Reader Robert Martin has some further thoughts on the airline security fiasco.

They’re all worth a read, but I particularly agree with his final comment.

In all, the visible presence of heavily armed troops in airports is only a public relations gesture that makes no genuine contribution to security. It serves only to fool those who will be fooled by such things. In the meantime, we get to look like a banana republic that is anticipating, undergoing, or recovering from, a coup.

According to the Telegraph, Afghanistan is getting ready for tourists again. It may be that this is the first industry to recover in that beleaguered country, and it will be a significant one, since now many who had previously barely heard of the place will be interested in seeing it.

I find this personally interesting because I think that it says something profound about the nature of the modern economy that could have an impact on our future space activities.

There is a long-standing debate in the space policy community as to whether space tourism (assuming that it occurs at all on a large-scale–that it will occur on a small scale now has an existence proof in the person of Dennis Tito) will be a cause or a consequence of space development.

Most “traditional” space analysts believe that if space tourism occurs, it will happen after technology has sufficiently advanced to make space travel affordable. They make the historical analogy that tourism has never before led the development of a frontier, and it won’t do so for space either.

I (and some others, such as Dr. Patrick Collins, an economist at the Japanese Space Agency and Tom Rogers at the Space Transportation Association) argue that absent a large market like tourism, the costs of space access will never be reduced, because it is not fundamentally a technology problem–it is a problem of lack of economies of scale.

Furthermore, historical analogies on this particular subject have little relevance because the nature of the economy has changed. In the past, tourism was not a major part of the economy. Now, depending on how you do the bookkeeping, it is perhaps the second largest industry in the world, after energy.

In this formulation, developing a robust market for public space travel will create the infrastructure, both for earth-orbit transportation, and on orbit, that will enable many of the other things that space enthusiasts propose (e.g., solar power satellites, space manufacturing, lunar science bases, space settlements, etc.).

One other related item.

NASA Watch provides a link to a story in the Hunstville Times about the closure of the Space Camp in California, due to declining attendance, and increasing debt load of the Space Camp Foundation…

The story describes the bare fact that attendance is down, but doesn’t discuss any possible reasons for it.

Is this a bad sign for space tourism (I don’t think so myself, but I’m interested in other points of view)?

After all, one of the indicators that many use to show support for public space travel is the large existing terrestrial space tourism market, as represented by visits to the National Air and Space Museum, and various space museums and attractions, etc., in Florida.

This article indicates that the Florida space tourism activities are down. How about attendance at NASM? How much of it is due to 911, and how much to declining general interest in space among the public?

I’ve never been a big Space Camp fan myself, and still think that there may be a market for a space tourist-themed resort that is less NASA/science/Shuttle focused.

But for those who believe, as I do, that space tourism is the best hope for a viable and self-sustaining free-enterprise space industry, these represent both encouraging (Afghan) and troubling (Space Camp) trends. Not enough data to make a judgement either way here, but after the ripples in the pond from the 911 boulder die down, it will be worthwhile to take another look at the prospects for the global tourism industry, and reassess the implications for space development.

Hmmm, desperate times call for desperate action. This story in Slush claims that Osama and crew are shopping for new (or at least different) gods, since Allah seems to have let them down.

For those fascinated by Internet history, there’s a nice little article in Salon about the successful salvaging of most of the early Usenet archives, with a lot of emphasis and quotes from the ubiquituous (at least to those of us in both the Internet and space communities) Henry Spencer.

Thanks to these packrats, Google now estimates that 95 percent of the posts ever made to Usenet are now searchable from the site. But Spencer, for one, can’t help thinking of all that’s still been lost — not just of the other 5 percent of Usenet, but also of the other early history of online communication.

Think of the Arpanet mailing lists that were the precursors to Usenet. Spencer points out that while most of the mailing lists kept archives, a significant number of them have been lost over time. “The first flame war, things like that, most certainly dates before Usenet,” he says. “And I would bet that a lot of that material is gone, because at some point, nobody thought it was worth saving.”

Lileks is giving Steffie Salter another rhetorical thrashing. Despite the fact that it’s more than well deserved, it still seems unfair somehow, like shooting a whale in a pail with a double-barrel shotgun. But read it anyway, for a little guilty pleasure.

I don’t normally read Vin Suprynowicz, but he has an interesting take on Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. He thinks that it’s actually a metaphor for the virtues of limited government. I can’t get into Tolkien’s mind, but could be…

[Update, a few minutes later]

I see that on Samizdata, Perry de Havilland has made the same point today–the ring represents the State.

According to Fox News, Charles Bishop, the fifteen-year-old kid who drove the plane into the building in Tampa, left a note in it expressing support for bin Laden.

We’ll see what his parents have to say about this. Was he just seeking his own enlightened path? Or rebelling against his last name?