Last Friday, Virgin Galactic experienced a terrible tragedy as SpaceShipTwo crashed in the Mojave desert. The accident resulted in the death of a pilot and another with major injuries.
For those who don’t know, Virgin Galactic has been promising space tourism for quite a while now. It is one of those technologies that always seems to promise an availability date, but it never delivers. I personally think it is something that we might have eventually, but I am not certain when.
The CEO of Virgin, Richard Branson, has officially come out with words like “Space is hard” and “we fell short”. I will have to admit that he has more than a point with this, as aviation is full of pitfalls and sadly casualties on the road to progress.
Now is the time where I am going to get all philosophical and ask whether or not we need space tourism. Perhaps the question is whether or not we want it, and I will have to say yes. The problem is there may come a day when we need space travel, especially if we just pollute the planet beyond livability. I’m not certain if that will ever happen, but if we really want to explore the universe, then space tourism is the first step.
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