SPACE TOURISM

Travel and tourism is one of the world's largest businesses. Its gross revenues exceed $400 billion per year in the U.S. alone, and it is our second largest employer.

In an interview, Jacob Lopata, chief of a company called Space Launch, said that space tourism is expected to be a billion-dollar market within the next 10 years. “Technology advances and events like the Ansari X Prize, a relatively new $10 million contest for private spacecraft, have made that a possibility,” he said.
Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is constructing a 200 million-dollar space station in New Mexico. US firm Space Adventures will soon begin launching from the United Arab Emirates and Singapore. Tourists will be able to go on a 90 minute $100,000 suborbital flight to the edge of space. Space Adventures hopes to send passengers around the moon in 2009.
Zero-gravity aircraft trips are becoming widely available, and other trips using a new kind of vehicle taking people up to very high altitudes should become available within the next few years. And the Shuttle fleet, now becoming privatized, could carry a very few of our general public to orbit every year for general public space tourism research and merchandising purposes.
To move beyond this to generally available trips to orbit and week-long stays in hotels now can be seen as certainly feasible, and some of the required basic space transportation and habitation technological-operational advances required to do so are already underway.
In 1999, Las Vegas native, Robert Bigelow founded Bigelow Aerospace ("BA"). Bigelow Aerospace is a Las Vegas, Nevada space technology start-up company that is pioneering work on expandable space station modules. An expandable module is a space structure that has a flexible outer shell, allowing conservation of diameter for launch. Once in orbit, the module is inflated, allowing greater work, play, and living area for astronauts.
The company has announced development of a family of prototype and production space station modules, including: the Genesis-1, a one-third scale prototype module weighing approximately 3,000 pounds, 15 feet (5 meters) in length and 6.2 feet (1.9 meters) in diameter, expanding to twice the diameter once in orbit.
On July 12, 2006, the Genesis-1 launched on a Dnepr booster from Yasny Launch Base in Siberia. The launch was conducted by Bigelow and ISC Kosmotras. The mission is planned to last for five years and include extensive observation of the craft's performance including testing packing/deployment procedures and resistance to radiation and space debris, among other space hazards and conditions. Mike Gold, corporate counsel for Bigelow Aerospace, stated in relation to this mission and the next, “Our motto at Bigelow Aerospace is ‘fly early and often’. Regardless of the results of Genesis-1, we will launch a follow-up mission rapidly,” indicating that the Genesis 2 is on track for its launch later this year. According to the Bigelow web site the Genesis I spacecraft has successfully expanded and all of the solar arrays have been deployed.
The geniuss' at BA have come up with the "Fly your stuff program". In 2006 Bigelow Aerospace announced its Fly your stuff program. This program is designed to allow private citizens to have their pictures or small items launched into space for $295 per item. These items will then be photographed by cameras aboard the Genesis II craft.
With the successful launch and program test of Genesis I on items from Bigelow staff, the Genesis II is now scheduled to fly with the items and pictures from customers in early 2007. Already, private interests are working on initial space trip vehicle designs, and travel and tourism business interests are offering initial space trip services that could begin in the next few years. It is hoped that this report will draw wide attention to a fundamentally new human dimension of space that can and should be created, and to suggest ways by which many of us can help to see this come about responsibly and at a relatively early moment. The future is upon us.

In 2005, Popular Science (via Caveat lector ) had a cover story about the Robert Bigelow project to build a 330-cubic-meter orbiting space hotel. Bargain-basement room rate: $1 million a night.