• Steve Fawkes
• Patrick Collins

As tourism activities around the world grow to include more and more varied offerings, the idea of space tourism - members of the public making trips to and from low Earth orbit and beyond - has started to be recognised as a serious possibility. For example, at the October 1997 general assembly of the World Tourism Organization, a report entitled "Tourism 2020 Vision" identified the advent of near-space tourism as one of the trends that will shape the tourism industry in the 21st century.

The subject of space tourism has also recently gained credibility among professional space organisations as a possible means for the commercialisation of space activities. For example, in March 1998 NASA published "General Public Space Travel and Tourism" the Final Report of a joint study with the US Space Transportation Association (STA). This study concluded that space tourism was indeed a realistic possibility; it is likely to start soon; and it will grow larger than all commercial activities in space today (1).