Space Travel

I found this photo in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to take it seriously or not, but then I did some research and found various articles talking about Space Tourism, private companies making space shuttles and things like that.

Space.com

The advertisement reminded me of all these posters from the 50s about space travel and things like that.





Are we really that close to casually traveling to space? Granted the definitions of "Going to space" vary greatly. It could be a 5 second ride into the upper reaches of the atmosphere before falling back to earth or it could legitimately be leaving the atmosphere and docking with a Space Hotel or something. To which those guys at the International Space Station would be like "Wait, I spent years in college and training to become an astronaut and these rich suits just casually came up here too?! Careful, these doors aren't big enough to fit your wallets through!"

I'm not too sure how I feel about space travel. I think it'd be cool, but it would be incredibly expensive, unless it becomes popular enough to be a regular thing like airplane travel. Although, I can't even stand sitting in a plane for a 16 hour flight to Australia, how am I supposed to handle a 3+ month ride to Mars? Easy solution: Hypersleep!!

Anyway, I think space tourism is in the beginning of beginning stages, but it would be awesome to see a major breakthrough in my lifetime.

We could easily be going from life like this:


To life like this:



wildwombat