With private companies planning to expand their offerings in orbital and suborbital space tourism and more and more civilians already shooting into space, one Jesuit astronomer said if he were ever offered the possibility, he would go.
“I know enough to never say no to an opportunity,” Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, a planetary astronomer and director of the Vatican Observatory, told Vatican News July 29.
“If God opens a door, he’s wanting me to rush through it,” he said.
“I’m a very timid person in many ways, but I had the chance 25 years ago to go to Antarctica to collect some of these meteorites. It was not easy, but it’s an adventure I would never have regretted doing,” he recalled.