Like the headline!
Couldn’t agree more.

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Never? Certainly a strong stance to take….

First you say that most tourists will never be able to afford space tourism or be fit enough to travel to space. You do realize people used to say the same sorts of things about air travel, automotive travel, even travel by rail, don’t you? There was a time when people honestly believed that traveling over 60 mph would cause you to die, regardless of your transporting medium..

You go on to say that tourists cannot look after earth, never mind taking a trip in to space–I can only presume you are referencing some sort of “space pollution”. Two problems with this. 1) space is already horridly polluted, as it’s much cheaper to just leave all of our satellites and spare parts and random junk in orbit than it is to bring it back down and dispose of it some other way. 2) Do you really think that the idea of not being able to take care of space would limit a future tourism industry?

As for your comment on the three day training period–people take lessons all the time for different forms of “tourism”–ski lessons, skydiving lessons, rock climbing lessons, racing schools, etc. This is part of how the adventure-tourism works–you want to do something batshit crazy, you generally have to take the time to make sure you’re at least less likely to kill yourself in the process. Which leads to my next point–you haven’t presented an argument against space tourism, you’ve presented an argument against interstellar commercial travel. You even say it in your article–you do not think we’ll see [space travel] happen. Travel and tourism are not the same thing–in the same way people don’t fly just to fly, or drive just to drive as they once did during they heyday of the airplane and automobile, respectively, we will most likely someday not travel to space just for the experience of it. At that point, we will have reached interstellar commercial travel. Until that point, all non-scientific space flight–i.e. a trip to space purely for the experience of it–is most certainly space tourism, and is already becoming semi-popular among the affluent. The same happens every time a new form of transportation begins to become more mainstream–it begins its popularity at the top, with the rich, who are willing to spend the time and money to deal with the quirks and inconveniences necessary for the experience, and then trickles down through the classes as it becomes more practical and affordable over time.

As for the price of the ticket–do you really think branson is so daft that he’s not making money on galactic? The man is a money-generating machine, and will most certainly find a way to make galactic profitable–probably insanely so–as long as it continues to operate. I would presume the pricing reflects this. This means that, by purchasing a ticket, you are giving virgin the money they have to have to make improvements to the rail system. Without fat profit margins off of space flight and crazy luxury planes and the like, virgin could not afford to improve their staple businesses.

So, taken from this angle, you may wish to applaud virgin galactic and their attempt at jumpstarting the privatized space industry, as they are both indirectly improving your rails and increasing the likelihood that you will see some form of interstellar travel before you croak.

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I agree that space travel is likely to follow the same pattern as air and rail travel, with luxury accomodations for the wealthy and crowded, uncomfortable “economy” accommodations for the masses.

In addition, as more companies get involved, rate competition will come into the picture.

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This sound crazy, when 1st I read your post that I think you were kidding, but I visit the website of Virgin Galactic than I realize it’s true. But now it is possible only for rich persons not for all. In my opinion it is amazing to travel in space.

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I hope the rates come down to reasonable levels in this lifetime as I would love to see space and the curvature of our planet from above – wishful thinking! I’m not sure if it will “never take-off” because there seems to be a lot of interest and I can imagine, such a trip would be a humbling, potentially life-altering experience which many would gladly pay for.

Reading the comments above, I agree with raowng that people in the 19th/early-20th centuries must’ve thought the same about the viability of rail and air travel.

Only time will tell I guess.

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Space travel is usually the preserve of trained astronauts, scientists and – had Lance Bass of N’Sync made it – time-rich, cash-rich pop stars.

But, as Virgin Galactic chief executive Stephen Attenborough has continually said, this will change.

His boss, Sir Richard Branson, seems to be one of the most obvious people to spearhead the drive to create the first company to take paying ‘tourists’ into space.

The move was not taken lightly by Virgin or sceptics, with Branson promising the fare for a trip into space would be considerably less than the $20 million-odd it currently costs amateur astronauts to reach the heavens via the Russian space programme.

The environmental lobby was told early on that the hardware for the Spaceship-branded vehicles would be “radically different” from previous space exploration rockets and the NASA-run shuttle.

In fact, some argue that the environmental impact of air-liners is what green campaigners should be focusing on.

But what is the point of holidaying in space? With an average of six to seven minutes of passenger ‘effective weightlessness’, a figure which doesn’t usually come out in the PR puff, some say Galactic isn’t really ‘space tourism’ at all.

Perhaps it is the definitive niche trip at the far end of the Long Tail of Travel, but equally, it could be just a plaything of an imaginative entrepreneur.

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[...] Our pal Darren over at Travel Rants sounds off on the prosptects of space tourism. Don’t read if you’re Richard [...]

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I think it depends on how you define space tourism. I think the market for sub-orbital trips for the uber-rich will be a growing industry, but mass-market space tourism to a space station on a galactic version of EasyJet or Ryanair is, I agree, unlikely to take off.

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£107,000 might not be affordable for you or me but it is for a lot of people. People buy second homes all the time, don’t they?

I recently heard a guy from Virgin Galactic speak at a magazine conference. The reason Virgin is going into space travel is partly for the wow factor and to be part of something big if they do pull it off, but also to help develop the technology for cleaner air travel. Virgin owns airlines such as Virgin Atlantic and they believe that air travel in the future will involve leaving the atmosphere in order to avoid polluting the atmosphere. So it’s also about R&D.

I’m not sure that a train operator can fix British rail. They don’t own the lines.

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[...] outlines three solid reasons space tourism will likely never take off. I have to agree, but it sure would be cool to take a ride in a [...]

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Darren

People said the same thing to Mr Stevenson and his Rocket !

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Is the point of travel to get somewhere? Some people enjoy the journey as much as the destination, but I think if this is to work you have to get somewhere. London to Sydney in 90 mins that would make space travel very viable.

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