Dark Sky Station tourism

I bet you could get alot of "suborbital tourism" to a DSS to help pay for development of further progress. It would be especially nice for the less-adventurous (sp) types who don't fancy a 50-mile tall rollercoaster like SS1. (Of course, turbulence issues might change that a little... but on the whole it should be much less insane.) Another obvious benefit would be the saftey factor (at least percieved saftey factor) of using balloons. Lower cost is a huge plus.

And spending serious time high up would be cooler than just passing thru. In fact, you'd get sort of a space-station effect w/o the disorientation of weightlessness (of course, for some ppl, that's what their after, but for them, I propose to bungee jumping or space diving from the ship... can you image the adreniline rush from jumping off the edge of one of those things? [shudders]). I'm sure the view would be absolutely spectacular, even at night (I wonder if you could see the major cities by the light they give off). Or what if the station was in polar orbit and you went right below (or thru!) an aurora!! Or how about looking down on a thunderhead from above, and watching the weird electric phenomenon come bursting up at you.

Anyway, I for one would rather pay for that than for a cruise on an oceanliner any day! I have no idea what the price for a DSS stay would be, though, but I assume it could be estimated, and probably very low.