Katie Ward
Staff Writer
Richard Branson’s commercial space travel company “Virgin Galactic” recently experienced another setback after one spacecraft crashed in the Mojave desert. The company was supposed to begin space tourism this year, and over 800 guests had already paid to travel. This crash is being seen as a blow to the entire commercial space travel industry, and the number of skeptics is growing. Do you believe that commercial space travel will ever be made available to the public? If so, would you participate? Why?
Johanna Loacker
sophomore biology major
“I do believe that space travel will be commercially possible, even though there are setbacks, that’s the whole process of inventing something new. It probably won’t happen in the near future but eventually the ships will get better and better. I don’t know if I personally will do it, I would like some more safety checks to happen, but travelling in space would be amazing. In terms of being excited about space travel, I would like to experience something that is completely different than what we are living with right now, being in space or another planet would be completely mind blowing, but space travel’s kind of scary because you don’t always know what you’re getting into. There are so many things that could go wrong, but there’s also the chance it could go right. ”
Sonja Giraud
freshman kinesiology major
“No I don’t think [commercial space travel will happen] because it costs so much money. To waste that money just to have fun doesn’t make sense to me and I think to a lot of other people as well. If I had the opportunity, though I would do it, because I think its a very cool experience, but I don’t think I will ever have that opportunity, just because, like I said, it’s too much money.”
David Vileta
senior computer science major
“I absolutely believe that public, commercial, space transit and journeying will be a thing that’s happening in the future. I just see this as a small setback, this sort of thing happens all the time especially if you look at scientific expeditions, like NASA or Russia’s programs, there were things that happened like this all the time but we kept going. Especially with the commercial market, they’re going to keep pushing for innovations as it becomes more affordable and feasible. It’s going to be a while, and yes this is going to be a setback, but I think this is going to be an inevitability, yes. It has to become affordable, but if that happens, then by that time they’re going to have to work out a lot of the safety concerns, and it will be regulated to some degree, and it will be just like flying around on a commercial airliner, by the time I’m doing it–if I’m still alive.”
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