With Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo in flight testing and XCOR and Blue Origin well along in developing their vehicles, suborbital space tourism is about to become a reality…but that reality will belong only to the wealthy for the next couple of decades.

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.

Satellite and missile defense manufacturer Orbital Sciences is about slicing off a piece of that space tourism pie: Orbital announced, via Twitter, its second entry into the commercial crew and cargo delivery business with a private space plane called Prometheus.

As anyone who has studied business knows, corporations merge and divide like amoebae in a Petrie dish, often to the point where we cannot even tell who is merging with whom.

Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) successfully orbited and recovered its first Dragon space capsule today. This marks the first time a private company has successfully returned an orbiting spacecraft to earth.

As reported here a few days ago, Russia has announced its plans adding another Soyuz craft to its fleet dedicated to and taking two paying passengers along with a professional astronaut pilot as early as 2013.

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?

In a press release dated 9/27/10, Russia’s space agency Roscosmos announced its plans to allow two space tourists to ride its Soyuz craft along with a professional cosmonaut as pilot. “Such a proposal is under consideration of Roscosmos and the American Space Adventures (company)” said Alexei Krasnov, head of Roscosmos’ manned flights department. “There are also detailed offers which we will study in Washington at a meeting of space agencies’ heads,” he said.

There’s only one way to get from Earth to the International Space Station ( ISS): First, you have to pay about $30 million for a seat on a Russian Soyuz. Then, you spend six months learning both Russian and other necessary skills to handle yourself in weightlessness and during possible emergencies. Only then can you join the elite seven civilians who have made the trip to date.

The TED Conference lecture series includes anecdotes and stories from the movers and shakers of the world, such as Richard Branson and Benoit Mandelbrot, as well as other people with tales to tell. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, but TED has come to mean “ideas worth spreading.”