Well, It's Not Quite Star Trek...

...but I would pay the $200,000 (if I had it) in a heartbeat to go for a ride into space - if only for 4 1/2 minutes. I'm not a huge Richard Branson fan, but he's got the right idea when it comes to seeing tourism as a means to spur development in space travel. I figure, any guy who can actually put me a step closer to the childhood promise of living on the moon someday is alright in my book.

And while I'm all for private investment in spaceflight and believe that it will be the driving force in making things cheaper, I still believe that governments are the only entities capable of providing the amount of funding necessary for large, deep-space exploration missions that will ultimately be beneficial for all of us. Just think where we'd be without NASA... I mean, no Tang? That's not a world in which I'd want to live...