Factoid:
International tourism experts predict that space tourism will become a leading component of the tourism industry in the 21st century.
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Virgin Airways, Daimler Benz Eye Space Tourism
Several major European companies have lately announced plans to invest in space tourism.
Start Date: 5/10/99
Richard Branson, the adventurous entrepreneur at the helm of Virgin Airways, now says he's getting into space tourism. According to the London Times of May 1, 1999, Branson has just announced Virgin Galactic Airways, which will offer short tourist flights into space within eight years. "Finally it's come to the stage that it's going to be possible to look at taking people into space," Branson told the Times.
To begin with, Branson plans to offer two-hour sub-orbital jaunts at an estimated cost of more than $70,000 per seat. The price sounds exorbitant, but it's in the same ballpark as prices previously announced by Seattle-based Zegrahm Tours, which says it will offer short tourist spaceflights by the end of 2001.
Meanwhile, German industrial giant Daimler Benz disclosed in April that it is teaming with the German space agency in an ambitious plan to build and launch Hotel Galactica, a tourist destination orbiting 300 miles above the Earth, by the year 2009. Hilton previously announced that it is exploring the possibility of an orbiting hotel as well.
These are only the latest in a growing number of rocket-builders and visionary entrepreneurs who see space as the next great marketplace of the future. And, according to the Times, their dreams are not just pie in the sky. For example, recent polls in Japan reportedly show that 70 percent of the adult population in that space-happy nation would be willing to spend up to three months salary for a ride into space. Similar polls in the United States show that about 42 percent of Americans share that enthusiasm.
Although costs at first will be sky-high, they are sure to come down fast. Even now, a firm in Houston, Texas called Advent Launch Systems says it will soon be able to launch tourists into brief sub-orbital spaceflights for as little as $5,000 per seat.
 Excelsior, Michael Lindemann's new novel (written under the pen name Michael Paul), depicts a wholly plausible near future in which human cloning is both widespread and widely abused; terrorists have access to target-specific biological weapons; recreational space travel is commonplace; and mounting pressures of global climate change, environmental decline, population growth and civil unrest inspire radical new approaches to urban security.
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