Public Space Travel
I wasn’t even aware that we were this close to the average civilian taking a ride in space. In fact they have Flight School for these guys. There is already over $1.5 billion invested in new air transportation ventures and an estimated $1 billion in new commercial space ventures. While we have a hard enough time getting automobile loans these guys are pumping billions into a private space flight program for civilians to use!
They even have flight school for private space travel. Flight School 2007 – Flying: Beyond A to B, a workshop for commercial space and private aviation ventures, held June 20-22 at the Aspen Institute. The unique gathering was hosted by computer and entrepreneurial investment imaginer, Esther Dyson:
“On the one hand,” Dyson told the Flight School audience, “there is the optimization of air travel. Then there’s private space travel on the other. You have many, many problems in common starting with financing, finding customers, running your businesses, marketing…defining what your business is,” she said.
That being the case, while public air transportation and space travel businesses cater to different customers, there’s room to learn from one another, Dyson said. Moreover, there are opportunities to overcome the obstacles, she added.
“Ironically, it is precisely because space travel is defined as not transportation that it can escape the heavy regulation that governs air transportation…and that it can be tried at all, and be practiced enough to become safe enough,” Dyson told SPACE.com.
“In other words, if it [space travel] were defined as useful, it would have to be much safer. But the only way it can get safer is through trial and error. In fact, we need a little more trial and error in aviation, not on the safety side, but on the business model side,” Dyson emphasized. read more…
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Filed under: Space Tech by JMH
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I’ll ask the Maxicans. As South Park told us they take only a couple of hundred bucks to send a whale to the moon… It should be cheaper to send me and some of my friends…
I believe that Virgin Galactic is building a space port in Phoenix (that should win the “Oddest Sentance” award for the day)…