No Fly
I entirely agree with your drift. I'm a strong advocate of space exploration and the pushing of human boundaries, and acknowledge the associated factors of risk to life and financial expense. But that view, for me, does not embrace Richard Branson's private experiment, and given all previous and continuing national and international space exploits, I'm unable to fathom the Virgin project's contribution. His desire to enable commercial tourism in space seems a vacuous notion, fuelled by a handful of celebrated wealthy individuals to whom the prospect of a brief excursion into a very low orbit holds an attraction: and it is only they who might have access to that flight of fancy. I find it difficult to imagine how the venture could contribute to the wider and longer term quest for practical commercial space travel on a universal basis. And the prospect of his wife, kids and a band of other laypersons being catapulted into such a hostile environment, without all the necessary fit-for-purpose skills and knowledge, must surely be a non-starter? To me, it is this that sets Sir Richard's activity way apart from most other laudable adventurous pursuits. Should it not be left to others with more appropriate acumen to pick up on previous initiatives as those alluded to by 'what next'?
Last edited by jindabyne; 4th Nov 2014 at 12:34.