Well maybe not this summer, but such ideas might not be fantasy much longer.

"SpaceShipOne, designed by Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites, will be carried by a turbojet called White Knight to an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,240 meters)... The craft's designer aims to open up a new space frontier with Monday's launch... If all goes according to plan, it will ignite its rocket engines that propel the craft to Mach 3, three times the speed of sound, and into space. The spacecraft will spend three minutes beyond Earth's atmosphere, becoming the first private craft to carry a human into space and touch down on the same runway it left about an hour and a half earlier." - from the CNN report: Commercial space travel next leap for mankind? by Michael Coren

Rutan and his team are one of twenty teams, from seven different countries, competing for the $10 million Ansari X Prize for the first civilian flight in space. The prize was meant to encourage interest in private space travel.

We are on the edge of a breakthrough here. If Rutan succeeds with his flight tomorrow (I assume tomorrow, though the CNN report said "Monday"), or if one of these other teams succeeds soon after, that will bring the idea of space travel that much closer to all of us (well, any of us with money of course, because I can't imagine it will be cheap).

There were a few pieces of information that I didn't find from the article, such as: are these people even allowed to go into space? Do they need special permits, and if so, what kind of agency supplies those? What about an intergalactic pilot's license? Are there rules for this kind of stuff?

"It's like Star Trek!" my husband said this morning. I'm not a Trekkie myself, but I share his excitement. The thing is, space travel has always been one of those things that "they" did. The government, military, or other secret alliances. But most certainly not me, and not you either. It's hard to grasp the idea that I might one day be outside the Earth's atmosphere, or that I would have the option anyway. There are talks of space tourism, resorts and hotels in orbit! In the future, we will take the kids to the moon instead of Disney World.

Although exciting, this feels like one of those huge things, advances in technology, that may be too big. Scary big. Like cloning, or artificial intelligence. One of those things that maybe we are not supposed to do. Playing God even.

Maybe humans aren't meant to leave the planet. Although, I'm sure they said that humans weren't supposed to fly when the first airplane left the ground.

Still, I'm all for innovation. Rock on with your big bad brains - let's build some rockets.

The deciding factor for the continued success of commercial space travel will be whether or not there is a market for it. How many people would be willing to take a trip into space if they could?

It sounds like a thrill, better than a rollercoaster I'm sure, but I think I'll probably sit out the first few rounds, just to see how it goes. Both feet firmly planted on Earth's soil.

Laura Rae Amos
peaceandjellybeans.com