Travel
Sub Disaster Puts Spotlight on Another Extreme Venture: Space Tourism
- US oversight of commercial space flights limited by law
- A moratorium on regulation is set to expire this October
Commercial space travel shares plenty of similarities with deep sea tourism: wealthy customers, tight spaces, far-flung destinations and waivers that clearly warn people they’re risking death by embarking on unregulated vehicles.
As the world dissects what went wrong with the doomed OceanGate submersible vessel, the craft’s lack of safeguards is raising alarms. The founder of the deep-sea tour group once called safety a “pure waste” and industry peers flagged the potentially “catastrophic” results of his “experimental” approach to ocean exploration.