Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Space ... the next frontier

For a small fee (well, actually for thousands of dollars) you can have your or your loved ones ashes blasted into space. Of course, you will soon be able to be blasted into space while you're still alive - for a great deal more - but you'll have to be screened first to make sure you're not a terrorist. Thus spake the US Federal Aviation Administration on drawing up space tourism rules designed to prevent a terrorist from destroying a spacecraft or using it as a weapon.
The screening won't cover your health though. The report has no strict proposals on the health of any would-be space tourists.
But you would have to be given safety advice by the flight operators including how many flights the spacecraft has been on, and if there have been any problems with the craft. You'd also be given pre-flight training to handle emergency situations such as a loss of cabin pressure or fire. But hopefully you'd never had the chance to find out if the saying is true or not. The saying? "In space, no-one can hear you scream".
And all this is not too that far away. Virgin Galactic aims to start flights into space from New Mexico by the end of the decade.

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