After the moon trip you're back home again without much to show for the trip but the pictures...
Literally every astronaut who's been in to space says it profoundly changed them as a person.
Literally every astronaut who's been in to space says it profoundly changed them as a person.
But when space travel is more commercialized and commonplace and anyone that can come up with $100K can buy a ticket for a trip around the moon and your instagram feed is full of people's snapshots from their moon trip, will it still have that mystique?
My grandmother was very proud of her first (and only) trip to Hawaii back in the late 1940's, she literally saved pennies over years to afford it, and said it felt like going to another world and she was a celebrity when she returned home to her small town. And even decades later she tells the stories from that trip (her only significant travel). But I've been to Hawaii about a dozen times, and while I enjoy it, it's not a profound experience that I'd save up for years and few people even care to hear about my trip when I come home, they just want to know if I brought them Macadamia nuts (the same ones I can buy at Costco!)
Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14) said "From out there on the Moon, international politics look so petty." I imagine that change in perspective is what going in to space would give you.
To me your argument sounds like "Nobody space-tourists to the moon any more, it's too crowded" ?
I mean, if they send so many space tourists to the moon that going there isn't noteworthy any more, their sales would have to be really, really high.