Up until recently, space has been an exclusive prerogative of powerful nations. For decades, only the USA and the USSR (later Russia) were privileged to send people to the circumterraneous space. Recently, the two countries were joined by China that sent its first national astronauts into orbit and declared the launch of its Lunar Exploration program. There are a number of countries that mastered sending Earth satellites, however, they amount to not more than ten.

Nonetheless, there have always been a lot of people who wish to visit space. People are intrigued by the idea of spaceflight, but their excitement is restrained because they don't consider it a possibility for themselves. So far, to effectuate such a flight, outside state programs, was feasible for only a small number of the very wealthy. An American citizen, Dennis Tito, became the first space tourist who purchased a round-trip ticket on the Russian spaceship “Soyuz”, for reported $20 million.

However, the idea of space tourism, as well as the use of spaceflight as an advertising medium, does not belong to Mr. Tito. As far back as 1995, an American photographer Sergey Melnikoff executed an agreement with the Russian rocket-and-space corporation “Energy” on an orbital trip and a 10-day stay on Mir Space Station. At that time, the cost was estimated to reach $15 million, to be paid by one of the worldwide credit card company.

The idea was as simple as everything of genius: the space tourist would take his own credit card, purchase an orbital flight and – “sky is the limit”. The flight itinerary was prepared and the space tourist was to start on “Soyuz-27” and return on “Soyuz-26”, which at that time was attached to the space station.

In the same year, IPV News USA registered rights to promotional activity in near-Earth space. It was a comprehensive program that could turn any trade mark into an international brand. However, first in a series of fires on Mir Space Station ruined Mr. Melnikoff’s ambitious plans.

Private spaceflights for “no other purpose than having fun” are essentially a new thing. They are significantly lower in price, a prospective tourist would spend no more than a week in preparation for a flight, and government authorities would not interfere with this activity, except for the issuing a license to companies that provide such services. In fact, such companies have already combined and founded a consortium of firms known as the Space Transportation Association. They were also the first to build a private space launching site in the state of Nevada.

However, these spacefaring companies lack the most essential – spacecrafts adequately designed for space tourism. Since the US and Russia did not show much interest in designing astroplanes to accommodate the ambitions of “insane” space tour operators, the latter had no choice but to turn to private companies to master this innovative enterprise. The American industrialist Dr. Peter Diamandis was the first to capture the spirit of that time. In May of 1996, together with a group of American businessmen, he established and chaired the Ansari X Prize Foundation – a revolution in private spaceflight – whose mission was to incite and sponsor innovations that have potential to benefit humanity.

The Ansari X PRIZE was modeled after the $25,000 Orteig Prize, offered in 1919 by the wealthy hotelier Raymond Orteig, to the first pilot who could fly non-stop between New York and Paris. The prize was won in 1927 by an unknown airmail pilot named Charles Lindbergh. Before Lindbergh won the hearts of the nation, the competition stimulated not one, but nine different attempts to cross the Atlantic, and, as a result, spawned a $250 billion aviation industry.

Dr. Diamandis realized that his lifelong dream of traveling into space could be made a reality through the creation of a prize similar to the one Lindbergh was awarded for. Today, the Ansari X Prize Foundation is based in St. Louis, state of Missouri. This city was chosen because these were the businessmen from St. Louis who raised the necessary funds and helped Lindberg to build his famous plane, called Spirit of St. Louis.

So in early 1996, the St. Louis community - in a return to its roots as a center of the early aerospace industry - committed to provide additional funding to organize the Foundation and became the first headquarters of the X PRIZE Foundation. They saw in it the opportunity to revive the city’s reputation as the US center of aviation industry. Only very few people know that descent vehicles of the first American spacecrafts, Mercury and Gemini – the predecessors of the famous Apollo, were built in St. Louis.

The concept behind the X Prize competition was to make space open to everyone, and not only to state agencies and the very wealthy. Thus, the X Prize Foundation began a revolution in private spaceflight with the $10 million award to be given to a team who would be able to build and launch a space shuttle for several people, by private funds. Later that same year, American spacecraft SpaceShipOne, led by the Mojave Aerospace Ventures team, organized by two companies, Scale Composites and Vulcan, captured the Ansari X PRIZE. The world took notice of this great achievement and the notorious SpaceShipOne is now can be observed in the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum.

On June 21, 2004, the first private space flight in history, organized and effectuated without any involvement of government institutions, finally took place. The shuttle flew to height of 100.1 kilometers and remained there for three and a half minutes. Upon its completion, the spacecraft pilot, Mike Melville, was officially declared a USA astronaut and received an applicable emblem from the hands of the Federal Aviation Administration representative. Thus, government monopoly on space travel ceased to exist.

This success by Americans was noticed by the British billionaire Richard Branson, the founder of a number of Virgin companies. Even prior to the first official flight of SS1 in the Ansari X Prize competition, Branson announced about signing a contract with Mojave Aerospace Ventures on the construction of five suborbital shuttles under the name of Virgin Galactic SpaceShip. The amount of the 15-year contract is $20 million, which may vary depending on the final quantity of constructed spaceships.

The first tourist spacecraft received a name of VSS Enterprise. Structurally, as well as in its outward design, the vehicle resembles SpaceShipOne, but the new shuttle has the capacity to take five passengers on board plus a pilot. Their adventure would begin about a week before liftoff, when prospective space tourists would arrive at the spaceflight facilities in the Mojave Desert. At first, they would learn about spaceflight and undergo specific instruction in safety, basic procedures, what to expect during different phases of the flight, and how to move in microgravity. An entire flight would take no more than 3 hours, out of which 3 minutes would be the phase of weightlessness, at the height of more than 100 kilometers above the Earth.

Advocates of space tourism paint a very promising picture. Much of their attention is devoted to developing an economical, fully reusable launch vehicle. If in fact they can reduce launch costs to a small fraction of what they are today, they will eliminate one of the greatest bottlenecks to our advancement in space. By raising the prospects of space tourism, industry advocates give us the model to leverage the elements of public interest, entrepreneurial spirit and cross-disciplinary innovations to bring about progress that benefits us all. They offer us a wonderful gift of exciting new experiences. How about orbiting around the Earth or landing on the surface of our celestial neighbor?