Space tourism is more than taking a joyride

Is there a point to rocketing Jeff Bezos and William Shatner into space?

Wendy Whitman Cobb, an Air Force political scientist for space, says yes. Her views about space projects, such as those from Bezos and Elon Musk, are challenging, and they imagine a future away from Earth.

Whitman Cobb, who has a doctorate in political science, said tourist jaunts are a first step to transform space travel from outlandish to routine.

And she believes sending amateurs into orbit is a proving ground for worthy ambitions — including settling Mars, as Musk imagines, or colonizing space to support more people and industry than is possible on Earth, as Bezos aspires to.

Those may sound like the escapist fantasies of billionaires, but Whitman Cobb’s optimism is a useful counterpoint to the warnings of many that technology is not a magical fix to our problems.

Whitman Cobb agrees but said technology sometimes has done magical things in space exploration.

To rewind the past decade, corporations such as Musk’s Spacex, Bezos’ Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman and the New Zealand-based startup Rocket Lab have tried to become bigger players in spaceflight. Companies have always worked with governments on space travel, but now they’re more involved in carrying astronauts, enthusiasts, satellites and cargo to space.

There is debate about the appropriate role of governments vs. corporations in space, but Whitman Cobb believes those companies have made rote space tasks cheaper and easier.

That frees up NASA to dream big on projects such as pursuing moon colonies and exploring deep space.

Spacex, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic have also led space pleasure cruises. Those are joyrides for a tiny few, but Whitman Cobb said they helped hone the safety of space travel and generated enthusiasm for searching beyond our planet.

“The more ‘normal’ people we see fly into space, more of the public will see this as possible and be excited by it,” she said. “That public opinion is key to a lot of things that these companies as well as the U.S. government is doing in space.”

(Whitman Cobb said these views are hers and not those of the U.S. government, which employs her. She also said she didn’t receive funding from commercial space companies.)

The ultimate goal, though, goes far beyond tourism. Musk and Bezos imagine moving people or polluting industries into space or creating a Mars civilization. Could that be a pretext to ignoring problems on Earth?

Whitman Cobb says she doesn’t want us people lose sight of the potential benefits of dreaming. The history of space exploration, she said, is of kooky and not necessarily high-minded visions becoming doable and helpful.

The U.S. missions to the moon in the 1960s were driven by a desire to prove U.S. superiority over the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, nationalist space missions helped spur the development of ever-smaller electronics that we use every day, improved health technology and even gave us memory foam. The past decade’s boom in commercial spaceflight has lowered the cost of space access and enabled novel ideas like small-scale satellites to map the Earth from above it.

Whitman Cobb said the advanced technology that commercial space companies developed for spaceflight could likewise trickle down to other areas that help us.

A self-described space geek, she also said the awe of space was a worthy goal. “It also scratches an itch, so to speak, of humanity’s longing to explore, to discover, and to understand the world around us,” she said.

Would she would want to live on Mars? “Absolutely,” she replied. “Maybe not forever.”

Whitman Cobb wants us to have skepticism alongside excitement. The history of space travel, she said, shows that selfish dreams can benefit all of us.