Looks like tourism has reached the International Space Station. Enjoy.
First comment from the tourists. "Oh my God this thing stinks! What's that smell?!!!" Followed by "Where the bar and the spa?"
Space X will market this to desperate housewives types with a moto: "come with us on a trip of the lifetime and lose all the weight you want!"I don't know what to think. Possibly a wealthy tourist could also be a ultra-nerdy type and provide some valid input for experiments or science. Or even use the experience to suggest what might work for future space hardware and the general public.
I've often thought about any experiments I'd want to run in micro gravity. But in the end, I don't have anything to suggest other than the Mach Effect type thruster experiments
Sadly yes. That's the undoing of NASA. Some experiments are sensitive or the results didn't pan out so they rather stay silent than state that your tax dollars were wasted.We're not likely to see much more of this. The ISS is nearing the end of its life, and abandoning the station is becoming more likely because of the poor relations between the US and Russia now.
Also, let's face it: we hear about the ISS mainly during a story like this one. We never hear about the actual results and findings from research and experiments conducted on space missions, though we as taxpayers pay for them, and I think that hasn't helped the space program over the years. I remember there were many experiments on the shuttle that sounded fascinating, but we never heard about the outcomes. The old NASA Tech Briefs were more about the technology used, not about scientific results.