Virgin Galactic SpaceShip Two Crash: A Blow To Space Tourism?

Even though it is still beyond the reach of the average working class consumers, does the recent crash of the Virgin Galactic SpaceShip Two represent a blow to “affordable” space tourism? 

By: Ringo Bones 

It was supposedly a routine test flight aimed to make space tourism closer to the masses but in ended in tragedy when in October 31, 2014 a Virgin Galactic SpaceShip Two space tourism craft suffered a catastrophic failure after it separated from its mother ship White Knight Two and crashed moments later into the Mojave Desert below. Even though the crash is under further investigation to determine the cause of the tragedy according to Stuart Witt CEO of Mojave Spaceport, witnesses on the ground says that the craft appeared to be in pieces before it crashed to the floor of the Mojave Desert. One pilot was killed while the co-pilot is seriously injured. Virgin CEO Sir Richard Branson flew immediately to the crash site as soon as he heard the tragic news. Will the recent disaster represent a giant step back to “affordable” space tourism? 

Compared to the US government run NASA, private space travel and space tourism companies like Virgin with its Virgin Galactic space tourism program seems to be able to make viable space travel programs at a far lesser cost than government run counterparts. SpaceShip Two costs “only” 500 million US dollars to develop – a bargain compared to comparable spending made by similar NASA projects. While the Spaceship Two is slated to bring the first batch of space tourist to their “suborbital” destinations by 2015, there are 700 customers who already paid the ticket price of 250,000 US dollars already lining up for the experience including celebrities like Hollywood actor Tom Hanks and song-and-dance man Justin Beiber and also Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. 

By their very nature, our current spacecraft technology is inherently dangerous in their operation because they operate under the extremes of temperature and pressure. Like cryogenic fuels and oxidizers only tens of degrees above absolute zero fueling a rocket engine that runs at a temperature hot enough to vaporize steel. Not to mention reentry temperatures comparable to that of free-flowing magma. 

Jihad Tourism: Newfangled Tourism?

Even though every American and British citizens who ever had gone to one are now under close surveillance by their countries respective anti-terror groups is Jihad tourism even legal? 

By: Ringo Bones

Every young man who have ever gone to one is now – as of late – currently in very close surveillance of their respective countries’ anti-terror agencies, it seems that the perception surrounding this so-called “Jihad Tourism” that if we stop the already radicalized young men from going into a “Jihad trip” to Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq or to enlist with ISIS or any other conflict zone where the West have the complicity of “killing Muslims” it could avoid them becoming into full-fledged Islamist terrorists. But is there any truth to this and is this policy of not sending “already radicalized” young Muslim men to current conflict zones with a large Muslim population from becoming “further radicalized” can even be implemented viably? 

Even though the West friendly House of Saud, the apparent world authority of Sunni Islam, condemn such “Jihad Tourism” such form of “military outfitting tourism” is apparently older than that of the events that lead to the September 11, 2001 Terror Attacks. And aren’t these “Jihad Tourist” just mercenaries by any other name? Back in the 1970s young British and American men fresh out of the Vietnam War who are starved for cash had been lured to become mercenaries in the unstable regions of Africa in order to protect Western multi-national commercial interests. And during the late 1970s and early 1980s, a clandestine travel company provides logistical support for the right price to Americans who want revenge against the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese Army to enter back to the newly unified communist Vietnam and shoot at Vietnamese soldiers after these “American tourists” enter Vietnam via secret channels that existed in Thailand during that time. Could the “private security contracting industry” just the Christian West’s version of “Jihad Tourism” when it all comes down to it?