For the first time in Nasa’s more than 40-year history, Nasa funds have been used to ask US citizens whether they would like to take a trip to space - and the results strongly endorse Space Future's position.

Some of the results are accessible by downloading a PowerPoint file on the Web site of Kelly Space Inc. These include some key tables from a market survey performed of 2020 US citizens by Harris Polls. That survey confirms the potentially huge market for space tourism and leads to the report’s conclusion that only space tourism offers a large enough market to enable reusable launch vehicles to reduce the cost of getting to orbit. This result of course invalidates all of the projects such as X-33, X-34 and SLI that Nasa claims are intended to reduce launch costs - since they all focus on unpiloted satellite launch vehicles.

Though decades late, the 'Kelly Report' is an excellent step towards forcing the US government to reevaluate Nasa’s anti-space-tourism policy.

The ‘Kelly Report’ should be used to force a new, comprehensive study of space tourism such as Sharespace has been pressing for for years.