Outer Space Tourism: is it the way of the future?
In 2005, a civilian contracted with a private company to catapult him into space, for a price that was over the moon and probably could have covered his expenses for around the world trips for the rest of his life. Many speculate that soon tourists will be flying to the moon or other out of this world destinations as easily as they now skip across the Atlantic from New York to Paris or London, and there are prototypes for passenger aircraft that can carry a hundred or more people at a time into the stratosphere, at rocket speeds. Some investors are spending millions to get into this futuristic idea of travel, while others think that it represents a dream or a pie in the sky that will not be realized for hundreds of years, because of the enormous expense involved in providing safe space travel.
But it was only a century ago that people felt the same way about the car, and when the first car carried people at speeds as fast as 30 miles per hour, this was considered a terrifying and extreme mode of transportation. Then air travel followed, and before long people were crisscrossing the planet in supersonic jets, making air travel as common as riding a bike or taking a walk in the park. In fact it is difficult now to imagine a world without air travel, which represents the bulk of the tourist market for international travelers. So pack your bags and your space suits because soon you may be taking a stroll through the park on the nearest celestial planet.