• Tom Rogers

Serious discussion of the possibility of space travel by "ordinary people", i.e., people other than professional astronauts, has been underway for the past four decades.

Originally it was thought that our civil space program would undertake activities that would see this possibility realized. And, indeed, we did see one of our Senators, a Congressman and an Arabian prince take a trip to space. In parallel, two private persons, one from the United Kingdom and one from Japan, traveled to/from the Russian space station MIR.

However, the government pace was slow, and in the mid-1980's a few small companies were formed in the United States that began to explore the possibility of creating viable private sector space tourism enterprises.