FuturePundit on Space Tourism

The ever-intelligent Randall Parker - and never so intelligent as when he is agreeing with me! - weighs in on the space tourism debate.  Randall makes two key points in his post:

1938 was 35 years after the first aircraft flight of Orville and Wilbur Wright on December 17, 1903 at Kitty Hawk North Carolina. Manned space travel began on April 12, 1961 when a Soviet air force pilot, Major Yuri A. Gagarin, made an orbit of the Earth. So manned space travel is over 40 years old. Space travel into Earth's orbit is orders of magnitude more dangerous after 40 years than aircraft travel was when it was only 35 years old....

Newer rockets have been designed in recent years and have unexpectedly blown up on launch. Rutan's accomplishment is not as radical as some media reports present it for a number of reasons. First of all, whether he has designed a safer spaceship is will not be proven unless and until it has flown hundreds and even thousands of times without mishap. Also, and very importantly, SpaceShipOne does not do that much. It can not achieve orbital velocity or decelerate from orbital velocity. In my view the Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne flight was important because it demonstrated the potential for prizes to spur innovation. It also opens up the possibility that that dangerous orbital spacecraft can be designed and built for much lower costs than NASA and big aerospace companies typically spend.

Addendum: Randall's programming work is already in outer-space!