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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY 1: Dreaming Of Space

Have you ever wanted to gaze down on earth and float weightless through a flying spaceship? If so, you don’t have to be an astronaut. You can be a space tourist!

Companies are striving to send regular people, who are willing to pay, into space as early as next January. This comes after millionaire U.S. scientist Dr. Greg Olsen circled above the earth more than 100 times last October. After paying $20 million, Olsen became the third space tourist.

More than a dozen companies plan to send tourists into space within the next few years. These trips will cost between $100,000-$250,000, and prices are expected to drop as more people seek to take the adventure.

The lower cost, compared to Olsen’s trip, reflects a more private spaceship that will only carry tourists into suborbital space. This region of the atmosphere is merely 60 miles up. Tourists will also experience five minutes of weightlessness, totaling an approximately two-hour voyage.

The largest space tourist company is Virgin Galactic. This firm plans to construct an entire fleet of suborbital spaceships which will be called SpaceShipTwo. The spaceships are powered by a hybrid rocket motor and carry six tourists and two crewmembers. The company plans to begin test flights in late 2007. Their SpaceShipOne was the first to privately carry a passenger to space.

In contrast, Rocketplane Kistler, a space tourist builder based in Oklahoma, plans to send people as early as January 2007. They are constructing a 42-foot-long jet, which will hold three passengers and a pilot.

Other competing companies include Space Adventures, which hosted Dr. Olsen’s trip, and PlanetSpace, which hopes to carry 2,000 tourists in the first five years of travel.

The government plans to complete its regulations for human space travel by this summer to ensure safety. Upon approval, the dream of flying through space will be a reality.

--Written by Frankie Lumpkin

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