Vacation in Space by Barbora Kasparova

For some people mother Earth is too small to meet their holiday needs. Their dream vacation involves lot of training, medical tests, an insane amount of money, and the result is a postcard from space, and some publicity along with it, of course. The pioneer travelers to space must have met set standards, and therefore have certain characteristic in common. They're rich, (preferably so rich that $ 20 million was not an issue), they're extremely adventurous and determined and they're men (with the exception of Anoushes Ansari, who flew in 2006). Space travels began in 2001 with the first space tourist in history Dennis Tito. Four more followed, and Charles Simonyi, who did his trip in April this year, has been the last one so far. (Share some of the excitement from his journey on his website - http://www.charlesinspace.com/). So far is the crucial word here. The only "travel agency" providing this kind of service is the Russian Space Agency at the moment, however, there's a competition on the horizon. Company Virgin Galactic is offering their first launch in 2008 and planning to start the main trips in 2009, the Space Adventures on its web site promises it "…will fly more people to space than have made the journey since the dawn of the Space Age/" (http://www.spaceadventures.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Our_Vision.welcome). What was a dream yesterday is a reality tomorrow. Jurij Gagarin would surely be surprised.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071126/ap_on_sc/china_space;_ylt=Aid0dg940HY6ZsMMWZoEJV.s0NUE

by Barbora Kasparova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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