Innovative projects of pioneer billionaires such as Sir Richard Branson, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos on the conquest of space seem to have matured even though they have not yet been implemented. Since the time of the American Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon, the idea of conquest space has been created and developed.
Today, however, because of the above rich pioneers of the planet, space tourism and the industry that is being shaped around it have begun to be established.
by Thanos S. Chonthrogiannis-https://www.liberalglobe.com
The policies that shape the space tourism industry
For this realization, the government of Donald Trump (USA) has been instrumental in specific political decisions. More specifically, in 2018 in the effort of President Donald Trump to further cut spending on the US federal state budget, he submitted the proposal to halt further funding-subsidising the International Space Station from the US federal state budget and until the end of 2024.
This political decision of the US government forced NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) to start seeking funding from other sources in order to reduce expenditure related to research and operation which daily is an amount of around $8 million.
Therefore, NASA in this effort allowed private companies to use the International Space Station for both tourist and business purposes. As if they had been ready for a long time, the pioneers and innovative billionaires seized the opportunity to make their plans.
This NASA decision led to the decision of the Virgin Galactic by Sir Richard Branson to merge with the Social Capital Hedosophia investment firm. The newly created corporate scheme will proceed to a public record in NYSE. This strategic move will raise more funds that will obviously be used for the qualitative upgrade of Spaceship Two of Virgin Galactic, bringing competition to the upcoming space tourism even more.
NASA has already signed contracts with the company of Elon Mask “SpaceX” (Space Exploration Technologies Corp.) and Boeing Co. with aim to transfer her astronauts to the International Space Station.
Photo by Author: Space Exploration Technologies Corp.,
Source: SpaceX Flickr, licensed Public Domain,
https://creativecommons/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en
At the same time, NASA announced that it will give permission to citizens who will pay the equivalent amount to be transferred through private space companies and remain for short time on International Space Station.
SpaceX and always within this framework intend to carry out tourist flights up to the moon. On the other hand, there are construction projects for space station installations that will host for some day’s citizens-tourists.
The role of the rich in the space tourism industry
All these actions have already excited many wealthy citizens who in turn have already bought the first tickets to travel in space with Virgin Galactic.
This fact shows us, among other people, how wealthy citizens play an important role in a society and the most decisive role in shaping a new industry that in this case is the space tourism industry.
More specifically, a new product or service that is initially characterized by its high cost of acquisition, at the beginning is a choice of very few-rich citizens, and before this product or service becomes a public necessity and part of the necessities of life. Because today ‘s luxuries that appeal to the few-rich citizens, are the future necessary goods and services for the many.
In addition, the new-incoming products or services in the lives of many often become available to most of the population only after for some initial specific period were luxuries for the few-wealthy citizens.
Essentially, a large part of the expense of the rich, is directed to cover the cost of each type of experimentation on new products and services, which in this way these products and services can later be made available to the poor.
As an example, we will mention innovative products and services such as mobile phone. The first mobile phones appeared in the 1980 in the form of satellite mobile phones and which were very expensive and for this reason they could only acquire them very rich people and high-ranking supreme state officials-in this case was a state expenditure.
The fact that they were bought and used by very wealthy citizens, further encouraged telecom companies to invest even larger funds in their research in order to accelerate the evolution of this product and service making them available after many years in the large population masses.
In this case the mass production of the mobile phone dramatically throws its cost in relation to the initial cost of satellite mobile phones, and because of the huge volume of sales because it is sold to the whole population, maximize the profit.
The same was true for the plane and its services, the same was true for the car and their services that when they were first presented both the same and their services were acquisitions only of very wealthy citizens.
Over time and with technological development, these products and services began to dramatically reduce the cost of obtaining them in relation to the initial costs they had when they first appeared, making them accessible to most populations.
We can therefore conclude that once the development of the medium and lower income classes is accelerated, the supply of the rich with these products and their respective services ceases to be the main source of the big profit for the companies that offer these and the huge demand gives way to efforts now aimed at serving the needs of the overwhelming majority of the population.
Space tourism, with all these successful advances so far, lays the foundations for a future thriving industry that will be addressed, from a time and beyond, not only to the rich but to most citizens of the planet.
Thanos S. Chonthrogiannis
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