Space tourism, and the unspoken US victory in space

This is actually the fatal problem with my proposal (I was wondering who
would find it). Shuttle failure rate is demonstrated at 1% (vs 7% for
commercial launch industry) and is calculated to be perhaps 1 in 300 or
so. While this is actually lower than the fatality rate on Everest, on
Everest it's you against the mountain -- very manly (or womanly?). In
the shuttle, you just wait to see if you explode.

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

> Regardless of how safe we think the shuttle is, it still has a pretty
> graffic failure akin to the Hindenburg.

The International Space Station (ISS) most important legacy may be
jump-starting space tourism. Consider: the first space tourist, Dennis
Tito, was supposed to go to the Soviet era Mir space station. Under
pressure from NASA, Russia de-orbited the Mir which resulted in Mr. Tito
going to the ISS instead. Now the Mir was old, smelly, crowded and
probably not all that nice. The ISS was brand new, shinny, much more
roomy, etc. Mr. Tito came back to Earth with glowing accounts of how
great space is. Would his experience have been as good on Mir?

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