SpaceX to Send First Tourists Around the Moon 2018
SpaceX plans to launch two paying passengers on a tourist trip around the moon next year using a spaceship under development for NASA astronauts and a heavy-lift rocket yet to be flown, the launch company announced on Monday.
The launch of the first privately funded tourist flight beyond the orbit of the International Space Station is tentatively targeted for late 2018, Space Exploration Technologies Chief Executive Elon Musk told reporters on a conference call.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-spa...
[I posted that two days ago, 28 Feb '17. Reflecting on this, I think that "space tourism" is evidence of a shift in a fundamental aspect of our culture, a change in society as important as the Renaissance. The purpose of the venture is not to find gold as it was for the European exploration of the Americas, but for personal enrichment. It is beyond mere pleasure - though it will be pleasurable, but for an ineffable extension of consciousness. And consciousness is an attribute of an individual.
From 1995 to 2003, I wrote about aviation while learning to fly. Writing for other pilots was easy enough, but I never felt capable of transmitting that experience to someone who had not shared it. Sure, I read books about flying by aviators. We by Charles Lindbergh was probably the best narrative, but, again, by then, I too, had flown, probably soloed by then.
I actually took my first two flying lessons in 1984 and 1985 inspired by NASA's "Journalist in Space" competition. Being a pilot was not a requirement. But NASA's goal was to get people into space who could translate the experience to a broad audience. It was not limited to prose. John Denver - also a pilot - entered the competition, as did Walter Cronkite. The program was cancelled after the Challenger disaster.
In my aviation library, I have three disks of music, including Pink Floyd's "Learning to Fly" (listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tresP... ). Nice try... but I have landed and seen the rime ice on the edge of the wing, the unheeded warning... If you never have, the lyrics are just words, rich and compelling as the music is.
As far as we know from every American who has written about it, going into outer space changes your mind about everything you knew. That is worth more than all the gold of the Aztecs. And it will have wider, deeper, and stronger consequences in the channeling courses of human history.]
The launch of the first privately funded tourist flight beyond the orbit of the International Space Station is tentatively targeted for late 2018, Space Exploration Technologies Chief Executive Elon Musk told reporters on a conference call.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-spa...
[I posted that two days ago, 28 Feb '17. Reflecting on this, I think that "space tourism" is evidence of a shift in a fundamental aspect of our culture, a change in society as important as the Renaissance. The purpose of the venture is not to find gold as it was for the European exploration of the Americas, but for personal enrichment. It is beyond mere pleasure - though it will be pleasurable, but for an ineffable extension of consciousness. And consciousness is an attribute of an individual.
From 1995 to 2003, I wrote about aviation while learning to fly. Writing for other pilots was easy enough, but I never felt capable of transmitting that experience to someone who had not shared it. Sure, I read books about flying by aviators. We by Charles Lindbergh was probably the best narrative, but, again, by then, I too, had flown, probably soloed by then.
I actually took my first two flying lessons in 1984 and 1985 inspired by NASA's "Journalist in Space" competition. Being a pilot was not a requirement. But NASA's goal was to get people into space who could translate the experience to a broad audience. It was not limited to prose. John Denver - also a pilot - entered the competition, as did Walter Cronkite. The program was cancelled after the Challenger disaster.
In my aviation library, I have three disks of music, including Pink Floyd's "Learning to Fly" (listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tresP... ). Nice try... but I have landed and seen the rime ice on the edge of the wing, the unheeded warning... If you never have, the lyrics are just words, rich and compelling as the music is.
As far as we know from every American who has written about it, going into outer space changes your mind about everything you knew. That is worth more than all the gold of the Aztecs. And it will have wider, deeper, and stronger consequences in the channeling courses of human history.]
"The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."
THANKFUL tor our pioneers. Me -- will say a small prayer for them. Yes -- I DO believe in that. Kept me alive when chips were down.