gliding back to earth
Well... That's not like they will leave earth at all anyway...
We left earth a few times,a long time ago, in the 60/70s (even if more and more people affirm it was fake, internet is the best place for the conspiracy theories, but that's a whole different topic) and never ever left earth since. Funny enough no country in the world with our modern technology is able to make an human being to leave earth in 2011, neither seriously forecast to be able to do it in the future, weird...
The little jump you can get with Virgin
GALACTIC (what a name!), or other """"SPACE TOURIST"""" (haha!) business with a russian fighter (or even the international "space" station that has no choice but to stay on earth at very low altitude) is the very proof we can do very little (seriously, I mean "nothing") about this famous maned space "exploration".
21 st century is a wake up call. The one that says: "take care of your earth like it was your mother, don't think you can spoil it and live on the moon afterwards", because nowadays this thought is just ridiculous, and any arrogant little jump (less than 50 Nautical Miles-Diameter of the earth 5000 NM-...) inside the protective earth atmosphere and so bellow the van allen earth protection we call space because of a definition misunderstanding is here to remind us the hard reality.
Those little jump that last a few seconds, that are not able to leave the earth van allen protection, that are sold like space flight (playing with the space definition***) that makes you a cosmonaut (re-haha!) are for rich kids (or imature adult) to fill up their ego, there is no other purpose than that one.
Let's focus/invest in priority on EDUCATION/QUALITY FOOD/HEALTH/WORLD STABILITY/PEACE/ECOLOGY and avoid useless ego inflatement that is always the source one way or an other of competition, arrogance, economy/technology competition, wars. 1 million years from now we will still live on the earth, let's not fool ourselves, better to start right now to make the earth our home, a clean one.
*** What they call space is in fact the lower layers of the thermosphere, much below the ionosphere. Definitively on earth and inside its atmosphere.