Last year, a group called Scaled Composites won the Ansari X prize, ending a competition to find a viable means of space tourism. Coupled with a new branch of the Virgin Group, Virgin Galactic, the spaceship designers hope to create a market for commercial space travel within the next 15 years.
The companies plan to begin sending members of the public into space by 2008. The current estimated cost for a two-hour flight in Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne is $200,000.
Joyriding into space has been criticized as yet another opportunity reserved for the very few. Chief of Scaled Composites Burt Rutan told the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics in Washington, D.C. last week that he has no problem with such a description.
"I'm not at all embarrassed that we're opening up a new industry that will likely be a multi-billion dollar industry that's focused only on fun," Rutan said.
Scientists and profiteers alike have their eyes set on what they see as grand potential in the future for commercial space travel.
"The potential for space travel is huge," mechanical engineering professor Chris Rogers said. "Look back to the first ships that could cross the Atlantic and what that opened up."
"I'm sure people back then had similar thoughts of 'Why would anyone want to take a ship to the edge of the earth?'" Rogers said. "Even just the ability to get to Japan in a few hours will make a huge difference."
The business aspect of commercial space travel is one major factor in how students feel about it. "What's very nice about the business part is that scientists find the most efficient way to do it," freshman Nicky Gortzounian said. "The design by Scaled Composites is a model of efficiency when compared to the space shuttle."
Senior Amarylis Rojas is not so keen on space travel's business aspect. "This kind of thing should be solely groups like NASA, etc. - it has no benefit for society if it's just commercial," she said.
But making space travel into a business could be beneficial, according to visiting Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Rosanne DiStefano: "Astronomers sometimes want to launch payloads, and commercial travel could make it possible to do it in an economic way," she said.
"I can't afford domestic travel, let alone international travel, so space seems way beyond my financial realm - I can't imagine whose financial realm it would be in," senior Ellie Levine said about space tourism. "It's kind of nauseating to hear that people would spend all this money for a joyride to Mars."
The environmental consequences could be significant, too, according to DiStefano. "One thing that I think most scientists are concerned with is that space is a very special place, and in order to be able to continue to use it, it is very important that there not be a lot of space debris because that can lead to disastrous consequences," she said.
Students had similar concerns about the environment. "There's a lot of exhaust [when a spaceship launches], and if a lot of people were going up, there would be a lot of exhaust," Rojas said.
"We don't want to pollute space, so one thing to focus on is trying not to mess up like we've done so much of on Earth," Gortzounian said.
Some students, though, feel that we may not now be able to predict the types of benefits or detriments space travel could eventually bring about.
"In 1982, everyone said that by 2000 we'd all be wearing space packs, but no one saw the advent of the Internet," Levine said. "This kind of technology can manifest itself in ways that we can't possibly foresee."
