Will the shuttle soon be taking people on holiday to space stations?

Fancy going on holiday somewhere where the views are out of this world and you feel euphoric and weightless? A trip into orbit could be just the answer - that's if you can fork out several million dollars for the ticket!

With the help of US company Space Adventures, the first two space tourists - Dennis Tito (USA) and Mark Shuttleworth (South Africa) - made a 10-day trip to the International Space Station in April 2001 and 2002 respectively. You too could take off from one of the Russian Aviation and Space Agency's facilities, and fly into orbit aboard one of its Soyuz spacecraft - for the sky-high sum of $20 million. The price tag may seem steep, but one pound of payload costs $10,000 to be put into low Earth orbit on the space shuttle.

Undeterred, several space tourism companies are planning to build suborbital vehicles, orbital hotels and lunar cruise ships within the next two decades. Who knows, in 30 years time space planes could be taking off for the moon at the same frequency as airplanes flying between New York and Los Angeles!