Space Tourism: Tired of the Typical Vacation? Consider Space Travel!

Therefore, you have traveled all over the world and are tired of going the same old places. Space tourism is rapidly become a travel destination of the future. Are you ready to strap in and take a trip throughout the galaxy? Well you had better have a large bank account.

Space tourism has become so popular that, even at $20 million a ticket, the Russian Space Agency is fully booked until 2009. The Personal Spaceflight Federation, a private space flight industry group favors the term "personal space flight." Among the primary attractions of space tourism are the uniqueness of the experience, the thrill and awe of looking at Earth from space.

The space tourism industry is being targeted by spaceports (a launching area similar to airports) in numerous locations, including California, NewMexico, Florida, Virginia, Alaska and Wisconsin, as well as Singapore. During the 1960's and 1970's, it was common belief that space hotels would be launched by the year 2000. Many people during the middle 20^th century speculated that the average family of the early 21^st century would holiday on the moon.

While it has been joked that John Glenn on his 1998 shuttle flight was the first space tourist, it was years later when MirCorp, a private venture by then in charge of the space station began seeking space tourist. Potential space tourist were sought to visit Mir in order to offset some of its maintenance costs.

Dennis Tito, an American businessman and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientist became their first candidate. When it was decided to dismantle Mir, Tito booked a trip to the International Space Station (ISS) through the U.S. based Space Adventures, Ltd, which to this day remains the only company to have sent paying passengers to space.

On April 28, 2001, Dennis Tito became the first paying space tourist when he visited the ISS for seven days. The second space tourist was in 2002 was South African computer millionaire Mark Shuttle. The third person was in 2005, Gregory Olsen a scientist whose company provides specialty high-sensitivity cameras, of which he conducted experiments with his equipment while there.

In the future traveling to space and beyond may become as easy as catching a flight to Los Angeles. To quote Jackie Gleason on the Honeymooners, "To the moon Alice, to the moon."