The Future of Transportation

We had a choice of writing about the future of transportation or the future of fashion. Given my penchant for wearing jeans and t-shirts, I chose the transportation aspect. Enjoy!

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When I think of the future of transportation, I think back to John F. Kennedy, and the challenge to put a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth by the end of the 1960’s. In that speech, President Kennedy created the “space race,” one of the most remarkable experiments in mankind’s history. In theory, that’s all it was; nothing had been accomplished at that point to suggest that it could even be done. Alan B. Shepard, Jr. had made the first American manned spaceflight aboard Freedom 7 in 1961. The total time for that flight was 15 minutes, 28 seconds, yet they turned this into the ultimate accomplishment – landing on the moon. If scientists could create all the new technology to put a man on the moon in less than 10 years, surely when partnered with capitalists, they can create commercial space travel within the next 100 years.

First, we have to be realistic and have a place for these space travelers to go. Let us presume there is a sustained human colony on the moon. This has been created by trained astronauts and scientists, engineers and contracted workers. They drilled the last hole, secured the last rivet, pumped an oxygen mixture that the human body can handle into the environment and washed the windows. Now, how do we get there?

The business world has already started the process of creating public transportation into space. Based on the Orteig Prize, won by Charles Lindbergh in 1927 for being the first to fly non-stop from New York to Paris, the $10 million X-PRIZE was announced in 1996. To win the prize, a team had to design, manufacture, and launch a space vehicle “…capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometers above the earth’s surface, twice within two weeks” (NASA.gov). Scaled Composites won the X-PRIZE in 2004, but more importantly, they opened the path of commercial space travel to other companies.

My vision of the future is of these sleek spacecrafts; launching on a weekly basis, from different sites around the globe. While the price of a ticket may be egregious at first, I see the cost of the flights going down; as engineers find more economic, yet safer, ways to build and fly these new ships. One of the contestants in the running for the X-PRIZE was Virgin Galactic, and they have taken the lead in personal space travel. For a small fee of $200,000, you can apply for a booking on one of their future spaceflights.

Located in New Mexico, the world’s first commercial space terminal, “Spaceport America” is under construction through the collaboration of Virgin Galactic and the State of New Mexico. A $200 million state-funded project, the spaceport is located on 27 square miles of southern New Mexico’s “Land of Enchantment.” Just one more small step for man, and we will be sending all types of civilians into space, to do the things that only astronauts aboard space shuttles and the International Space Station had previously been able to do.