Well, everyone has the article; MSN’s account may be found here. We’ve had our first private suborbital flight. Will we finally see the opening up of the final frontier to everyman?
Probably not for awhile, but the hopes and fears of the Space Age generation– space tourism, private flights, and offworld colonies– may be a wee bit closer.
Timelines? Next steps? SF developments that may be in your future?
I always hoped….
that I’d get to own a small craft and fly around in space… But those are dreams that comes from reading too much sci-fi. Fact is, nobody in our lifetime who is not wealthy will be able to access space like we can access the world thru an airplane. But it will come… maybe in 50 or 75 years.
It’ll be neat to grow old seeing the young lucky bastards begin the real space era. All we gotta do is keep governments from laying claim to every inch of space. I could easily see the moon being split up between 5 large countries… What private citizen has a chance to get a piece then? Not one.
Re: I always hoped….
For those interested, here‘s an average-guy eyewitness account of the launch.
Re: I always hoped….
I doubt that. I see no practical reason for ordinary people to travel
through space these days or even within the next few decades. Unless we
find a real benefit (more than mere exploration and science), that won’t
change. There may be a few space tourists, but that won’t make a
difference for the majority of the people on this planet.
Before humanity can really go out into space, we need one thing (well,
probably more than just ONE thing, but this one just came to
mind):
– reliable artificial biospheres
Without those you cannot possibly live independently from Earth, and –
as a consequence – the cost of supporting human life in space would
grow immensely due to the transportation of continously needed
resources into space.
Maybe – for the time being – we should just be contend with the fact that
we ARE actually travelling through space – on this giant spaceship
called Earth. Well, okay… no-one’s has found a way to control it yet.
But believe me, we’re better off that way ;)