11/17 Out of This World

Source
http://www.spacefuture.com/tourism/sciencefiction.shtml

Article
Introduction: Space Tourism
"Space tourism" is the term that has come to be used to mean members of the public traveling to and from space by buying tickets like an airline. It's a distinct category of "space travel" which also includes travel in space for work purposes - to date, mainly by government staff.
In recent years it has become increasingly recognized that, although government space agencies are not interested in space tourism, it is a legitimate objective of space development - and it is likely to generate substantial investment funds that will help to develop space.
Indeed NASA itself published a report "General Public Space Travel and Tourism" in March 1998 which endorses the idea of space tourism; points out that it is going to start quite soon in the form of sub-orbital flights; and argues that it is likely to become a much larger market for launch systems than satellite launch.
Although space tourism appears in a number of science fiction stories, it's very striking that in almost none of them is tourism portrayed as more than a small-scale activity greatly overshadowed by government space activities - military operations, scientific research, defense, etc. This seems to be a good example of how the Cold War pattern of space activities paralyzed the public's imagination. That is, government monopoly organizations carrying out "missions" in space ostensibly for the benefit of the taxpayer created a fixed image of what space activities are which has dominated the imaginations of engineers and scientists, the media, politicians and the general public for several decades.
This effect has been so strong that even most science fiction writers became unable to imagine anything different - although they are generally thought to be some of the more imaginative members of society! Yet, search as you may, almost no stories set within the next 50-100 years feature near-Earth space tourism at all, and in those that do it is an economically and socially minor activity.
Space Future disagrees firmly with this collective image, and maintains that space tourism will become the main economic activity attracting commercial investment into space and thereby financing space development - within as little as a decade or two. That is, far from being a small-scale activity of just a few rich people, tourism in space will grow like air travel to become a mass market available to the middle classes, and will dwarf other space activities.
Encouragingly, the objective of space tourism is gradually coming to be more and more widely accepted - see the Space Future Timeline of space tourism. Compared to that coming reality, today's long-term projections by government space agencies (which are generally accepted by the media and appear in much science fiction) that in 50 years the sum total of human space activities will comprise a handful of scientists working at bases on the Moon and Mars, and perhaps a hundred in Earth orbit - will come to seem astonishingly blinkered.
In the following we discuss a number of examples of space tourism activities appearing in science fiction stories - both short stories and novels, and also film and video. The authors would be grateful for any references and (better still) excerpts from other stories, in order to make this survey as complete as possible.

Discussion Questions
Session One
1. Where does the future of space travel lie? Scientific research, government activities or tourism?
2. If you could travel beyond Earth, where would you go and what would you do there?
3. Imagine yourself as billionaire in the future space tourism business, where would you develop and how would you promote your business?

Session Two
1. Do you think that “sci-fi” travel is truly possible? Talk about some movies or books that related to this.
2. If money and health is no object, would you like to go on an adventure out of this world, into the earth, time travel, to space, find lost civilizations (Atlantis), the depth of the ocean, even fantasy lands? Who would you take with you and how would you travel?
3. Share your findings or encounters with strange species during your “sci-fi” travel.