Would commercial Space flights take off?

[Aoshi]

well you all know the announcements of the four commercial space crafts that was designed after the space one capsule project funded by paul allen, which are going to be used to fly tourist up to see the earth a feel waitlessness for around 15 minutes for $20 000 US i think.

 

But my question is do you see this taking off (no pun intended) as a feasible type of activity and will let others create space travel vehicles and open the field of space exploration and tourism like howard hughes and airplanes? or is it just a waste of time as it will fizzle out like the dearly departed concord or nasa's ambitions?

 

My opinion- I think the construction of the ships and the type of lauch is currently to primitive and at the current time we need a better approach at launching ships into space so currently i think their goals will ultimately fail for this type of thing to catch on and be permanent

[random guy]

The ships would need oxygen and climate-control so the passengers don't have to wear space-suits (for maximum comfort) and I don't think the technology is quite there yet.

[KyokugenKiss]

im highly against space travel, i think we should focus on getting to the bottom of our ocean

[Agozer]

I'd really like to see commercial space flights, since I've always been interested in space...

 

Sure, I have not against deep-sea research, that's awesome too.

[OverlordMondo]

I've always been interested in space as well. Deep sea exploration is probobly easier though. It's one of those things we need to get out of the way. Once we develop the technology to live down there, we can start working on space travel.

[Gryph]

I think it would be fun to go to outer space. And it seems like SpaceShipOne is going to win the Ansari X-Prize. I was rooting for Armadillo Aerospace (John Carmack's commercial space flight team) but their ship crashed sometime last month.

[darkmage479]

The ships would need oxygen and climate-control so the passengers don't have to wear space-suits (for maximum comfort) and I don't think the technology is quite there yet.

 

SpaceShip One has a pressurized cabin and the passengers don't need space suits. However, SS1 itself is too small for mass space tourism; a second generation would have to be developed for profitability.

 

NOTE: At around 10:00 AM US Pacific time, test astronaut Mike Mevill piloted SpaceShip 1 to 300,000 feet (technically space) for the first of 2 x-prize flights. I'm studying to be an aeronautical engineer, and i tell you, Burt Rutan is a genius.