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Comment by pmorici | Hacker News Reader

They said during the launch live broadcast that SpaceX intends to fly paying tourists by next year. Apparently many tourists have also visited the space station.

https://www.space.com/spacex-crew-dragon-will-fly-space-tour...

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Yeah they stopped doing that a while ago and today when watching the launch with friends I was surprised they didn't know it was a thing. When Mark Shuttleworth went there it was all over the tech news.

Space tourism to the ISS is just US taxpayers paying for billionaires' vacations. Yes, NASA charges a fee, but it is tiny relative to the cost of the service. If somebody develops a private space station, great. Until then, this isn't an industry that deserves any support.

https://www.space.com/bigelow-spacex-tourist-flights-space-s...

Bigelow Aerospace lays off entire workforce - Mar 23 2020 https://spacenews.com/bigelow-aerospace-lays-off-entire-work...

Thanks! Too bad for now

If somebody develops a private space station

Bigelow Aerospace? Looks like they just laid everyone off.

Is that true? Most of the cost of rockets seems to be the r&d, there's economies of scale to doing more launches.

I'd have hoped nasa is smart enough to charge more than the marginal cost of one more launch.

I'm not sure I would call seven people "many".

Only 562 have been to orbital space so far. A 1% increase on the first flight is significant. It can only increase exponentially from there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_travelers_by_nam...

That's not true. It could stay a trivial endeavor forever given there's really nothing to do in space.

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