Yuri Gagarin went into space 50 years ago. When will you get your turn?
Yuri Gagarin became the first human to enter space on April 12, 1961. Fifty years later, isn't it about time you get a chance to be an astronaut?
US businessman, space tourist Gregory Olsen enjoys flying inside a zero-gravity simulator on board Russian IL-76 MDK Space Adventures' aircraft better known as the Flying Laboratory. Photo taken on Aug 25, 2005. Olsen is Space Adventures' third space tourist, and will follow American Dennis Tito and South African Mark Shuttleworth who visited space in 2001 and 2002 respectively.
Newscom
It's been exactly 50 years to date since Yuri Gagarin became the first person to go into space. When will it be your turn?
If you have an extra $102,000 lying around, you can buy your ticket today. Space Adventures, a company based in Vienna, Va., is developing a suborbital vehicle that will take you just past the Kármán line, the 62-mile-high boundary that demarcates the beginning of outer space. Space Adventures calls this figure a "relatively affordable price," which seems like a stretch until you compare it to the $20 million to $35 million that other space tourists have paid the company for trips to the final frontier.
According to CNN, "[m]ultiple companies are developing their own spaceships and their own plans for making money in space. Virgin Galactic, for example, could start taking tourists on suborbital joyrides as early as 2012, at $200,000 per seat. More than 400 people have already bought down payments for such a trip, according to company officials."
