With all the hours of hard work that your kids put in around the Math Blaster Space Station, have you ever caught yourself wondering about what it might be like to travel into the unknowns of outer space? Currently, only a handful of private citizens have already had the opportunity to orbit through space. However, with the recent proposal by a privately funded company to start manning missions to the moon, commercial spaceflight may be more of a realistic goal for the near future than ever before. In a matter of a few years, you could be booking yourself on a flight as one of the first space tourists or better yet, an official astronaut.
Now, that dream is as close as ever to becoming a reality. As companies like Richard Branson’s much talked about Virgin Galactic are actively accepting reservations for future trips into space. Depending on your chosen package, deposits for Virgin Galactic flights can range anywhere from $200,000 to $1 million. However, with the rate at which technology has been advancing in this field and with the development of new spacecrafts, there is now more than one company making waves in the market of commercial space travel.
More recently, Colorado-based start up, Golden Spike has made headlines promoting their plans for privately funded commercial flights that would take people from earth all the way to the moon. With the first flights scheduled for as early as the year 2020, the company prices each trip at about one and a half billion dollars. The plan was announced by CEO, Alan Stern, a former director from NASA on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the last moon landing, which occurred in 1972.
Although the costs of these flights may not be practical for average citizens, the announcement marks a great opportunity for the advancement of space programs worldwide. As technology and research proceed forward, we can expect that elite list of space tourists to grow at unprecedented speeds. And in the case of Golden Spike’s plans for flights to the moon, Neil Armstrong’s iconic words from the legendary Apollo 11 flight seem most fitting as this venture can easily be considered “one small step for man, a giant leap for mankind.”
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