i will say only this:

until the cost of the ticket becomes significantly less than $200k, no space tourist I.

(granted it's cheaper than the $10 mil it takes to visit Mir. but still.)

I can't see space flight picking up much steam for advanced levels of privatization -- where are folks going to go? We can't go into space, there's no destination. The best bet I can see is faster transit between continents, but you need some hefty cargo planes to make it profitable.

OTOH, folks thought the locomotive was a waste of time, too. I hope it works. We need to get off this planet.

You know better than that!

Its the journey, not the destination.

Havent you ever wanted to fly? To Soar about like superman? (Dare I say it, have sex in space?)

You dont need to *go* anywhere, aside from *up*!

I dont think spaceShipOne will be the really awesome tourist success, however. I think the first company to build an orbiter would clean up. There are enough rich people out there with a million dollars to blow on a vacation to make that worthwhile. Apparently, they also have a 50 million dollar prize out now for the company that Achieves orbit.

Why did you remove me from your friends list? Just curious. :)

Oh! I thought you were leaving LJ for a bit. I removed it when I was pruning some other dead accounts. Since you're back.... *bing* Back on the friends list. :)