Abstract
Human spaceflight is likely to change in character over the 21st century, shifting from a military/governmental enterprise to one that is more firmly tied to private industry, including businesses devoted to space tourism. For space tourism to become a reality, however, many obstacles have to be overcome, particularly those in finance, technology, and medicine. Ethnographic interviews with astronauts, engineers, NASA doctors, and NewSpace workers reveal that absolute faith in the eventual human occupation of space, based in religious conviction or taking secular forms, is a common source of motivation across different populations working to promote human spaceflight. This paper examines the way faith is expressed in these different contexts and its role in developing a future where space tourism may become commonplace.
Highlights
Space tourism is an endeavor, similar to but distinctly different from other forms of space travel, that relies on its participants’ and brokers’ faith that carrying out brave expeditions, modeled on and inspired by those in the past, will pay off in a better future for humankind
Workers in industries that focus on space tourism and the tourists themselves describe feelings of connection to other forms of exploration that suggest a sense of connection to these earlier explorers that motivates them and encourages optimistic faith in the future of human settlement beyond the Earth
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how spaceflight participants and providers, sometimes belittled by governmental space agencies and frequently criticized for “the disparity between aspirations and achievements” (Cohen and Spector 2019b), are inspired and buoyed when they position their goals within the larger historical framework of human exploration
Summary
Space tourism is an endeavor, similar to but distinctly different from other forms of space travel, that relies on its participants’ and brokers’ faith that carrying out brave expeditions, modeled on and inspired by those in the past, will pay off in a better future for humankind. Faith, in this case, refers to a subjective sense that a particular future is guaranteed and may or may not have religious foundations. Workers in industries that focus on space tourism and the tourists themselves describe feelings of connection to other forms of exploration ( polar exploration and early space exploration) that suggest a sense of connection to these earlier explorers that motivates them and encourages optimistic faith in the future of human settlement beyond the Earth
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