What’s interesting about this Pop-Sci article on “space diving” isn’t so much that it’s a new market for alt.space or that it could (as Tumlinson suggests) generate public interest in space, but that someone other than NASA is developing operational space suits.
Current suit technology is a hindrance to intensive development of space…yet NASA, even in pursuing the VSE, doesn’t seem especially interested in implementing alternatives. However…a business activity in which space suits (or space-suit-like protective garments) play a vital role will create an incentive for the development of alternatives. If space diving is successfully launched as an adventure sport, maintaining its allure will mean (as the article suggests) augmenting the thrill involved through higher and faster jumps — which in turn means more capable suits.
Admittedly, there may not be much incentive in this particular market to bring into being more dexterous suits, but there will be an incentive to making them less expensive to produce and more readily reusable than current (NASA) designs. The real beauty here, though, is that this sport could bring into being an industrial capability for producing suits which could in turn supply (and improve) them for other space activities, such as those planned by Bigelow.
(Surprisingly, the article completely omits mention of spacecraft-less reentry concepts explored over the past few decades, like MOOSE, AIRMAT, Paracone, etc.)
Your posts on Space and Mars have been most interesting. On the subject of spacesuits, you will be interested in my July 4 post.