After many months of 'on-again, off-again' rumours that the MIR space station could be maintained in orbit as a private business facility if some tens of millions of dollars of new investment could be raised, it appears that this is about to happen.

With powered flight starting in 1903, aviation grew from zero to nearly $1 trillion/year by the end of the 20th century. So, starting in 2003 - and a sub-orbital space flight by private citizens will be the most appropriate achievement to commemorate the centenary of the Wright brothers' historic, first powered flight - we can expect to see space tourism services growing to a huge scale by 2100. Indeed, the potential for economic growth in the 21st century is much greater than that in the 20th, due to the accumulation of financial assets and to the growth and spread of financial markets world-wide. Consequently a new idea (such as mobile phones) can grow and spread through the entire world economy in just a few years. Thus passenger space travel could grow to reach a turnover of about $1 trillion/year by 2050 (by which time aviation will be several $trillion/year).

Mr Goldin has yet to keep the promise he made before a crowded session of the Space Frontier Foundation Conference on September 24 - that he would put the historic NASA/STA report 'General Public Space Travel and Tourism' on space tourism on the NASA website.

Space.com runs with an article titled, "Wanna Be A Space Tourist?" at:

In a Mobile, Alabama Register editorial titled poorly, "Mars failures may have influenced," are the seeds of discontent that Americans feel towards a spectator "space program."

In an article entitled "The Engineering of Dreams: The Future of Commercial Space" published in the National Space Society's magazine " Ad Astra" (September/October issue), Maxwell Hunter, one of the greats of rocket engineering, makes the case conclusively for launch vehicle development to focus on carrying passengers:

Dole Food Products Inc, the world's largest fresh fruit company, is offering tickets for a sub-orbital space flight to winners of a sweep-stake it is organising.

This article appeared in the business and finance section, not the human interest section. Next milestone is for it to appear in the travel section, where future space tourists will lust for the ultimate "get away from it all" vacation.

Eight excellent papers concerning various aspects of space tourism were presented to an audience of about 100 people in the session "Space Tourism and other Novel Space Applications" held on October 7th at the 50th IAF Congress in Amsterdam. (There were no other topics.)

Two students in the Faculty of Tourism at Bournemouth University in England carried out surveys relating to space tourism in the 1998-99 academic year. (In a sign of the times, both students also published their work on the World Wide Web.)