Now that the experience of spaceflight is merely $200,000 and a waiting list away, what kind of transformation will be sparked by the successive crops of space-travellers returning to Earth?

On October 17th, 2011, a dedication ceremony was held for the ‘Virgin Galactic Gateway to Space’, the first terminal of Spaceport America. Situated in the Jornada del Muerto desert basin in New Mexico is a piece of science fiction made real. The simple terminology of ‘spaceport’ being applied to a real place that you could go to, a place where people will be working at and eventually travelling from as a matter of routine should be enough to send the nerds of the world into delirious joy. However, I doubt we are prepared for the real implications of, on a weekly basis, sending wealthy people into orbit, 6 at a time, for 6 minutes of spaceflight.

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UPDATE:
This post ended up being published as “Star Wars and the Future of Mythology” on RealitySandwich!

Star Wars has always been a complicated subject for me. The half-hearted First Baptist church of my youth failed to captivate me, and the journey of Luke Skywalker became the myth that really explained the universe. I was no less devoted to Star Wars than any of the strictest adherents of any religion. I meticulously arranged my collection of toys, numbering in the hundreds, into a well-maintained shrine charged with a spiritual undercurrent I couldn’t have explained at the time. Ultimately, to my 12 year old unconscious self, the three movies were a closed loop tracking the life, death and rebirth of the Cosmic Sun God.

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