Nowadays, space tourism has become closer to reality than ever before, leading to the belief that space tourism will progress significantly in the future. In my view, it is a negative development, since its financial and social costs can outweigh the indirect improvements in technology.
On the one hand, space tourism is merely an expensive form of entertainment, and might only be affordable to ultra-wealthy individuals. Exorbitant fuel costs and intricate construction of spacecraft are the primary reasons behind the prohibitive costs of this type of tourism. Furthermore, the government and private companies fund a colossal amount of money just to entertain a select few people rather than distribute it for solving global issues such as poverty or treatment of diseases. For instance, one way to go to space may cost hundreds of thousands of dollars which is an unprofitable industry for citizens. That said, cultivating the space industry only increases social inequality, which harms society.
Сommercialization of space could accelerate rapidly developing technologies. Investments in private space travel foster innovations in science, robotics, and telecommunications; space tourism may be the reason for some improvement in satellites, for example, which will eventually increase the speed of the internet. However, these gains are speculative and indirect and they could be achieved more with publicly funded research.
In conclusion, even though space tourism may foster technologic breakthroughs, it mostly serves the wealthy minority at the expense of more urgent problems such as poverty. Therefore, it is an enhancement that society ought to approach with caution.