Recent space flights could trigger a wave for the future of space travel

Recent trips to the edge of outer space by Richard Branson of Virgin Airlines and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos are changing the nature of space travel. We thought we’d get the thoughts of someone who’s “been” to outer space, former astronaut, Colonel Cady Coleman, ASU’s Global Explorer in Residence.

How do you feel about more people traveling to space?

“I am personally a fan of more people going to space. That means more ideas, more diverse thought I mean, we’ve had great programs so far but there’s been a limited number of people going and there’s something that happens when you get to look back and see that view of our planet, the place that we actually live where all that money is spent. And, you know… for me looking out the window, it was so clear that if only people on the ground could be connected together we could literally solve anything. And when you give that view to different people with different ideas. That’s when solutions start to come together,” Coleman said.

Are the recent space flights a wave of the future?

“What we’re seeing right now is people who have a vision, we could think of, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Elon Musk, you know they have a vision for the future. They have means they have resources, their plans are all different and at the same time there’s there’s some commonality there where they really think that… space belongs to all of us, and it’s a place, that I mean, here’s our earth and we used to think space was somewhere else but I mean, this space is just an extension of where we have our planet here, and they are constructing ways for people to go there,” Coleman said.

Are we at the Wright Brothers stage of space travel right now?

“This is the time where they are actually gathering a lot of people to them, and experiments are being organized at these universities and sent up. So it’s really exciting time on every level,” Coleman said.