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

Why money is enough

[G4from128k]

Anything that gets more people excited by space and space travel is good. Space needs better marketing -- yet another scientific experiment in space doesn't capture the imagination. But marketing is expensive unless you can get free publicity -- I can't see Congress giving NASA the OK to put on a $100 million ad campaign.

If letting a space tourist go up can attract media attention, then that's great. Its even nice that the customer pays the organization to create good marketing for the organization.

Besides, I'd bet the economics of space flight are such that the cost of filling an empty seat aren't that high. The average cost of putting a pound into orbit may be extremely high, but the cost of adding another pound of person and supplies is probably not bad. It's like the airlines -- if you're going to fly anyway, why not fill every seat.

Creating the idea that space is accessible to an increasing number of people -- not just a few astronauts that spent their life in the program -- is the key to the future of space funding.