Space Truckin'

 I ride my bike to and from school. On somewhat rare occasions, an inner tube fails or the weather does not coincide with the gear I have brought with me. That's when I start fishing for a ride. Sure, I could walk. But that could take years and cost thousands of lives. Instead, I pick up my phone and start with my wife, the keeper of the family car. More often than not, this exchange takes place abruptly and we agree on a time that she can drive by as I leap inside to the relative luxury of our still-dependable Prius. At which point I begin planning my return to my standard mode of transport, whether that means changing an inner tube or finding my rain pants. Whatever it takes. 

Now, let's say for the sake of discussion that the route I have chosen isn't the two mile trek from school to home, but a longer one. Like a voyage to the moon, or a nearby space station. Even my fancy bike with all its gears is probably ill-suited for a trip of this magnitude. But even if it was, a mechanical failure or challenge of some other sort might make me have to change things up. If I were NASA, I would be stuck, since my fleet of space shuttles has been mothballed for some time now. Now if American astronauts want to hitch a ride to outer space, they are dependent on Russia. We were tagging along on Soviet-era Soyuz flights that were costing the United States nearly eighty million dollars a seat. I'm pretty sure Southwest can beat that price. 

So, beyond the expense, there was this little kerfuffle in Ukraine that made it seem like a pretty bad idea to sharing spaceships with the bad guys in that conflict. And maybe it was an even worse idea to be paying Russia eighty million a pop for the privilege of riding in their rockets. What's the alternative, when you absolutely positively have to get into space? 

How about Space X? Elon Musk, everyone's favorite extraterrestrial is offering five flights on his outer space Uber for the low, low price of just one point four billion dollars. With four seats on five flights, that works out to  just (checks math one more time) seventy million dollars. And NASA is going to pass the savings right on to you. Or something like that. The goal is to keep the International Space Station continuously crewed until the end of its useful life in 2030. Then what? I'm guessing Jeff Bezos has a pretty sweet deal on a new Space Station, and he can get it to you in just two days.