Biggest Ball Of Twine In Space!!!
Lore Sjöberg wrote an article for Wired News entitled, Laying Traps for Space Tourists.
… it’s time to reveal my master plan. It seems to me that if there are space tourists, there need to be space tourist destinations. Space tourist traps, if you will. We’re not going to be zooming around the rings of Saturn in sealed Winnebagos for, oh, let’s say another 15 years, so in the meantime there’s a lot of money to be made running quaint and interesting souvenir shops in low Earth orbit. Here are some of my ideas. Send venture capital in care of Wired News.
The Biggest Ball of Twine in Space
The great thing about this is that you can start with a very small ball of twine. There’s just not a lot of twine floating around the universe, and even less of it in ball form, so you can start with, like, three bucks worth of hardware store twine and you’re set. Just make sure that when the supply rockets come up with water and such that they also bring along some more twine. It’s a really low cost of entry, except for the getting into space and setting up a space stations and such. Twine-wise, though, it’s very cheap.
The Museum of Space Tourism
This one’s also easy to set up, because your visitors are also your subjects. If you visit it, you’re in it! Just have a cheap video camera set up so your visitors can talk about what it’s like to be inducted into the prestigious Museum of Space Tourism, then they can wander in and see their video playing. If you can arrange for some sort of instant wax figure creation device to be invented, then so much the better.
The Mystery Geosynchronous Orbit Spot
It’s strange! It’s spooky! It’s the only place in space where gravity works as normal! Watch as a floor that appears to be perfectly level actually is. Stand a broom on end and it falls over! If you lean very far forward, you’ll end up on the floor, stupid! How does this seeming violation of the laws of non-gravity work? Hell if I know. Ask Larry Niven or someone.
The Floating Petting Zoo
If there’s anything better than a goat, it’s a goat you can pet. Actually there are a lot of things better than goats, but goats you can pet are definitely one of them. And even better than that are floating goats you can pet! Frankly, I can think of no tourist destination more attractive to my particular sensibilities than a large open area filled with harmless farm animals and interesting reptiles, all drifting aimlessly through the air as they wait to be petted and/or fed by rich space tourists. Frankly, I could probably spend an entire vacation there, enjoying a cool beer and watching the giant tortoises waft by.
Hey Bigelow, can you make a “haunted” inflatable space habitat?