Nearspace tourism - a tool for building up support?

Unlike (sub)orbital flights, a nearpsace flight would be in the range of the average person. Granted, it lacks the 'I've been to space' and zero gravity appeal of a suborbital spaceflight, but it can run longer and gives just as good views. As JP said, through Aubrey in Floating to Space, "This is what people want from space tourism. Not the high g-loads and vomiting. They want to stand on the veranda with a drink in their hand, watching the great blue ball of the Earth roll silently beneath them." Given that it's cheaper, it is a lot less likely to be seen as exclusive, as a lot more people will be able to go.

Oh no, not these sorts of spammers. We have them over at NewMars.

But thanks to the spammer for bumping the thread.l What do actual users think of the idea?

The spammer is banned and his reply deleted, that's what i think about it

About your post, i must admit that i like the idea.
It's almost like a really advanced amusement park ride (if you present it like that it could sell )

An amusement park ride? Eh?

I was thinking more of a hotel-cruise type thing.

well the thing is if you would make it a hotel-cruise kind of thing it would have to be real big, the thing i mean with the amusement park ride is small say 6 person rides to near space and back again.

But if you could make it like a hotel/cruise it would be cool as well. The view would we spectacular to say the least

Even small 6 person rides to Nearspace would work, as long as it could break even. The purpose is to make space seem more accessible.

I like the cruise idea. Back in the 1930's airships were used for intercontinental transport, along with ocean liners. Then the Hindenburg burned and airplanes were developed, and today no one does intercontinental travel by airship anymore, and the only ships that carry passengers commercially are ferries. And cruise ships.

So, if airships were just as good as (or better than) ships for carrying people from continent to continent, why wouldn't a high-altitude airship work just as well as a seagoing vessel for cruises?

The main problem seems to be infrastructure. Cruise ships visit interesting places for their passengers to visit. A stratospheric airship that can carry a significant amount of passengers is going to be too large and too slow for an airport. Perhaps it could really be a flying ship, land on water, deflate its balloon, and use existing port facilities?

It doesn't have to land. The passengers could embark and disembark from the airship unto a ferry.

Interesting idea. But the ferry itself would probably have to be an airship too. How do you dock two airships, given their shape? Keep in mind that many of the passengers will be elderly, so you can't have any acrobatics getting on board...

As far as I know, there's nothing wrong with having a docking platform, with a shaft down to the cabins on the underside, on the top of the "ferry ship" if this is going to be an air ship as well. That way you could use an elevator to lower the passengers from the upper to the lower ship.

Why does the ferry have to be an airship? Also, you could use a oil platform to dock with. For that matter, you don't even have to dock at sea.

Aerostatic craft are the only vehicles capable of docking with Nearspace airships, so the ferry has to be one.

I prefer the hotel idea, though, with smaller ferry airships taking cargo and passengers up and down. Or maybe an elevator might be more practical?

Why can't nearspace airships go lower?

They may be able to get low enough to let helicopters reach them, but helicopters are noisy, shaky, and expensive to operate. Not what you would want to put several busloads of grandmothers through. A smaller airship would be much nicer. I hadn't thought to put an elevator all the way through the craft, but it solves the problem and seems like it would work. A cruise ship is essentially a floating hotel, and this would be one floating at the edge of space.

Right, so now that we've decided that Ascender and Deep Sky Station are really good ideas, all we have to do is wait for JP to build them, and book our tickets .

But he's taking ages.