2019 is expected to be a big Year for Space Travel

Space expert Keith Cowing says times have changed.

"Ten years ago the notion that you and I would be on the radio and you'd say 'when can I buy the ticket?' that presupposes it's actually a real thing; ten years ago you might have asked that as a joke, now you're asking because you probably want to go."

But Cowing says SpaceX and Amazon will probably beat NASA in space tourism.

"Do we do this as a country, do we do this as a planet, do we do this as a company or do we do this as a mixture thereof? No one's quite sure."

Cowing says Virgin Atlantic billionaire Richard Branson has already offered such flights -- depending on how you define the word 'space.'

We're in a trade war with China, but not a space race. Cowing says the Chinese are off doing their own thing with space travel.

"China's moving forward at their own pace; it's slower than we can do but we're not doing it and they are, so it's sort of like a one-person race and they keep looking over their shoulder to say 'are you Americans going to race me?'"

Cowing says SpaceX, Amazon's Blue Origin and Virgin Atlantic are all promising to bring space travel to the masses -- but likely only the very wealthy, at least at the start.


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