Space tourism, and the unspoken US victory in space

The US is cutting shuttle flights from 6-8 per year to 4. That leaves
maybe two flights per year -- 50 people -- which is probably too many
for the market. One flight a year is probably more realistic.

On Wednesday, June 5, 2002, at 06:23 AM, panamabob wrote:

> Will it be one extra shuttle mission per year? Two? What are you going
> to do
> with these folks? Just a few orbits around earth?

The dinosaurs were destroyed by an asteroid because they weren't
space-faring. It's almost as if Gaia then thought "Well, dinosaurs
worked pretty well, but space-faring is necessary. Maybe I'll should
try mammals this time." Humanity is now developing systems to detect and
deflect asteroids, and could build orbital space colonies to spread
beyond Earth to insure life would survive a planetary catastrophe.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html