No, it’s not what you think. During his luncheon speech yesterday at ISDC, former astronaut Rusty Schweickart made an interesting analogy about space tourism:
I realized that space tourism is a little bit like sex: it’s exciting, it’s a little bit dangerous, or risky, perhaps, and when it’s well done it’s tremendously satisfying. But there’s more to it than that because, at a deeper level, it’s also the basis for reproduction, which is the foundation of survival.
He went on to say that the long-term future of humanity is dependent on two things: getting humans into space, and protecting the Earth from asteroid impacts to enable that diaspora. His talk primarily focused on the latter, but he identified space tourism as a way of enabling the former. “It depends on the evolution of space tourism, which reflects the desire of everybody in this room, in one way or another, to get out into space.”
If you’re still focused on the sex part, though, Apogee Books is publishing a new book this summer titled Sex in Space by Laura Woodmansee which examines the myths and realities of the subject.
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