I'm not in the room, but sitting out on the patio checking email, listening to the speakers on the...speakers. Listening to an astronaut (not sure which one) describing his flight experiences, and the awe and wonder of seeing an 800-mile-long aurora borealis from orbit. Listening to the whole panel (including Anousheh Ansari), I'm once again boggled at people who think that the spaceflight experience will be a "fad," or that once a few people have done it the interest will drop off, or that no one will want a repeat trip.

[Update late afternoon]

Clark Lindsey has much more extensive coverage of the space tourism sessions.

>>I'm once again boggled at people who think that the spaceflight experience will be a "fad,"

That is what they said about flight immediately after Kitty Hawk. Come to think of it, that is what "they" say about almost every momentous new development that comes along. Funny how often "they" are wrong.

>>>>>I'm once again boggled at people who think that the spaceflight experience will be a "fad,"

>>That is what they said about flight immediately after Kitty Hawk. Come to think of it, that is what "they" say about almost every momentous new development that comes along. Funny how often "they" are wrong.

Careful here. Most new things proposed are wrong. That we remember the successes doesn't change the sheer quantity of looney stuff that is proposed. If you are always negative, you will be right 90% of the time at least. It is the people that can sort out the correct tiny fraction that can bank serious winnings.

I'm betting on the future of manned spaceflight. I'm not betting on all proposed versions of it.

My wife had a "straight electronics" instructor in college who thought that computers were a fad. That was in the 1980's.

That aside, the interest dropping off thing is easily done. Sell postcards from outer space. Post cards from exotic locations earth side certainly have slowed down tourism on terra firma. Once you get a post card from Maui or Angkor Wat or Disney World, there is no need to go personally.

Steve --

Did you (and that electronics instructor) mean personal computers?

If no, then he was moronic beyond imagination. But if yes, then he was far from alone in his belief. I remember reading in late 80's a column by self-styled founder of "Crabapple society" (a jab at Apple Computers) who claimed that personal computers are a far too expensive toy with far too few uses, and unless you write for a living you have no real need for one.

And until the invention of World Wide Web he was largely right.

If you think of it, vast majority of PC owners today use them for things very different than PC enthusiasts in 1980 did, or envisioned. In the end, PC enthusiasts were right, but not the way they expected.

When writing "Neuromancer" William Gibson tried to bounce some ideas off computer experts, many of them young and far from stogy. He came up with very prescient uses for PC-to-PC communication, and these experts would say "No way this would happen! There is no bandwidth!" And these were early adopters. So your wife's instructor can be excused.

Unless he meant all computers, of course...

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