I Need Some Space
April 1981 - Living in the USA, the nine year old boy from New Zealand was obsessed with space lego. He watched on television as the Space Shuttle Columbia took flight for the first time and dreamed of one day becoming an astronaut. Like the generation before him, who had witnessed the first manned space flight and the first man on the moon, he felt that he would live in a time of great space exploration.
27 years later, now as an adult, I do feel a slight anti-climax at the rate of progress of space flight. In 27 years we have seen a few more space shuttle flights and an international space station – but nothing like the Star Trek-fuelled childhood dreams of spacecraft exploring new solar systems and planets.
But with a number of commercial organisations now getting involved, are we finally on the brink of an exciting period of development in space flight?
Most well known would be Virgin Galactic. They have commissioned the development of two launch aeroplanes and five spacecraft that they will use to take paying tourists into space from approximately 2009 / 2010. Their website is fascinating and worth a look. At around US$200,000 a trip you will need to start saving your pocket money now.
Virgin Galactic
Jeff Bezos of Amazon, has also set up a space tourist business ‘Blue Origin’, with plans to offer a commercial sub-orbital space tourist flights from 2010.
Even little New Zealand is getting involved with local company Rocket Lab developing a small unmanned rocket that could be used for research and space burials.
Futurist, Dr James Canton, anticipates a number of future trends in space including space tourism, space mining, and space discoveries (leading to advances in medicine and innovations). Bring on new unexpected ideas and developments in space.
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