A little OT, but the contrast between SpaceX and The Spaceship Company is striking. Elon Musk is pushing for interstellar travel, while Branson is pushing for space tourism. Seems so petty in comparison.
It's all good. They're bringing more money to an industry that can then fund further development. Google, for example, is mostly an ad company. They've taken all that money and built some pretty cool stuff. Among other things, we should get self-driving vehicles and futuristic robots with that money.
So, the 62 mile high space tourist plane will turn into an one orbit trip in a few years. Then to the moon in 25.
Just sort of FYI, in 1969 I was promised a tourist space station I could visit in 25 years by NASA ... (well and their lapdogs the Scholastic Press :-)
Ask your politicians for the lack of funding, then. Those guys are remote controlling robots on the surface of another planet for more than 10 years. They are capable of sending you to a tourist attraction in space with enough funding.
At one point I was lobbying my congressional representative to add a section to the IRS1040 forms that said "2% of your taxes will be allocated to one of the following projects (select one) if you so mark." and then have NASA, Park Service, Pure Science, etc. All things that get short changed. Let the people vote every year on where to send that small pittance.
If Branson is able to make space flight mundane (b/c so many people do it) and/or put "a resort on the moon," I can't see how that wouldn't push things forward.
You're talking about different timescales. Interstellar travel is the long-term goal, but everyone understands it's not going to happen in the next decade. Thus, SpaceX is launching satellites and space station cargoes and The Spaceship Company is debugging a suborbital tourist vehicle, because these are things it is feasible to do right now.
I don't really follow SpaceX to know what Elon Musk is pushing for, but as a practical engineer it seems unlikely that he would be pushing for something that is outside the realm of what physics considers at all possible.
SpaceX has a current mission of reducing launch costs and providing low-cost launch services, with a long term goal of helping humanity settle other planets (mars being the first, perhaps only planet mentioned right now). Interplanetary is well within our realm. Interstellar, not currently.
