After taking eight years to get licenced to provide parabolic flight services to the general public, Zero Gravity Corporation finally started its long-awaited service on September 14.

by Alan Breakstone

Space Adventures, Ltd., the world's leading space experiences company, announced today the results of an informal survey of the over 100 people who have paid deposits to fly on a suborbital vehicle.

There is considerable controversy about the June 21st flight of SpaceShipOne, with some commentators saying that it is of little importance. So here is Space Future's view.

Scaled Composites has announced that SpaceShipOne will make its first flight to space on June 21, 2004 – a date that will live in the history of space flight along with those of other epoch-making flights, such as the first ever flight to space, by Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961, and the first private flight to space, by Dennis Tito on April 28, 2001.

Arlington, Va. -- May 18, 2004 --Space Adventures, Ltd., the world's leading space experiences company, announced today it has begun working with Dentsu, the world's largest advertising agency, to send a prominent Japanese figure to the International Space Station ( ISS) within the next several years.

by Derek Webber

Space Adventures announced that American Dr. Greg Olsen, scientist and founder of CEO of Sensors Unlimited, Inc., will become the third private space explorer. Following in the footsteps of Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth, Dr. Olsen hopes to inspire children to learn science and engineering with his work on the International Space Station ( ISS). His flight represents the first of the four exclusive flight opportunities that Space Adventures acquired in 2003 through their contract with the Russian Space Agency and RSC Energia.

On Thursday, March 4, 2004, the US House of Representatives approved legislation which is designed to promote the development of the emerging commercial human space flight industry.

In a characteristically stimulating presentation at the session on Space Tourism of the Space Technology and Applications International Forum (STAIF-2004) on Monday February 9, Chuck Lauer, Vice President for Business Development at Pioneer Rocketplane Inc, confirmed that the company had finalised an agreement with Spaceport Oklahoma (officially OSIDA, the Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority) to develop the passenger-carrying XP Rocketplane, which will be capable of sub-orbital flights, at Burns Flat in Oklahoma. The XP is an adapted Learjet, with a rocket engine being developed by Orbitec Inc. It is not primarily targeting the “X Prize” but the sub-orbital passenger market, including tourism. “But if no-one else has won the X-Prize by 2006, then we will” Lauer said.