So...just for the sake of the argument: Would you ever pay (especially online...) for a space travel or book a reservation at a space hotel? Something like this guy (Sir Richard Branson): http://virgingalactic.com http://www.virgingalactic.com/booking/ The prices seem too high though. So...they want $200,000 USD for a simple space flight and they claim a number of 300 customers so far. What if...they wanted say 10 times less and offer a "space hotel" in orbit, something like this: http://scienceblogs.com/startswitha..._am_dissatisfied_with_nas/Space_Station_V.jpg (ok this seems more like star trek...but you got the idea...). - would they sell it to you then? 10x!
$200,000. is a hefty price to pay. I think I would rather invest it elsewhere, if I have that amount of cash.
The second mouse gets the cheese. I would wait until there is a Challenger plus a Columbia type of incidents to wake up the design engineers before signing on for outer space travel in the vehicle they are developing. Sorry... technology advancements are paved with blood. It's one thing if you are the pioneer hero to take the risks in advancing technologies for the benefits of mankind. It's another thing if you expect to go for a leisure trip and end up being a victim of some engineering oops. Remember somebody managed to cause the Mars lander to crash because of an English-metric conversion oversight.
those space tourism flights are too draconian, especially the one they had to the international space station. it's like taking a one week tour on a submarine -- seems cool at first but the accomodations would make Motel-6 seem like a five-star hotel. there's a company working on a space tour to orbit the moon. price tag was expected to be > $100 million per passenger. that probably includes peanuts and bottled water.