Publishing illustration

Space tourism.

Computer artwork of a crew member on a space tourism flight above the Earth. The spacecraft at centre is based on the SpaceShipOne design that won the Ansari X Prize by making its second ascent to 100 kilometres on 4 October 2004. Virgin Galactic is one of the companies developing plans for future space tourism. Virgin Galactic are building scaled-up versions of SpaceShipOne, and plan to begin flights in 2008. Flights will include seven minutes of weightlessness. Tickets could cost about £115,000 ($210,000), and include training for the flight. It is proposed that the first two Virgin SpaceShips will be called VSS Enterprise and VSS Voyager. Virgin Galactic plan to fly 500 passengers a year into space, and also have plans for a space hotel.

Image available for license from Science Photo Library