Why this professor is using $50,000 of his retirement savings to realize his childhood dream and fly into space
Chris Cokinos, a University of Arizona creative writing professor, is using $50,000 of his retirement savings to fulfill his childhood dream of traveling to space.
He will be flying with World View, a Tucson-based startup that offers commercial space flights for $50,000, a fraction of the cost charged by other space tourism operators. World View aims to make space tourism accessible to as many people as possible, even offering financing packages for younger customers.
The company recently signed up its 1,000th customer and holds the longest waiting list of customers among all space tourism companies. The space capsule is fully-autonomous and powered by helium and lithium, with personal viewing screens for each passenger to optimize the view. The flight will ascend up to 100,000 feet, almost twice the altitude of commercial airplanes, and launch from sites at the seven wonders of the world.
Cokinos, who is also a writer of nonfiction on nature and the environment, is excited to see the edge of space up close, and gain a new perspective of the Grand Canyon, a place he knows well. He believes it is necessary to see the curvature of the Earth and weather patterns to begin to think about its precarity.
