More affordable space tourism is viewed as a money-making proposition by several companies, including Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, Armadillo Aerospace, XCOR Aerospace, Rocket plane, and others. Most are proposing vehicles that make suborbital flights peaking at an altitude of 100 kilometres. P&ssengers would experience several minutes of weightlessness, a view of a twinkle-free starfield, and a vista of the curved Earth below. Projected costs are expected to be in the range of $100,000 per passenger, with costs dropping over time to $20,000.
Under current US law, any company proposing to launch paying passengers from American soil on a suborbital rocket must receive a license
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from the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation (FAA/AST). The licensing process focuses on public safety and safety of property, and the details can be found in the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 14, Chapter III.
Constellation Services International (CSI) is working on a project to send manned spacecraft on commercial circumlunar missions. Their offer would include a week-long stay at the ISS, as well as a week-long trip around the Moon. They expect to be operational by 2008, according to their best case scenario. Space Adventures Ltd. has also announced that they are working on lunar missions, also possibly in 2008 or 2009.
In the long term, orbital tourism may be superseded by planetary (and, later still, interstellar) tourism. Such possibilities have been explored in detail in many science fiction works.
More information about the future of Space Tourism can be found at Space Tourism Lecture, which is a free online handout collection. Since 2003 Dr. Robert A. Goehlich teaches the world's first and only Space Tourism class at Keio University, Yokohama, Japan.