially more damaging pollution and degradation of the upper atmosphere. I don't think people quite appreciate the risk with which we really are frivolously toying. Understand, there is no fall-back, no fail-safe, no do-overs, no mulligans. Once the atmosphere is damaged, once the already engaged process of global climate change is exasperated by millionaires and billionaires who want to fly into space simply to take a looksie at the planet from high up because of their narcissistic impulse for exclusivity and domination is blind and self-destructive; there is a point of no return, where the system of a human habitable ecosystem starts collapsing. There will be no god to save us, no god to fix anything. Once it's done, it's done. Finished, Fin, Ende, Finito.... Game Over... no lives left. Some people claim, well, we'll just populate other planets. Again, a psychopathic and narcissistic mentality. So billionaires will ruin this planet and then jet off to another planet, leaving this one do wither and die along with the billions of people who you will surely also belong to? Is that the plan? I hate to be the bearer of bad news that pops your fantasy dream bubble. Reality is that this whole idea of space tourism and inter-planetary travel and terra-forming is really the equivalent of a cat hoarder living in a squalid shit and trash smeared shack venturing out to figure out how to take on a predatory loan to buy a nice new car. The priorities are so delusional and screwed up, it's incomprehensible to anyone with any bit of a level head.

eksith 12y ago
Their problem may not be with what you said, but how you said it. I fear the particular "brand" of space tourism offered by Virgin is probably frivolous in that it's at a level not too far removed from the "Vomit Comet" that astronauts, and paying customers, frequently use. Space tourism that does reach Low Earth Orbit is probably a play-thing for the rich as well, but I see that as a stepping stone to a greater voyage in our solar system and beyond. We're getting better at recycling our waste products and there is already a ton of research coming from the ISS on long-duration living in space. These alone have already contributed immensely to our understanding of the world around us and have lead to new technologies that are already in use or are about to enter the market soon. Likewise, space tourism will bring its share of productive advances. Let's not forget that it took millennia after the invention of sailing to get to flight. Although it only took decades from flight to space travel, it's unrealistic to expect such exponential advances in the next phase of our exploration. I doubt we'll have humans landing on Mars in my lifetime, but I wouldn't put it past the lifetime of the next generation.

dreamweapon 12y ago

Whether space tourism is frivolous or not is question of personal taste and values. But this opinion piece is definitely very frivolous indeed, in that it misses (by light years) the main argument against space tourism -- the amount of energy and resources needed (both in flight, and in on-ground support), is far greater than that of land-based travel, and will necessarily always be so (whatever improvements may be seen in terms of industrial efficiency, a gravitational well is still a gravitational well). The article doesn't even mention carbon footprint, in fact. As if the author is unaware of the fact that even regular air travel is seen by many experts as an essentially unsustainable industry, in terms of carbon impact (on the scale that it exists, and in the unrestricted, no-penalties sense as we know it today).

pavel_lishin 12y ago
Can't space tourism be seen as an investment? Sure, the carbon footprint is huge, but the money spent on space tourism is going towards the space industry, which could result in cleaner sources of energy. (Imagine huge solar collectors beaming power down to surface collectors in the desert. Doesn't get much cleaner than that, after everything is manufactured and launched - unless I'm grossly underestimating the maintenance.)
- dreamweapon 12y ago
  Yeah, one can imagine various piggybacking effects or other tradeoffs by which luxury space travel might be more feasible. But what got me was the the opinion piece didn't consider environmental impact at all. It was just "C'mon, it's the human spirit! Ya gotta believe!"
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]