The real reason I went on this cruise was to meet Buzz Aldrin. And to get my copies of "First on the Moon" and "Encounter with Tibur" signed. I mentioned this goal to my roommate, and he allowed as he has a copy of "First on the Moon" with the signatures of all three astronauts, plus Arthur Clarke's (who wrote the afterward for the book). I guess I've been setting my sights too low. In some small compensation, after I got the books signed, a guy I was walking past wondered out loud whether I might want to get the co-author's signature on "Encounter with Tibur". He was John Barnes, one of my favorites from this decade's collection of new Science Fiction authors, and Buzz's co-author. And he turns out to live in Colorado, about 4 hours drive from Denver.
Buzz gave a couple of lectures on board, one to the National Space Society and Planetary Society members only, and one to the ship at large. (He starts his lectures by holding up a stuffed toy and announcing "Hi, I'm Buzz Lightyear. I come in peace.") Buzz has stayed active in space, unlike Neil Armstrong who basically retired to teaching after Apollo 11. One clue that Buzz has been keeping up his flying: he wears a wristwatch with a built-in Emergency Locator Beacon, for use if your plane crashes and you need to provide rescuers with a location to home in on.
Buzz's theory about how to make space travel commonplace relies on two interesting notions. The first is space tourism. If we could find a way to put civilians into space for $100,000 apiece, there are probably a million people with the desire and wherewithal to buy tickets. That's enough money to research the next generation of orbital tour bus and LEO hotel, driving the price down even further. When the price gets down to $10,000 a ticket, Princess cruise lines will probably buy five or ten launch vehicles and half the people on this eclipse cruise will line up for berths.
Another interesting notion for deep-space travel: shuttle busses. It costs a lot of money to put a habitable spacecraft on a path to the moon or Mars. Current plans for exploring these worlds involve throwing such a vehicle away after use. But why not assemble a large, comfortable habitat in earth orbit, boost it towards Mars, then use gravity assist trajectories to bounce it back and forth between Earth and Mars? Buzz has designed an orbit that oscillates back and forth without requiring any reaction mass. Of course, if passengers want to get on and off, they have to accelerate to catch up with the habitat as it goes by, and decelerate into orbit at the other side, but this can be done in a small "taxi" just large enough to spend a few hours in. The Mars habitat cycles back and forth every two years or so, and can carry passengers both ways.
The same principle works to the moon, with cycle times down in the 10 day range. How much would you pay for a 10-day vacation to the moon and back?
Why?
P.R.
Ship
USVI
Dominica
Grenada
Astro
L.G.
Eclipse
Aruba
Bday
Buzz