NASA’s decision to open up the space station is in some ways a natural next step for space exploration. Earlier, earthbound vessels all experienced a similar transformation. Transoceanic ships, railroads, and airplanes spawned cottage industries to enable their spread and wide adoption, and each eventually reached the masses. And in widening access to space, NASA is actually behind the Russians, whose space agency has transported a few space tourists through a company called Space Adventures.

But space is different. Space, as they say, is hard. To get there, you have to strap yourself to a bomb, and sometimes those bombs malfunction.

Personal space exploration is also hard to justify. Space is not obviously a place of riches ready for the taking. There are no ports full of exotic foods to bring home, and there are no people or animals to oppress or exploit (at least not yet). There are no vast tracts of arable land where intrepid explorers can make, hunt, or gather everything they need. There is no water, or wind, or soil, or anything except sunlight and radiation. There is no good reason to take on the risk and the debt to get there in the hopes of making it rich.

Read: Space travel’s existential question

This has not stopped private companies from exploring space, and it shouldn’t. The region where the space station circles Earth is mostly free from gravity’s influence, transforming many basic physical processes and enabling interesting science. Already, astronauts frequently conduct experiments for pharmaceutical firms that could lead to new medicines, because some proteins grow better in microgravity.

While these projects are financed by private companies, government workers do the job. Astronauts undergo extensive training on Earth before flying to space to conduct biology experiments. It’s not clear yet whether the tourist visits will be open to private firms, turning the ISS into a co-working space in orbit. A private company could, in principle, buy tickets for its own scientists, or for that matter, manufacturers. Under the new tourism plan, NASA will also allow, for the first time, purely for-profit ventures that do not meet any educational or research goals. That could include flying objects or food to space, then selling them to collectors or connoisseurs back on Earth.

But space-based tourism doesn’t have the same utility as private, space-based research or as space-based mining, which may happen someday on the moon or on asteroids. Space-based tourism has no obvious external benefit—at least, none beyond the pure, personal exhilaration of a real-life glimpse of Earth’s curvature. Space tourism is a lark. It’s something for very rich people to do with their money. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has literally said so. “The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel. That is basically it,” he told Business Insider in 2018.