Yeah they stopped doing that a while ago and today when watching the launch with friends I was surprised they didn't know it was a thing. When Mark Shuttleworth went there it was all over the tech news.

Space tourism to the ISS is just US taxpayers paying for billionaires' vacations. Yes, NASA charges a fee, but it is tiny relative to the cost of the service. If somebody develops a private space station, great. Until then, this isn't an industry that deserves any support.

Is that true? Most of the cost of rockets seems to be the r&d, there's economies of scale to doing more launches.

I'd have hoped nasa is smart enough to charge more than the marginal cost of one more launch.

Bigelow Aerospace lays off entire workforce - Mar 23 2020 https://spacenews.com/bigelow-aerospace-lays-off-entire-work...

Thanks! Too bad for now

I'm not sure I would call seven people "many".

Only 562 have been to orbital space so far. A 1% increase on the first flight is significant. It can only increase exponentially from there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_travelers_by_nam...

That's not true. It could stay a trivial endeavor forever given there's really nothing to do in space.