Private space station?

[Starfisher]

Yes. (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&ncid=585&e=1&u=/nm/20040808/sc_nm/bizleisure_space_dc_1)

Some hotel tycoon has been researching and developing a private space station that he wants to turn into a hotel someday. He claims to have a test module ready for launch into orbit by November 2005.

Everyone always touts the X-Prize as the first step towards the privatization of space, but I always thought that it didn't go far enough. 60-odd km up isn't enough to open up the stars to private industry. But having a private space station, even if it turns into a glorified casino, would be.

Discuss!

[Freshmendave]

Ahh frankly I dont see space turrisum in any serious form for at least thirty years, yes we have the technology but in reality who cares enough besides some rich old guys. Although a privite space station is pretty cool :) instead of turrisum I see further corperate use of space.

[Langy]

Who *cares* enough? Dude, I would totally shell out $100k to go up to space. A mil is a bit much, but I could make $100k in 10 years or so, and would gladly spend it on that. Would be totally worth it.

From what I remember, tourism is the biggest market in the world, or at least that's what something (I can't remember for the life of me what) said. I'm positive there is a large enough market to make a private hotel/casino in space be profitable. Especially since it wouldn't have any laws attached to what happened there (think hyper-expensive brothels and drug distribution). Though that's only if they can launch from anywhere in the world, which is possible with some of those X-Plane designs.

[starrider]

Good idea. and i agree with that guys veiw on NASA.

If you dont bet, your not even really playing the game...

[Freshmendave]

Well then I guess I dont have enough motovation to care much. I like no love space but I suppose the novilty of it dosnt exactilly send shivvers down my spine. Time will tell Im just a pessimist most of the time when it comes to things of space.

[Vijil]

"NASA is so risk-averse," he told Reuters. "That's insane for exploration. Zero risk means zero accomplishment."

Damn straight. I like this guy.

[Zepherian]

You just know he's gonna burn up in reentry someday, yelling Geroooooniimoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!

[silver falcon]

here tell ya what, give me 1 billion dollars and ill get a guy on mars 2 years from now, i dont care if he doesn't come back alive (i dont care if that person is me) at least i got us there and did something productive with the money and at least i took risks. plus the fact i didn't dodle around and did shit either, "umm we plan on getting a guy on mars in 15-20 years from now, just let us sleep on it" - nasa mock

i agree with vijil's quote, RISK IS THE NAME OF THE GAME

<>silver falcon

[AntaresSITH]

Who *cares* enough? Dude, I would totally shell out $100k to go up to space. A mil is a bit much, but I could make $100k in 10 years or so, and would gladly spend it on that. Would be totally worth it.


i have to agree with Langy here.

i also would save my money for ten years if i could afford a trip to earth orbit. nobody has to understand this attitude. it's just a dream and dreams are one of the main engines that drives human development. my dreams give me the motivation to do even the most boring/exhausting things.

[Zepherian]

Yah, but you would probably go to bed with an alien queen too, if you had a chance ;)

Some people are just suicidal :D

[Retroboy]

Look how many people spent tens of thousands of dollars to die on Everest every year.

What needs to happen, though, is a luxury reusable space liner that takes people to a fully protected moonbase. Now THAT would be worth a million bucks a head, and I could imagine that a lot of millionaires who would do it cheerfully. I have to wonder how far out the technology would be to do this.

-- Retro

[Murka]

Retro, what tech do you need to live on the moon?
we got airlocks, we got spacesuits we just need the time, will and $$$ to make it happen...

edit:
sorry I didn't saw that you've meant the transportation itself... I think we have all the tech for safe and luxurious travel to space, we just need smart and not lazy people that won't think "eh, who cares about a little mistake"
that's what happened with the columbia... :(

[ilia1986]

Some hotel tycoon has been researching and developing a private space station that he wants to turn into a hotel someday.


2 words:

Fifth Element.

[silver falcon]

oh god...

also retroboy i dont know why but for some reason i just cant take you seriously anymore with that new avatar of yours... i dont know why i.. just cant.... doesn't matter what u say or what topic, i ... uhhhh .....

<>silver falcon

[ilia1986]

That affects me too...:(

[Retroboy]

There's more than just the liner that needs to be developed, Murka.

- A greater overall efficiency in reasonably closed environmental systems, including hydroponics and waste recycling, particularly for food production
- Proven and achievable methods for harvesting or making water from the local resources (yes, we have theoretical processes, but none have been deployed)
- Telepresencing and semi-autonomous robotics to bring down construction costs and avoid sending as many people in advance to the moon until opening day
- A rendezvous Earth-orbit space station that is capable of reliably refuelling the luxury liner while avoiding Earth's horrendous gravity well.

Would love to see all this happen in my lifetime.

(p.s. Silver - the avatar is intended to distract and promote a perception of ridiculousness while I secretly engineer my own nefarious devices to take over the world. Apparently, it's working.

It also keeps me from taking myself too seriously. :D )

-- Retro

[incarnate]

hmm...nasa not getting anything done? i think that is the first mention of nasa i've heard in the last 2 years. there is a reason for that!

agree w/ vijil. this guy rocks.

i think the prob right now is our government hasnt really tapped into the idea of space as a medium for expansion (not CONQUEST, expansion). there are far less restrictions in space. i could def forsee some rediculous things like fusion reactors and particle accelerators up there. oh, and interstellar drug trade. thats a must

[Soban-sa]

may I point out that we have never lost a single man in space becuse NASA dosent like risk?

[Freshmendave]

Well you could stick a ten magawatt solar power gererator up in geo and microwave down electricity it could all be possible in the near future but who besides magor goverments has the money? Its kind of like when Isreal started a irigated farm land project in libya you could grow all sorts of stuff but it was immensly expensive.

Also dont ya think that there would be some sort of international laws put in place for what you can take up there in orbit. In the beggining it should be pretty easy to enforce.

[Murka]

LeadBC, what are you talking about?
I never heared about that project, can you give details?

[Freshmendave]

well I beleive it was in the fifties or early sixities when libya and isreal were somewhat chummy because of Eygpt this is before cernal cadofy, so for one reason or another a small group of technitions went to the meditaranian coast of lybia and built up a small deslainization operation and irigated a small portion of the desert, but it turned out it was far to expensive to do on any large scale so they abandoned the idea. the sorce has been lost to me it was somthing I read a long time ago. It could have been a private venture I cant really remember all I know is that it occured.

[Murka]

oh ok, thanks for the info

[Retroboy]

may I point out that we have never lost a single man in space becuse NASA dosent like risk?How about two deaths because of Apollo 1, and two full space shuttle crews?

Oh, okay... let's just talk about deaths that are just "in space" then. If you put a fine point on it, you're right. But it's because the most dangerous points of any flight are the take-off and landings... and there's plenty of NASA bodies for those two areas alone.

The point is - there should have been more. We would be much further ahead in terms of space exploration and colonization if NASA wasn't so risk averse - and the sacrifice of any pioneering individuals might have saved many more lives in return due to the advances in science that zero-gee research could theoretically bring if it had been performed earlier.

-- Retro

[Soban-sa]

But it was technicly not IN space. Geting there and comeing back may be dangrous but once your there...

[Starfisher]

That's the whole point, soban. The dangerous parts are getting up and back, so quoting NASA's record of not losing anyone while up is misleading and pointless.

[Soban-sa]

So the body count is what 17 out of hundreds? The point was that In Their methood your safe.

[Enterprize]

Advancing solar efficiency and rocket efficiency should also be high on the improvments list...

[Captain Pierce]

The thing that's incredibly effed up about NASA is how they claim to be so "risk averse," and yet they still do incredibly STUPID things like launching shuttles when the weather is too cold for the STRB O-rings or just assuming that the impact of a large chunk of ice-laden foam insulation from the External Tank wouldn't punch a big enough hole in the wing to let enough superheated plasma into the superstructure of the thing to cause it to completely disintegrate on re-entry... :rolleyes:

"Risk averse," my ASS... :madashel:

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but by the definition "no deaths in space," the Russians have never lost anybody in space either. And, although we may never know for sure, and IIRC, the total number of Russian space program deaths is now well below NASA's numbers. :hmm:

Finally, on the original topic, the Hilton chain was rumoured to have been tossing around the concept of an Orbital Hilton about 20 years ago, right about the time that President Reagan first "deregulated" space exploration... of course, as their presumptive heir has proven in the last couple of years, the Hiltons have way too much money... ;)

[Retroboy]

and IIRC, the total number of Russian space program deaths is now well below NASA's numbersMinor correction to this - the number of people the Russians have lost in their space race elements is MUCH higher. American rockets have a tendency to take the crew with them, and that's about it. However, in Russia, they've had refuelling explosions and other events that have pushed the death toll into the hundreds on the ground.

On flights, I think they're a little better, but I think if I were given the choice between being a ground crew Russian cosmonaut and a member of Courtenay Love's entourage, I'd pick the latter. :loco:

Soban - if a doctor said "I've never lost anyone on the table. A lot of 'em die on the day after I cut 'em open though" - would that make you comfortable that he was about to take out your appendix?

-- Retro

[Langy]

Soban, quoting from your own signature:

Zero risk means zero accomplishment

[Starfisher]

Soban, I'm not trying to demonize NASA as an astronaut meatgrinder. But to say that they've never lost anyone was incorrect. I challenged that.

Anyway...

Space exploration is dangerous as hell, and NASA is a public agency. They have to be risk adverse to keep funding and public support. Private industry is also risk averse, though probably more because rockets tend to be expensive. No one likes paying for risky screw ups, but groups of daredevils and adventurers might be more willing to take those risks. Hopefully private endeavors - dangerous, probably fatal to a bunch of private pilots endeavors - like these will open space up faster, and that its worth the cost.

[Captain Pierce]

No offense intended, Retro, but are you sure of that? Typically, Soviet rockets have used fuels that aren't explosive, and can be safely stored at room temperature. (Unlike NASA's fixation on liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, which--as Challenger unfortunately proved--are dangerous as hell.)

[Starfisher]

I'm pretty sure he's right, even without googling. I can remember watching one of those History/Discovery Channel shows about rockets blowing up on the pad, and it happened once or twice over in Russia with pretty grim results. Challenger and Columbia were higher up when before they had trouble, and Apollo 1 was a fire, not a rocket exploding.

[Soban-sa]

may I point out that we have never lost a single man in space becuse NASA dosent like risk?

Soban, I'm not trying to demonize NASA as an astronaut meatgrinder. But to say that they've never lost anyone was incorrect. I challenged that.

I belive I said In Space

Any way. I think we lost a lot of test rockets on the platforms before any manned space misstion. I do not think that any maned misstion has blowen up on the pad.

[Ash]

Apollo 1 caught on fire on the pad, killing two crew. Retro has already mentioned this.

As for the Soviet space program, they publicly had far fewer deaths than the American program, and their current vehicle, the Soyuz, has a better record than the Shuttle, but in the early days of their program they lost quite a few cosmonauts. And of course, they didn't tell anyone because they had absolutely no incentive to.

[ShivaArchon]

What's the difference between a manned craft blowing up on the pad, just after liftoff, in space, or during reentry? You keep harping on the "nobody dead in space!" line, but an explosion after liftoff or during re-entry still means astronauts were killed during their mission.

[Retroboy]

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2717535.stm

Quotes: In October 1960, 91 people were killed when a rocket exploded at a space centre in Kazakhstan in the USSR. and Twenty years later, 50 technicians died when a Vostock booster rocket exploded while being refuelled. A cover-up by the Soviet authorities meant the accident was only reported in 1989Soban - we're not at the point where landings and take-offs can even remotely be considered as being independent of space travel. Your splitting hairs is becoming absurd.

-- Retro, who does his homework.

[Soban-sa]

You know, I think I might actually be good at my job. (Making insane arguments and then defending them.)

Ok, back to the topic.

I think that going to a hotel in space would be fun. As has already been pointed out dangerous fun but still fun.

[Murka]

Eh... but the trouble is... what will you do when you're not in the training room\your room\eating\casino ?

"Dear, lets go to a nice spacewalk..."

-- Murka, gone for a spacewalk to breathe some fresh air

[Starfisher]

I think being weightless for a few days would be the real attraction, not the casino. If you could stand the experience without puking.

That might be a real problem. You would just get acclimatized to micro-gravity enough to enjoy it and then you'd have to go back down. Guess you have to stay for more than a week.

[Retroboy]

Shooting craps in zero gee would be interesting. And might take a long time too. :)

-- Retro

[Soban-sa]

mmmmmm... Never mind.....

you know what would be real fun in low G? High jumping. football might be even more intresting and I think a bit more fun.

Any of you read Enders Game?

[Starfisher]

The battleroom would own. We can't control gravity just yet, so no stars, but a zero-g laser tag would just be too cool.

[Soban-sa]

Who says we would need to control grav to have a battle room? We could use ropes that people could grab on to. Adding another element. or it could be more mazelike. interesting but not as fun.

Which way is the Emmys gate?

[Starfisher]

To have free floating immobile boxes to hide behind, we need to be able to pull some funkay physics. A grid or a 3D laser tag room is doable now.. and would own.

Which brings up another question - zero-g sports. Say... two hundred years from now, once there are a bunch of large space stations and space travel is more common place (assuming no apocalypse/end of civilization), what sports do you think we will see?

[Soban-sa]

ARENA! Think Battle room.

[Captain Taco]

There is a line between genius and insanity, and the most part it is blurry and half-erased.


looks a lot like this one from the bobby fisher thread

there is a fine line between genius and insanity, and most of the time, i think its a blurry, half-erased one.

i'm just glad somebody took that snippet seriously...

[Soban-sa]

I was woundering how long it would take someone to figure out where I got it.

[LynX]

Remember, "in space, no one can hear you scream". :p

[Soban-sa]

the worst way to die in space would be to fall off a interplaitare ship in the middle of it's trip.

[boolybooly]

I think we have to sort the world out first, people dying from malnutrition and new sources of energy and melting icecaps and immunology & stuff, once we have paid our dues then maybe we will get off the planet because when we do the global economy, including Africa Asia S.America China when developed will be sufficient to sustain the effort. USA is hard pushed to do it all alone and should be putting effort into raising standard of living and productivity globally at this stage.

[Captain Pierce]

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2717535.stm


Let it never be said that I argued with the Beeb. :D

[AussieSlinky]

I think we have to sort the world out first, people dying from malnutrition and new sources of energy and melting icecaps and immunology & stuff, once we have paid our dues then maybe we will get off the planet because when we do the global economy, including Africa Asia S.America China when developed will be sufficient to sustain the effort. USA is hard pushed to do it all alone and should be putting effort into raising standard of living and productivity globally at this stage.

But Space is a way to do that. Space could be an virtually endless source of energy and raw materials. Eventually, Earth will not have enough material to go to space, and if that day happens to be before we get into space, the human race is screwed.

Space is the future.

[Soban-sa]

Expand or Die.

[boolybooly]

If space can pay for itself it will be used, go ahead find ways to do it, I am all for that, just dont expect people to put up the cash for your schemes if they are going to take a dive in the short term.

Humans want to go out there and explore and one day when we are all obscenely rich thanks to automated production and construction we will do just what the hell we want, but right now three guys in a tin can is the most the richest nation can achieve and it is a waste of everyones money. One day they will look at Appollo same way we look at viking long boats and goat skin coracles. So what is the quickest way to get there ?

If you have a game of HW2 do you sit with 1 resourcer and scrap the others to build fleet ? Each major economy is like a resourcer, the more we have the more ships we end up with. Build them first then build your fleet. (Unless you are on enemy team in which case just do it your way, fine by me :nana: )

By raising the world to the same economic standard as EU USA Japan we will raise space investment in the long term. By developing automated systems we will double, treble , quintuple that power-to-construct aka "wealth". Ditto new sources of energy, the sun is raining power on our heads and we set fire to fossils instead, duh. By THINKING and working on effective methods like Rutan and Japans sails and NASAs sad Mars probes we will R&D the technology for future projects, but we are not gonna be living on Mars or habitat space stations for a few decades yet.

Besides shame on you for it is a real shame, there are people in Africa dying because they have no food or water, governments are in chaos and idiots with guns roam the streets because they have no civilisation and their economy has been raped unethically by everybody with a wanger. We have to help sort these places out and get them up and productive enough to make a good life for everyone. Cant be prancing around on Mars while some guy is coughing up blood in Sudan.

Robotics is the new space.

[Soban-sa]

Who says we cant have it both ways? We build the world economy and use what power we have now to go into space with what we have. You do not build a powerfull fleet all at once you build it in pits and peices. A destroyer here a frigate there.

[AussieSlinky]

If space can pay for itself it will be used, go ahead find ways to do it, I am all for that, just dont expect people to put up the cash for your schemes if they are going to take a dive in the short term.

Humans want to go out there and explore and one day when we are all obscenely rich thanks to automated production and construction we will do just what the hell we want, but right now three guys in a tin can is the most the richest nation can achieve and it is a waste of everyones money. One day they will look at Appollo same way we look at viking long boats and goat skin coracles. So what is the quickest way to get there ?

If you have a game of HW2 do you sit with 1 resourcer and scrap the others to build fleet ? Each major economy is like a resourcer, the more we have the more ships we end up with. Build them first then build your fleet. (Unless you are on enemy team in which case just do it your way, fine by me :nana: )

By raising the world to the same economic standard as EU USA Japan we will raise space investment in the long term. By developing automated systems we will double, treble , quintuple that power-to-construct aka "wealth". Ditto new sources of energy, the sun is raining power on our heads and we set fire to fossils instead, duh. By THINKING and working on effective methods like Rutan and Japans sails and NASAs sad Mars probes we will R&D the technology for future projects, but we are not gonna be living on Mars or habitat space stations for a few decades yet.

It is impossible to raise the world to the USA standard of living with current tech. There is not enough resources on earth to support 6 billion people at a USA standard of living are current technology. You'd need 3 Earths.
Space is a a way to get the resources: put up a solar station, move polluting industries into space, mine the astroids instead of the earth, etc. Without a route of expansion, humanity will die.


Besides shame on you for it is a real shame, there are people in Africa dying because they have no food or water, governments are in chaos and idiots with guns roam the streets because they have no civilisation and their economy has been raped unethically by everybody with a wanger. We have to help sort these places out and get them up and productive enough to make a good life for everyone. Cant be prancing around on Mars while some guy is coughing up blood in Sudan.

And WTF are you doing about it? If you are seriously working towards solving world hunger, well, then I'll accept your criticism.

[boolybooly]

I used to work for OXFAM in their head offices and did voluntary work for them as well over a number of years.

I also researched the Sudan situation for a TV producer and apprised him of the situation about 6 or 7 years ago.

So is that good enough ?

Without a route of expansion, humanity will die.
Slinky m8, - lol - you aren't going to get govt funding trying to scare them like that. You are right that the population expansion is reaching a crisis point but we are not there yet. Simply by improving 3rd world agriculture we can make a lot more food, the main obstacle to that besides manufacture and infrastructure is politics and war. Some people dont care how much we could all have by cooperating, they simply want to have more than the next guy, its an instinct.

In the EU we have excess food and Population expansion is slowing to nothing.

China's population though expanded by about the population of the UK every couple of years for a while largely thanks to a Maoist doctrine that they should breed which created a baby boom. The answer is to control the population growth, most of the European countries are reaching a balance, China will have to do the same and they know it. They are projecting a peak in 2020 - 2040 and todays levels return in 2050.

The rest of the world will have to face the same issue. Even so I think we will see the population of the world at least double by the end of the century. Asia will have to flatten off but the Americas and Africa and some of the East European and Russian regions have a way to go yet.

Besides, if we wanted to rehouse the population expansion in space now we simply could not do it, it would cost too much, let alone getting the food up to people. We simply are not ready. If we want to be ready we need highly automated production.

Humans I am sure will populate the entire solar system and eventually do the same around other stars but you are living in the era just before that happens and you cant do much about it. Impatience wont help us, we need to do the right thing. Even so I bet you will be able to fly as a space tourist for a few thousand dollars before very long, just dont expect to take up residence yet.

The period when humans could breed as much as they wanted either because disease kept numbers low or new productivity allowed the population to expand is coming to an end and exploring space will not bring it back unless we find a terraformable planet, once every few hundred thousand years if we are lucky, or we find means of production so completely automated that we can set machines to build machines and all the infrastructure we need while we breed away like bunnies.

Terminator Matrix and I Robot are just Hollywood nightmares, we really do need machines, we just have to make sure we dont programme them to be egotistically self defensive and compulsively aggressive in the same way we are. It is ironic that we need machines to develope yet the nasty things we project in fiction onto machines are the things in ourselves which are preventing us from developing.

The real danger ofcourse is not that machines will behave badly, but the people controlling machines will.

[Zepherian]

Terraformable planets? Venus and Jupiter are two. We could probably fit 40 billion people there when done.

Moons of saturn and jupiter might give us 3 or 4 more low gravity worlds. Another 30 billion tall and skinny people.

We could probably house another 20 billion in the asteroid belt in closed habitats.

Countless billions in space stations.

And thats without even leaving the solar system. Im not worried about overpopulation, Im worried about a species that is more in conflict than in cooperation. Im worried about elevating our, pretty primitive, global civilization values. Im worried that unless we advance ethically we will not develop the technology to expand as a species. The only good point in all this is that if we dont advance ethically I doubt the universe needs us for anything anyway, so we might as well go extinct, its not like we will be missed by anything except our own ego...

[boolybooly]

Quite so Zeph, but I expect we will muddle along. As mentioned in the Olympic Ceremony, in Apollos temple at Delphi is inscribed "Man - know thyself" which was incidentally why I studied Zoology as a youth, to understand where we really come from.

I wonder also about the polar regions of Mercury, inside craters or under the crust. It probably has high metallic mineral content so it may be worth a mining city or two.

Venus is very hot 450-500 deg C, and 90 atmospheres pressure, we would need to get rid of the "greenhouse" CO2 gas somehow and remove at least 80% of the atmospheric pressure. If we did then it has possibilities as the upper atmosphere is a mere 13 deg C, but I suspect that solar radiation may not allow us to live outdoors there without a thick CO2 blanket, which is the distinction I am making.

On Mars the air pressure is too low 7-10 millibars, Earth is 950 - 1030 millibars. Again we have to live in protective accommodation.

One day we will find another largish watery world like Earth and then we really will be able to have fun and live outdoors as we do now. But the Earth is a rarity as it has a moon due to a collision and therefore plate tectonics which recycle CO2 and a molten core which creates a magnetosphere. We are here because the Earth is what it is, a paradise for life. The chances are that this doesnt happen very often. I reckon most sun systems will give us several planets and moons like the Jupiter moons which will be good places to build but not exactly an Earth like home.

We will do better IMHO to create space habitats which immitate our Earthly paradise rather than try to live on these balls of matter ie back to the space station theme.

[BmB]

just 1 little note that hasnt read any posts... I might wanna go to space as a tourist cuz i ALWAYS wanted to place something in the air, whithout it falling down. (there are several other reasons such as feeling 0 Gee but its one of the main things.)

Double Post

now this post have read the lasts page...
how about solving the smoking problem? that would increase the avarage live span whith decades and if we now had clean air, people would live for centuries by now...

[Zepherian]

On the mars and venus terraforming issues, what now might seem unsurmountable problems might be easy to solve with future technology.

Imagine that mankind develops a wormhole generator for exp, he could then suck the excess atmosphere from venus directly to mars, and close the hole when the quantities of gases in the atmosphere are more adequate for terraforming... This is just off the top of my head wacky sci-fi, but the point is, never say never.

Allthough If I were to bet on it, I think venus will be terraformed by genetically engineered bacteria or/and nanobots. But sadly I doubt it will be in my lifetime, unless I get to live two centuries ;)

And btw Boolybooly, just noticed you live in Northamptonshire, which is cool, as I used to live there as a kid, above a pub called the stag's head next to the watford gap service station. Small world, eh?

[Cleron]

There will always be risk just like there is when you drive your car or fly in a plane. My beef with NASA is that we are STILL using the original shuttle design. There have been a lot of new designs put out there and every one of them have been knocked back. Recent proposals have shown improvements in EVERY area of shuttle design, cost, safety, life span etc, yet we are still using birds 25 years old and a design that was out of date more then a decade ago. "Safety" ? if they were so worried about safety Columbia would have been retired a decade ago, the entire shuttle design would have been put to rest and new shuttle proposals would be regularly looked over.

[boolybooly]

Madeira sounds nice (envy).

Well I have to agree we dont know what may become possible. We observe much that we do not understand and there is presumably much more we dont even observe that nevertheless exists.

I was going to suggest we crash Mars into Venus and get a second Earth-Moon binary running in a little orbit just inside the Earths. It might take several hundred thousand years but I bet we could do it with some ramped up ion engines, like interplanetary snooker. Trouble is it will be full of people by then.

Maybe we could us Io instead, that would make a splash ;)

[Russian Ninja]

I suppose it's possible that they didn't want to replace the parts of the Columbia because it was a financial risk. NASA are more uptight in the financial safety than they are in human safety. They seem to follow the moto 'If it's not broken, don't fix it', because then they don't have to replace their aging shuttles.

But enough of NASA's shortcomings. On the future, well space travel isn't going to go very far with any government unless there is either a) Political Motive (the whole reason Apollo got started b) Political or physical Gain, or c) Need. The way governments like to play though is the safe route. They'd only turly make an effort to expand into space if there was an obvious source of profit or need for them. It's the reason why the British decided to colonise Australia and America. They needed to get rid of their excess prisoners (for Australia, and America initially) for there was political and social presure to do so, and in the mean time they could gain political power, influence and resources whilst denying it to their rival European nations. Unless we get a situation like that, the Governments are only going to attempt half-hearted foreys into space. For the concept of Space Tourism, I hope this sort of thing kicks off, because then we can actually get some real true attempts at expanding into space.