Spaceport Singapore

A pioneering space tourism company called Space Adventures (the same guys who organised Dennis Tito's- the first space tourist who paid his way to space- trip to the International Space Station) is collaborating with Singapore to build a Spaceport right here in Singapore! According to the official site, the spaceport will offer suborbital space flights, zero-G flights, simulated space walks, space camps and astronaut-for-a-day programmes. The suborbital flights are the main attraction, though Channel Newsasia reports a ticket on one of those will set a traveller back a cool hundred thousand US dollars. Ouch. Clearly, space travel is still going to be for the super-rich for a while (the rest of us can just go on simulated space walks, I suppose *sighs*) but I'm still really enthused about this development! Private initiatives like this spaceport will eventually drive down the cost of space travel- I'm confident that within 20 years, space travel will hit prices that are more-or-less affordable for the common (upper-middle class) man. Or woman, for that matter. And space travel isn't just a vanity thing for rich folk, either! Besides giving people the opportunity to witness the beauty of our planet from space, commercial space flight will eventually let us make suborbital flights around the globe (you can travel anywhere on the globe in just 45 minutes that way!) and even travel to the moon- again! If you've got even one adventurous bone in your body, then that's just bloody exciting.