Of course, what most attracted those wealthy magnates and made them willing to spend ten million dollars on a space tourism ticket was the safety of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Spacecraft.
Whether national space agencies or private commercial aerospace companies that had mastered rocket launch technology, failures were unavoidable, both during early testing and later routine launches. Rockets frequently exploded or broke apart in midair after lifting off, and naturally, the astronauts aboard had no chance of surviving.
Even in the United States, which currently possessed the most advanced aerospace technology, accidents involving both manned rockets and space shuttles had been far from rare. To date, no fewer than sixteen astronauts had died in such accidents.
Therefore, although many people dreamed of traveling through space and had more than enough money, they had been unable to make up their minds.
They desperately wanted to ride a spacecraft into space, experience weightlessness, and feel the vastness of the universe, but compared to that desire, their own lives were still more important.
Those who could afford the exorbitant cost of space travel were all among the world's wealthiest people. Compared with ordinary people, they cherished their lives even more.
So far, only a small number of tycoons truly obsessed with space travel had risked taking rocket spacecraft into space.
Yet from its earliest test flights to its later commercial operations, the S.H.I.E.L.D. Spacecraft had proceeded flawlessly, without a single malfunction or accident. Its safety performance utterly surpassed that of spacecraft operated by national space agencies and commercial aerospace companies around the world.
Gradually, people began to rekindle their thoughts of traveling through space. And as the S.H.I.E.L.D. Spacecraft completed more and more missions while maintaining its perfect safety record, the number of people buying tickets steadily increased as well.
Eventually, nearly every flight had