Two “tourists” may learn the hard way next year why NASA depended on military fighter pilots with thousands of hours of cockpit time when it sent humans into outer space. Finding billionaires to stage the round-the-moon excursion (Elon Musk) and buy tickets (so far unnamed) is no problem–Earth has always harbored plenty of nuts with money to burn. But the disconnect between their imaginations and the spam-in-a-can reality of space travel is what makes Musk’s hucksterism murderous. The astronauts of yore never said much publicly about what it was really like to spend day after day strapped inside a tiny metal cone, peeing and defecating in zero-g and wondering if the life support would blink off at any moment. They were the “right stuff” and what not, after all, and their missions were swathed in Cold War hyperbole. Nowadays it is possible for wealthy customers to be hauled to the top of Everest by sherpas, but there will be no one to save (or wash) their bums on the far side of nothing. Much better to fly down to Orlando, where space tourism has been perfectly honed for years.
