SpaceBanter.com - View Single Post - Private, uncrewed, suborbital test flights to start this year.

**Jeff Findley**

In article , says...

Jeff Findley writes:

I've got to disagree. When you're flying high enough above the earth
that the vehicle is flying through vacuum then that vehicle is flying in
space. Flying people in space on a relatively short suborbital trip is
manned space tourism as much as a 20 minute sight seeing helicopter ride
is aviation.

But is a journey that takes 20 minutes or so "tourism"?

From Wikipedia:

The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people who "travel to
and stay in places outside their usual environment for more than
twenty-four (24) hours and not more than one consecutive year for
leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exercise of an
activity remunerated from within the place visited."

I have no problems with calling suborbital rides spaceflight (albeit a
short flight), but the word "tourism" feels just... wrong.

Ok, I give. Maybe it's not "tourism", it's a "theme park ride" where
the spaceport is the "theme park" and the trip on Spaceship Two is the
"theme park ride".

Whatever we want to call it, it could lead to "tourism" if it's
profitable enough to cause investors to take the big leap and invest in
actual orbital "tourism" (i.e. something like Bigelow's proposed space
station).

Jeff
--
" Solids are a branch of fireworks, not rocketry. :-) :-) ", Henry
Spencer 1/28/2011