commercial space flight

[moblsv]

I was just making my morning journey through my geek space sites and noticed that both http://xprize.com/ and http://scaled.com/ were loading very slow due to today's flight. I really hope this is a sign that people still care about science. America could really use something to get a generation excited about science and engineering again.

A related note. the President's space commission final report is out and the primary recommendation is to use commercial interests in the goal to reach Mars. In today's political climate I agree, I doubt anything useful can happen unless it is driven by profit.

My pipe dream: Wouldn't it be nice to have a new profitable American business that hires hundreds of Engineeers and gets a generation of people excited about science again.

[landshark77]

I must admit that I am interested in what is up there, or out there, but I have to wonder what impact the exploration may have on our planet. Maybe it is all the Sci-Fi movies that I watch, but I keep having visions of Wells's Time Machine in my head, with the moon exploding due to the construction and occupation and the debris from that explosion destroying the Earth. I have to wonder what we would do with what ever information we find. What if we find other life out there? It is just another life we can try to control and fight with. What if we determine that we can live on another planet or moon? We can not get along on this planet...so why start another colony or race out there? It has the potential to become a real Star Wars or Star Trek. I am all for knowledge, but it worries me what we may choose to do with this knowledge. I kind of have the feeling of why spend all that money for all that space travel and exploration, when we could use it here on Earth. How many times has NASA proven its incompetence?