Space tourism attracts new kind of astronaut

Space.com : The first person in space, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, made his flight 50 years ago on 12 April 1961. Now there is a new space race that is centering on space tourism, writes Clara Moskowitz for Space.com. Commercial companies are gearing up to send the first paying passengers to space on private spaceships. “It’s an exciting time for the industry,” said George Whitesides, president of suborbital spaceship company Virgin Galactic . “I really believe that we’re at the edge of an extraordinary period of innovation which will radically change our world.” The first flights will take passengers to an altitude of about 100 km, where they will experience about five minutes of weightlessness before returning to Earth. Although Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane is still being tested, regular tourist flights could start as early as 2012.