Draft Guidelines for Space Tourists

IZ Reloaded writes "Draft guidelines for space tourists have already been written in the United States." From the article: "A paying customer will now be able to fly into space once he has been informed and accepts the risks of space travel. There are several factors to take into account, depending on whether a passenger is taking a speedy "pop top," up-and-down, suborbital voyage, versus climbing onboard space machinery to roar off into orbit for an extended stay."

Comments

classy

[aendeuryu]

For one, if you are in a critical crew position, your health problem could endanger the life of others. Secondly, on an orbital mission, your health problem could cause the mission director to have to make a difficult choice, Diamandis said, between your possible death or ending a billion dollar mission early, presuming that returning to Earth could save your life.

Good to know the lawyers are getting a head start writing their closing arguments.

What is "space," anyway?

[fronthead]

Doesn't it seem a little bit pointless to just do one of those "pop top" flights into "space" since "space" is kind of an arbitrary thing? I would think it kind of an expensive indulgence just for some dubious bragging rights. Orbit I can understand; really really high and back down, not so much.

Death

[Lord_Dweomer]

I really hope this doesn't all get shut down prematurely after the first person dies. I mean, I don't mean to be a Negative Nancy, but when this is first getting off the ground (no pun intended), there WILL be deaths, and they most likely will be very gruesome (think explosion, suffocation, or decompression).

This is one time though that I hope the lawyers DO get heavily involved just so that one lawsuit doesn't bring this whole fledgling industry down in one fell swoop.

In the wider context of Adventure Tourism

[the packrat]

I wonder whether this was put together taking into account the recent, varyingly successful, lawsuits against earth-bound adventure tourism operators who provided white water rafting and rock climbing and who, despite all the no-liability clauses in their paperwork, manage to surprise the world by killing their customers periodically?

Given that at least some of those lawsuits were successful (if memory serves), one wonders how much value escape-from-liability contracts really have, unless the US signs a bill similar to the no-lawsuits-of-fast-food-providers into law. Even then, they'd still be taunted by various international courts.