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( Space tourism)
Space tourism is the recent phenomenon of tourists paying for flights into space pioneered by Russia. As of 2008, orbital space tourism opportunities are limited and expensive, with only the Russian Space Agency providing transport. The price for a flight brokered by Space Adventures to the International Space Station aboard a Soyuz spacecraft is now $20 million. Flights are fully booked until 2009. Among the primary attractions of space tourism are the uniqueness of the experience, the thrill and awe of looking at Earth from space (described by astronauts as extremely intense and mind-boggling[citation needed]), the experience's notion as an exclusive status symbol, and various advantages of weightlessness. The space tourism industry is being targeted by spaceports in numerous locations, including California, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Florida, Virginia, Alaska, Esrange in Sweden and Wisconsin, as well as Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. Some use the term "personal spaceflight" as in the case of the Personal Spaceflight Federation. After initial successes in space, much of the public saw intensive space exploration as inevitable. In people's minds, such exploration was symbolized by wide public access to space, mostly in the form of space tourism. Those aspirations are best remembered in science fiction works (and one children's book), such as Arthur C. Clarke's A Fall of Moondust and also 2001 A Space Odyssey, Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, Joanna Russ's 1968 novel Picnic on Paradise, and Larry Niven's Known Space stories. Lucian in 2 A.D. in his book True History examines the idea of a crew of men whose ship travels to the Moon during a storm. Jules Verne also took up the theme of lunar visits in his books, From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon. Robert A. Heinlein’s short story The Menace from Earth, published in 1957, was one of the first to incorporate elements of a developed space tourism industry within its framework. During the 1960s and 1970s, it was common belief that space hotels would be launched by 2000. Many futurologists around the middle of the 20th century speculated that the average family of the early 21st century would be able to enjoy a holiday on the Moon.
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