On April 12, 1961, a young man from a small Russian village experienced something no one had ever experienced before: the thunder and shake of over 800,000 pounds of rocket thrust erupting beneath him. As Vostok 1 broke free of its launch restraints, Yuri Gagarin triumphantly yelled, “Let’s go!”

Most of us, this writer included, have probably never heard of Kerala and have no idea where it is, much less why it would be a subject of interest in space tourism.

So you want to take a trip into space, and you happen to have a $200,000 in your pocket. Congratulations, you’re eligible for a suborbital flight on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip Two. So how do book your trip when you can’t find a listing for “space” on Travelocity?

When Marianne Dyson, former NASA Mission Control specialist and author of “Space Station Science,” speaks with school children, she uses an exercise to demonstrate the difficulty of working in space. She has them try to pick a dime off a table top...while wearing boxing gloves.

Richard Garriott has the best geek cred, ever. Not only was his father an astronaut, but also he earned a not-so-small fortune writing videogames. Garriott plays with the most awesome toys (he owns a freakin’ Sputnik), lives in the coolest house (featured on HGTV and MTV’s Cribs), and has the most fun of anyone you’ll ever meet.

On March 25, 2010, at a private showing at New York City’s Core Club, Richard Garriott screened his documentary, Man on a Mission, about his experiences as a spaceflight participant.

by Carol Pinchefsky with G.B. Leatherwood

A "Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans" chaired by Norman Augustine has recently been anounced, to report at the end of August or later. A potentially important piece of good news is that "stimulating commercial space flight capability" is one of the subjects to be addressed by the review.

Dr. Simonyi is currently on his second trip to space, which is the seventh civilian trip brokered by US company Space Adventures. However, it will be the last for civilian space explorers for the foreseeable future. Due to expansion of the International Space Station ( ISS) crew from three to six starting in April, there will be no extra seats aboard the Soyuz capsules for non-professional space travelers.

In a hastily arranged teleconference on Friday, 3 April 2009, Space Adventures president and CEO Eric Anderson laid out some new developments for the company, the only one in the world that has arranged for private citizens to travel to the International Space Station, starting with Dennis Tito in 2001.