President Bush has chosen Sean O'Keefe to be the next Nasa administrator; he’s expected to start formally early in the new year after the final Senate ratification. O’Keefe is currently Deputy Director of the US government's Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Earlier in 2001 he was responsible for denying Nasa the extra $5 billion that it requested (on top of a long series of earlier budget over-runs) toward the International Space Station ( ISS). A professional public sector manager, O’Keefe has said of the project “...technical excellence at any cost is not an acceptable approach....”

by G. B. Leatherwood

Dennis Tito's space flight is a resounding victory for freedom, democracy, Russia and capitalism in space - over the forces of government control, bureaucracy, Goldin's Nasa and monopoly.

In the blizzard of media discussion of what the 21st Century will be like, the number of journalists who recognise the role that passenger space travel will play in the world economy is vanishingly small. Yet passenger space travel will bring about a transformation of the world economy in the 21st century as significant for human development as the European 'Renaissance' in the 15-16th centuries.

As the "T Word" crops up more and more frequently in discussions of future space activities, senior figures in the space industry find themselves obliged to use the word and to acknowledge that tourism is going to become the biggest business in space. This often leads these people to venture guesses as to when space tourism may actually start. Interestingly, each date mentioned gets pushed farther into the future. In this way, taxpayers continue paying US$25 billion every year for current space activities, although these are clearly not leading towards the realisation of space tourism. These attempts to spread unrealistic projections to the public will presumably increase as the truth about tourism gets ever more coverage.

With powered flight starting in 1903, aviation grew from zero to nearly $1 trillion/year by the end of the 20th century. So, starting in 2003 - and a sub-orbital space flight by private citizens will be the most appropriate achievement to commemorate the centenary of the Wright brothers' historic, first powered flight - we can expect to see space tourism services growing to a huge scale by 2100. Indeed, the potential for economic growth in the 21st century is much greater than that in the 20th, due to the accumulation of financial assets and to the growth and spread of financial markets world-wide. Consequently a new idea (such as mobile phones) can grow and spread through the entire world economy in just a few years. Thus passenger space travel could grow to reach a turnover of about $1 trillion/year by 2050 (by which time aviation will be several $trillion/year).

In an article entitled "The Engineering of Dreams: The Future of Commercial Space" published in the National Space Society's magazine " Ad Astra" (September/October issue), Maxwell Hunter, one of the greats of rocket engineering, makes the case conclusively for launch vehicle development to focus on carrying passengers:

SATMS? ISFO? STC? No idea what they mean? Are you behind the times - or what?

If attending the ROTON ATV rollout at Rotary Rocket Company’s facility wasn’t cool enough, the party afterward was the ultimate schmooze fest. Old friends and fellow space activists conversed with business and government leaders. It was like a joint National Space Society, Space Access Society, and Space Frontier Foundation conference.

Readers will have noticed that more and more people are using the "T word" - that is "tourism" in the context of "space tourism", and using it positively, to support tourism as an objective of space development activities.