According to a Pew Research study, 55% of Americans expect space tourism to be as common in fifty years as international flights are today. Retired NASA astronaut Clayton Anderson, now CEO of the Strategic Air Command and Space Museum, says attainment of such lofty goals is going to require that space travels always keep in mind "Clay's 3 D's of Space Travel": dangerous, difficult and dollars. He hastens to remind people of the pioneering work of Orville and Wilbur Wright in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903. They had no way of knowing their personal experiments in flying machines would lead some day to an average American jumping on a 747 from Houston to Dubai, sipping an adult beverage, watch tv, and read their email on the plane's wi-fi. "We have a lot of people touting what's possible, and that's good, but they always have to remember Clay's Three D's of Space Flight: danger, difficulty, and dollars." We all understand the danger part, and we get smarter all the time about the difficulty of making it safer, but it's never going to be perfectly safe." And that takes you to dollars, ans who can afford this - right now not very many people. Fifty years from now maybe, but if you look at today you have folks around America who can't afford to a plane ticket. For the foreseeable future, space travel is going to be the playground of the rich and famous with a whole lot of money.
Pew Research finds seven in ten Americans feel it's essential for the U.S. to be a leader in space travel.
Fifty years ago, we launched SkyLab, not knowing what that would lead to. Today as we venture off into commercial space tourism it's impossible to know how the industry will transform in the next fifty years, but America has the desire to be a world leader in the task.
55% of Americans expect routine space tourism over next 50 years.
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