Illustration for TIME by Daryll Collins

So, you've arrived. Sit down in the plush, pressurized interior, take the weightlessness from those shoes, look out of the window, breathe, blink and then look again. The scene you're staring at will make your eyes shout: a crescent Earth hanging in the black sky. Ladies and gentlemen travelers, welcome to space.

The race to the heavens is on its way to becoming big business. The World Tourism Organization predicts that space travel will be positively prosaic by 2020, and companies are already trampling each other in the rush to get tourists there first. Seattle's Zegrahm Space Voyages, one of a growing number of prospective space-tour operators, is already offering sub-orbital flights, 100 km up, starting in 2001 and has taken more than 50 bookings. The 150-minute flight, which includes two minutes of weightlessness, will cost at least $100,000 a person. More modestly, travelers can ride to the "edge of space," 22 km high, in a Soviet-built MiG-25 fighter aircraft operated by another U.S. firm, Space Adventures, for $12,000.

Passengers who want to go higher may have to wait. NASA has no plans to accept paying customers on its shuttle missions. But a U.S. group, the X Prize Foundation, is offering $10 million to the first designer to develop a ship that can carry passengers into space. So far, 15 blueprints have been submitted.

One of the most enthusiastic entrepreneurs in the business is former U.S. astronaut Buzz Aldrin. The second man to step on the moon, Aldrin has formed a nonprofit company, ShareSpace, to promote mass tourism in space. "The building's the easy part," he says. "It's getting it up there that's the problem." To fund research into his vision of launch vehicles and Earth-orbiting accommodations for large numbers of travelers, ShareSpace plans a lottery. For about $10, customers can buy a chance to win a number of prizes that are already available, including suborbital weightless flights of the sort Zegrahm Space Voyages is selling.

Even if somebody figures out how to get you there, you will face an extremely acute hotel shortage. There are, of course, no orbiting Hiltons like the one in 2001: A Space Odyssey, despite founder Barron Hilton's claim 30 years ago: "We are going to have Hiltons in space, soon enough for me to officiate at the opening of the first." Design firm Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo, creator of the Legoland Theme Park in Windsor, England, is working on that problem. The firm's planned space resort, a cross between a theme park and a cruise ship, would accommodate 100 people as they orbit the Earth 320 km up, dining on hydroponically grown food. Aldrin is a consultant to the scheme. It also has the blessing of NASA, which wants to encourage the commercialization of space.

Wimberly vice president Howard Wolff expects to have the space haven habitable by 2017. Passengers will be able to make sidetrips to the moon, which he calls "the Cannes of the solar system." He enthuses: "A flight up to this resort would take less time than a plane ride between Hong Kong and Singapore. Think about that." Would-be travelers may find other issues to think about, like safety--the 1986 Challenger disaster may deter some--and ticket prices that are likely to be, literally and figuratively, astronomical. Says Wolff: "The Catch-22 is that until there is public demand for space travel, costs will never come down. Private enterprise could develop this at a tenth of the cost the government pays now, without jeopardizing safety." Would he go up in a private spacecraft? "Risk is risk," he says, "whether you cross the road or spacewalk." One man who has been there insists the trip is definitely worth taking. "The view from space is like having a globe on your desk," says Aldrin. "It's a broadening experience after looking at parts of the Earth only on maps to then see them for real."

R E L A T E D   L I N K S :

Space Tourism:
http://www.spacetransportation.org/page6.htm
Space Tourism Society:
http://members.aol.com/tourspace/stsintroF.html
Incredible Adventures:
http://www.incredible-adventures.com/
Civilian Astronaut Corps:
http://www.mayflowerrocket.com/