Out Of This World

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Some frequent fliers blow all their air miles on one big, exotic trip. Now they can start saving points toward the biggest trip of them all: a flight to space. Arlington, Virginia-based Space Adventures is now offering suborbital flights — that's just beyond our atmosphere, 100 km above the earth — from 2008 for those who have racked up 20 million points with American Express, or 10 million air miles with U.S. Airways. That's equivalent to 400 times around the globe.

Until then, for 275,000 air miles and $8,000, would-be space adventurers can take a flight on a MiG-25 jet fighter, which gets you 25 km high — you can see the earth's curvature. Or trade in 250,000 air miles and $2,000 to get weightless on a Russian Ilyushin 76 cargo plane used for space training, 11 km above the earth.

In 2004, eight people redeemed air miles with Space Adventures for these types of flights at the formerly top-secret Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City outside Moscow; that's a giant leap from 2003, when only three people redeemed. Space Adventures' first client was American businessman Dennis Tito, who paid $20 million of his own money to go to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2001. It's the ultimate travel high. tel: (1-888) 857-7223; www.spaceadventures.com