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Vision
Statement
StarPort Café, in cooperation
with astronauts, and leading scientific
and technical experts, has developed
a suite of cognitively based media
tools and techniques designed
to bridge the gap between the
robust emerging private space
movement, including space tourism,
and the currently low awareness
and involvement of the general
public, and has packaged it all
in a unique venue called StarPort
Café. A combination of proven
business models including a coffee
house, simulation center, gift
shop, small 3-D theater, location-based
entertainment and online social
networking, StarPort Café will
become the natural community center
for the emerging space aware population
wherever it appears, bringing
the space experience (called “The
Overview Effect”) to the world,
helping to jump-start the new
consumer space age and bringing
the reality of the new age of
space travel to the public. In
addition, it will become the location-based
portal of choice for all forms
of ‘NewSpace’ entertainment, information
and marketing and networking.
Background Few people fully realize
the incredible fact that consumer
space travel will begin by 2010.
Fewer yet have considered the
implications. A year later, hundreds
of people will have traveled into
space (maybe more than all the
astronauts in history). Though
it may still sound like science
fiction, just one of the corporate
challengers for that first commercial
flight, Richard Branson’s Virgin
Galactic, predicts 500 passengers
in the first year, with maybe
fifty thousand a year within a
decade. That’s just one company.
And nearly a half-dozen more are
working outside the spotlight.
Only a decade later, there will
be multiple commercial space stations
offering consumer accommodations.
“Space hotels,” businesses and
even sports arenas in Earth orbit.
Incredibly, two test units of
the first private space station,
an orbital hotel, have gone into
orbit since early 2006, with a
planned opening as early as 2011.
Google has just announced a partnership
with the X-Prize Foundation and
Space Florida, to fund a $30 Million
prize for the first private Lunar
rover sending pictures back to
Earth. Finally, as hard as it
might be to believe, paid trips
around the moon could start as
early as 2011. The first passengers
have already been announced.
While all this may sound like
science fiction, it’s very real.
And while it might just seem to
be about technology and entrepreneurialism,
the beginning of consumer space
travel will be the herald of a
sea change in every aspect of
our culture that will come naturally
with a mass experience of the
reality of space that will dwarf
the first space age of the ‘60’s
and ‘70’s. Quite simply, the “Overview
Effect” created by consumer access
to space is about to change the
world. Yet very few people fully
realize it, let alone are actively
planning for it. Despite the fact
that survey after survey has shown
that, given acceptable price and
safety, something like half the
adult population of the United
States would travel in space.
Half! So, as the industry insiders
already know, the potential market
for consumer interest and involvement
in space is huge. It is not by
accident that many of the leaders
of this ‘NewSpace’ industry such
as Microsoft’s Paul Allen, Amazon’s
Jeff Bezos and PayPal’s Elon Musk
were the leaders of two of the
last big techno-revolutions, personal
computing and the Internet. StarPort
Café is poised to play a vital
role in this emerging industry
and cultural phenomena.
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