Went to the NewSpace conference in Sunnyvale last weekend.

There are a number of things to ponder on this before posting anything in detail, as I have learned from going to conferences that you have to wait a bit before going public, to let the emotions ease and the facts settle.

However, I just had an email conversation with a dear friend who happens to be a devout world-traveller, and upon re-reading part of the e that I'd just rolled off I said 'huh, that wasn't half bad', and figured it would be ok to put it here for future reference on this point in time.

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At the conference, which was for the Space Frontier Foundation, a small group of advocates and billionaires who have this thing for tourist travel starting just 62 miles straight up (they and theirs brokered the lease of the MIR station from the Russians and put Tito on it for a vacation, are in hand with Space Adventures that put the other 7 tourists into the ISS, do some political stuff and support startups like Virgin Galactic and Carmac's Armadillo andSpaceX and that kind of stuff)...   Anyways, a guy named Rick Tumlinson was onstage talking about something or another and in his casual bullets he mentioned that at one point will have to come things like National Geographic.

To him, it was an offhand mention in a string of points, after the meetings I spoke with him and he didn’t even remember saying it. BUT, right after he did, I pulled out my phone and hit NetSol and checked and amazingly no one had ever bought the domains planetarygeographic.org/com/etc. or interplanetarygeographic.org/etc.  I've dealt with more than a few domain decisions and these being open was bizarre.    This guy also does a lot of domain stuff and he thought so too... I gave him 24 hours and when he didn't take them I did.

Now, what I do with them in the end is up in the air... some domains make me a small bit of money, maybe I'll just give these away eventually, maybe I'll put some content on them, whatever.  But after the purchase I did some research on the beginnings of the National Geographic Society and found that it was really cool.

The most intriguing part was that the Society started pretty much with the same type of people as were at the NewSpace conference: rich, who have a passion for travelling where others fear, and who know how to play the system to stay rich while playing out their passions.

So, dear young Traveller, as you board each new train to roll thousands of miles, making the most of those tiny cabins with those pull down beds, keep somewhere in the back of your mind that while there may be still a few places on this little planet that have not been completely seen and done... just a few miles straight up it's completely a new untamed place where new names are being written for the ages and a rich history is about to be made.  Some have already gone, next year the floodgates open with Virgin.

Just keep it in mind as you plan your ticket purchases.

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