Up, Up And Ka-Ching!

For decades after Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit the Earth in 1961, the notion that space travel could ever be possible—or affordable—for ordinary people remained the stuff of Hollywood fantasy and comic strips. Now the dream is on the launchpad. The quickest of trips—five minutes of weightlessness and spectacular views—is a viable business proposition. Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, which recently unveiled its SpaceShipTwo, is only one of several competitors that hope to introduce flights costing a mere $200,000 apiece in the next few years, eventually bringing the price tag down to $20,000.

These suborbital tourism flights are only the beginning of what many executives and entrepreneurs hope will be a breakthrough in the commercial business of sending vessels beyond the atmosphere. So far the aerospace business, which includes satellite launching as well as human-spaceflight programs, has been dominated by companies like Boeing and Arianespace, which cater to governments, the military and big commercial customers. Prices, which run into the tens of millions of dollars, reflect this fact. Space for the masses (or at least the well-heeled masses) is the entrepreneur's entree. If it works out—and many people think it's a good bet—it could have an impact beyond tourism to satellite launching and orbital missions, both manned and unmanned. That would open up a vast new market for space—private spaceship builders, outfitters, insurers, travel agents and spaceport contractors.

Much of this is still pie in the sky, but the first step, suborbital tourism, is not. Virgin Galactic is planning to begin 12 to 18 months of test flights in July. The six-passenger SpaceShipTwo will be carried to an altitude of 15km by a jet-powered mother ship, the WhiteKnightTwo. Then SpaceShipTwo will fire its rocket—the current design has it fuelled by rubber and laughing gas, though this may change—shooting the craft on a 90-second joyride during which it will reach a maximum speed of 4000 km per hour—more than three times the speed of sound. Passengers will be pinned in their seats by G-forces equivalent to four times the strength of Earth's gravitational pull as it climbs to 109 kms, where they will experience five minutes of weightlessness before the ship "feathers" its wings into an upright position to begin its descent. If all goes well, thrill-seekers can hope to start boarding in 2010 for the ultimate in adventure travel.

Competitors are in hot pursuit. Rocketplane Global, Inc., of Oklahoma, claims to be "neck and neck" with Virgin. Unlike SpaceShipOne, Rocketplane's XP vehicle is a one-stage affair. "It looks like a plane, takes off like a plane," says Rocketplane business associate George French III, who also envisions commercial flights by 2010. "The main difference is that this plane goes into space."

XCOR Aerospace in Mojave is also developing a ship, Xerus, that will take off and land from a runway. The company has not set a date for a launch. XCOR was granted a license by the Federal Aviation Administration in 2004 giving permission to fly its Sphinx demonstration vehicle—a manned rocketplane designed as a forerunner to Xerus—on up to 35 test missions by the end of 2006. The company declines to specify what stage Xerus' development has reached, stating simply that it is in "the design phase" and that it prefers to be judged by results rather than promises. But it is well respected in aerospace circles, in particular for its EZ-Rocket, a rocket-propelled airplane that has flown 25 times and set aviation records. NASA is among XCOR's fans; the firm has just completed tests on a methane-burning rocket engine technology that the space agency hopes to use on lunar expeditions.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, is funding Blue Origin, which is building a ship with a three-man conical capsule that takes off and lands vertically, akin to the lunar landing module. Blue Origin flew a prototype ship, Goddard, for 40 seconds in Texas in 2006. Since then the firm has begun building a second test vehicle, which has led to some skepticism as to whether Bezos is on track to meet his declared deadline of operating once-a-week tourist flights by 2010. Bezos, however, has given no specific timeline.