Your next car could come from India and your next vacation could bein space. Futurists predict that outer space will become “the” getaway of this century, and could begin showing up in travel guides by 2010.
Researcher Fred DeMicco says, “In the twenty-first century, space tourism could represent the most significant development experienced by the tourism industry?The technology to make space travel safer and cheaper is moving forward.”
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We may soon be able to take a vacation in space. But why take a plane, when we may eventually be able to take an elevator?
Virgin Atlantic has designed a plane that will eventually take passengers into space, starting in 2010. BBC News quotes CEO Richard Branson as saying, “I think it’s very important that we make a genuine commercial success of this project. If we do, I believe we’ll unlock a wall of private sector money into both space launch systems and space technology. This could rival the scale of investment in the mobile phone and internet technologies after they were unlocked from their military origins and thrown open to the private sector.” As long as these tourists don’t litter!
Art credit: gimp-savvy.com
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Not only is China polluting the earth, now it’s throwing trash into space as well.
A year ago, China intentionally destroyed its own aging weather spacecraft with an anti-satellite (ASAT) device, creating in the process a lingering cloud of dangerous space junk?the largest amount of orbital debris in five decades of worldwide space activities. In other words, they left so much litter in space that NASA had to execute a collision-avoidance maneuver with its spacecraft in order to evade it.
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According to the Bible, when Jesus was born three Magi saw a star in the East that signaled the birth of a new king. But just what was it, from an astronomical point or view, that the Magi actually saw? Astronomer Fred Grosse says there are several popular theories that may answer this question. According to him, “Astronomical objects or events which would be of interest to serious stargazers of the time include comets and meteors, nova or supernova, and auroras.” But the favorite candidate for the star of Bethlehem is a planetary conjunction.
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