> … said Representative Earl Blumenauer, Democrat of Oregon. “We pay taxes on plane tickets. Billionaires flying into space — producing no scientific value — should do the same, and then some!”
That was a stupid thing to say. This is the start of the commodification of manned space travel. The more we do it, the better we get at it, the more we learn about it. That’s scientifically valuable. But it’s not free, and getting the costs down is an important enabling factor.