We could be the closest we've ever been to space tourism after years of setbacks — perhaps by the end of this year.
When Americans first walked on the moon 50 years ago, the idea of space travel crystallized into a graspable future. Bolstered by a geeky shift in pop culture that launched and relaunched franchises like"Star Wars,""Battlestar Galactica" and"Star Trek," Americans saw intergalactic storylines that never touched Earth. Life in space seemed so close.
It's exactly that frustration -- that we've not further explored space -- that could lead to the closest we'll get to space tourism yet, possibly by the end of this year. "There is a frustration among space barons and the space industry in general that there isn't a base on the moon, that we haven't been to Mars, we haven't done any of the great things after Apollo," Christian Davenport, author of"The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos," told ABC News.
Despite the $250,000 price tag for the flights, Virgin Galactic's wait list is real: the company said that 600 future astronauts have paid $80 million in deposits. "In a good year you might fly rockets a couple times a month as opposed to multiple times a week and that's what they're aiming for," Davenport said. As space trips become more frequent and commonplace,"you get better, your operations become more efficient, your costs go down, and that's what they're ultimately trying to do."
"This year, and going into next year, will be the most exciting time in the space industry since the Apollo era," Stallmer said."They’re really close to getting the general public and private astronauts."Since 2011, American astronauts travel to the International Space Station on Russian rockets, at a cost of about $87 million per seat, in effect funding the Russian space program, said CSF's Stallmer.
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