Commercial Space Port

Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos bought 165k acres of land down in Texas, for the purpose of building the world's first commercial space port.

Leave it to the owners of major web sites to be visionaries A good thing, I say, since this would be the first step to making space ports much like what airports are like today. Things like Spaceship one could be buzzing around orbit by the hundreds, if not thousands, taking people to the moon and to orbital cities perhaps (Pandora, anyone?)

Someday... it sure sounds great.

Anyway, here's the article on it:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/03/15/bezos.spaceport.ap/index.html

Sounds really exciting

When do you think there might be a commerical / tourism place on the moon? Seems like there'd be a lot of insurance / safety concerns involved when dealing with the general public traveling there, let alone staying up there for any period of time.

Legal concerns might be more of a barrier than technological or economic ones, come to think of it.

This is true. Although when there's a huge economic potential, as there would be with space travel, things like this tend to get worked out.

After all, it's all about the Benjamins .

That has a way of working out.

In our lifetimes, what's possible with this? Could the space port be in full service within, say, 20 years?

It would be great to someday take my kids to the moon.

Realistically, if it happens within our lifetimes, we'll probably be in our 60's or 70's by the time average people are taking trips to the moon.