ESA to help Europe prepare for space tourism

Apparently, the European Space Agency (ESA) has reached the conclusion that space tourism is the way to go, and so they started a programme to find the best 3 ways to explorer the commercial side of space journeys.

[ext]The new initiative is called 'The Survey of European Privately-funded Vehicles for Commercial Human Spaceflight', and is part of ESA's General Studies Programme (GSP), whose role is to assess the feasibility of mission concepts. Under this initiative, private companies across Europe already involved in planning activities for space tourism are invited to submit their space tourism plans.

ESA's General Studies Programme will select up to three of the proposals for further study. Each selected company will receive 150,000 Euro to further develop their plans. A team of experts from ESA's Launchers Directorate, who are involved in the development of the technologies for the next generation launcher, will manage the selected studies and share their expertise with the companies. [/ext]

Source


This may be a good idea. Sometimes people are stuck with the same ideas and an outsider may have an excellent idea that goes nowhere because a private enterprise does not have the money, power, and know-how to make such things.

Only time will tell if this brings something new or not.