Space Tourism?

Cave_Monster wonders: "With the successful return to earth by Gregory Olson, the US businessman who allegedly paid around £11m for his trip, what are people's thoughts on continuing with this trend? It is definately favourable towards generating extra funds for space programs, and with Mr. Olson preferring to be labeled as a 'flight participant' rather than a tourist, it definately begs the question as to how much input can these paying people have in space research? Experiments that he participated in included further investigation into how the human body deals with weightlessness and the possible causes to lower back pain and nausea, yet are these activities simply carried out so as to 'entertain' or is there real scientific purpose behind them? With the next 'tourist' expected to be Japanese businessman Daisuke Enomoto, should paying people have a real scientific background or is money simply enough?"

Comments

Definitely time to invest in a spell checker

[Tetravus]

I use SpellBound for Firefox. As for space tourists/flight participants, if they can positively contribute to experiments in a safe fashion they should be encouraged to help further defray the costs of their trip by working.

science is a fringe activity

[lawpoop]

Face it, most of what people want to do is socialize. Science or other knowledge-acquiring endeavours are fringe activities for the small geek subpopulation. That being said, when technology becomes mass produced and sold to people in order to socialize, that lowers the cost and makes the science much cheaper to pursue.

I say make space travel mostly a entertainment/travel industry for now. As the general public finances it, there will be investment and competition by private industry. The cost of space travel will become so cheap that it will be feasible to manufacture in space, and also to throw a few experiments up there.

Forget about the science-and-engineering oriented utopia promised us by science fiction. As a general rule, people want bread and circus. It would be much more effecient to throw a few experiments on the bread-and-circus rockets than the way it's currently being financed.

Re:Fly me to the Moon...

[DerekLyons]

A lot of the Russian money for the ISS has been siphoned out by Moscow bureaucrats, and the Russians are begging the US for extra funding.

Partially true. The extra funding they are currently asking for is because the 'free' Soyuz flights (carrying US personell) are coming to an end as per existing agreements.

I don't think the US is that behind in its commitments - the articles I have read suggest that the Russians are behind.

Hmm.. Where then is the CRV? (Essentially cancelled. Which keeps the crew size down because they are limited by Soyuz.) Where is the full fit of equipment for the LAB? (Sitting on the ground because the Shuttle is grounded.) The HAB? (Ditto. And it's because the HAB is grounded that they are having life support problems - because it's the backup to the Russian hardware.)

My guess is (based on plenty of direct experience of Russian industry and project management) that the Russian manufacturers have not seen any of the money allocated for the project, because it's been diverted to various consultancy companies and agencies.

Your guess would be pretty much wrong since all the critical path Russian equipment is on orbit - whereas almost none of the American hardware is.

So the Russians can't deliver, because they can't buy material and parts, and the money has disappeared, so they are looking for other funding sources.

A conclusions that only follows if you start from the premise that the Russians are to blame rather than bothering to actually be aware of the full facts.