Space Tourism – Now Coming to the Average Person – the Average Person Who Has $200,000 to Spend on a Trip Into Outer Space

Don’t Feel Sorry for These People – They Deserve to be Taken for a Ride

There are many things, ok, actually a huge number of things The Dismal Political Economist will never, ever understand.  One of these is manned space travel.  Not only is it very expensive, it is also a totally pointless activity, devoid of any real benefit except may some unexplainable  psychic pleasure the participants derive from being shot into space on a high speed rocket.

Previously reserved for astronauts and very wealthy people, The New York Times now reports without a bit of irony about space travel being available for what they call the “average person”.

Until now, space tourism has been limited to the ultrawealthy: just seven people have paid tens of millions of dollars each for a trip to the International Space Station aboard a Russian rocket.

But that could change this year, when Virgin Galactic intends to start offering flights just beyond the space barrier on a rocket ship it has built, featuring five minutes of weightlessness during a two-and-a-half hour jaunt. At $200,000 a seat, this will open the final frontier to far more people.

Wow, only $200,000 a seat, who could turn down such a great offer.  Apparently not these people, one of whom is Catherine Culver



Ms. Culver - Who Can Throw $200K into
outer space



Soon afterward, Ms. Culver put down her $20,000 deposit, becoming one of 475 people who have reserved a place on a Virgin Galactic flight. Most of them have already paid the full ticket price to rise above the 62-mile mark, which is considered the entrance to outer space. (People who pay in full will get the first seats.)

And the trip and preparation will be great fun

The trip is not for the faint of stomach: NASA used to train astronauts on a fast-diving airplane that offered intervals of weightlessness and was nicknamed the Vomit Comet — apparently for good reason.

Now Ms. Culver can certainly spend her hard earned money any way she sees fit, and if this is what she wants to do, so be it.  Plus, as she gets above 62 miles into the air she will be able to look down and with a single glance see every unemployed, every hungry, and every poor person in America.  A view like that, priceless.