When talks of space travel first surfaced a few years ago, it seemed like something utterly extraordinary, and reserved for the elites and the die-hards. Who else could slam down a few millions bucks for a outer-space view of the Earth?Â
Well, we’ve waited, and space travel is now much more affordable. Price has come down drastically during the past half-decade, with a number of commercial outfitters offering bargain-basement price space tourism. A California company called XCOR Aerospace has taken it a step further, and started selling tickets to space for a mere $95,000.  It is billed as a “no-frills” version of their competitors, such as the Virgin Galactic project that supposedly takes you out of the orbit for twice that amount.Â
That’s all well and impressive, until I saw those vintage Popular Science covers and realized that we did have pretty high expectations back then. Space travel is a great achievement, but surely we haven’t made flying vehicles, aerial buses, ski cars, or sea bicycles a reality. Granted, some of those are a tad impractical for commercial usages, but it goes to show that it is our imagination that spearheads our scientific breakthroughs. And given what we thought was possible, we really haven’t come all that far.
source: dsc.discovery, wellmedicated
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