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Editorial the Final Frontier Making the Dream of Private Space Travel a Reality

Posted on: Thursday, 30 September 2004, 06:00 CDT

PRIVATE space travel is one of those great unfulfilled promises of the modern age - like flying cars and video-telephones - that futurists have promised for decades. Yet now the dream seems tantalizingly real.

Today, Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne is set for its second flight into the heavens, which, if successful, will make it the world's first privately owned, reusable spacecraft.

And that's just the beginning.

Billionaires Richard Branson and Paul Allen have signed a deal with Rutan to use the technology behind SpaceShipOne to create private space-planes. The vehicles would take customers on their own brief space voyages, at speeds of up to 2,100 mph - complete with four minutes of weightlessness.

Rutan and Branson speculate that space rides would be available to the public within the decade.

At first, only the wealthiest could take advantage of the technology. Trips aboard the "Virgin Galactic" space line would cost $190,000 apiece. But that's typical for a new technology, be it the airplane, the automobile or the VCR. Initially, only the rich can afford the steep costs, but eventually economies of scale take hold, and what was once a perk for the privileged becomes attainable to almost anyone.

And with the advent of private space travel, the possibilities for "anyone" are endless.

What begins with simple joy rides will quickly lead to much more - super high-speed earthly travel; space vacations; perhaps some day colonizing other worlds - thus extending the boundaries of the human frontier to infinite lengths.

Does it all sound a little far-fetched? Sure. So did the idea of crossing oceans, of soaring through the skies, of powering cities by splitting atoms or beaming information to orbitings satellites, then back to Earth again.

Dreams always sound far-fetched until someone makes them a reality; then they become a part of life. Rutan, Branson and Allen are on their way to making a dream of millions become a reality for us all.

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