Want To Go On A Tour? How About A Space Tour?

Yes, it’s true. Even if you are unable to believe your eyes and ears, scientists are on the process of chalking out a way to make space tours possible for an ordinary man.

#-Link-Snipped-#The experience will come true in a Virgin Galactic space plane which will charge a whooping amount of $200,000 for a four minute ride in the zero gravity space. The space plane won’t be completely a tourists’ vehicle. You could actually see scientists performing live experiments in front of you and might ultimately end up with a “Eureka... Eureka” if it’s a success. The ride into space will soon turn out to be a big business for Virgin as well as other companies aiming to invest in this newly found science and travelling business. A ticket worth $200,000 for a ride above the 62 mile altitude of the earth (which is the official altitude for space) might seem costly to most of the people but Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute says that “its revolutionary” when compared to the millions of dollars spent by the government agencies such as NASA to send scientists to research in the space. He also adds, "We're really at the edge of something transformational.”

Deposits for sending two scientists into the space have already been given to the Virgin's SpaceShipTwo vehicle by the Southwest Research Institute. They are planning to buy seats worth $1.6 million to carry research in the space. XCOR Aerospace and other companies are also planning to begin suborbital flights for people. This will help scientists from science agencies all over the world to carry on independent research in the space by paying for the seats in the travel vehicle. Southwest Research Institute strategizes to perform a lot of experiments which include an experiment on the behavior of loose soil and rocks covering the asteroids and flying an ultraviolet telescope that flew on the space shuttle Discovery in 1997. They also plan to create a device to measure heartbeat, blood pressure and other physical parameters of the scientist during flight in the space under a biomedical research.

The date has not been set for the flight but SpaceShipTwo is aimed to fly once or twice a day whereas XCOR's Lynx is designed for up to four flights a day. It is predicted that in a few years, hundreds of suborbital flights would be taking off every year. Every single flight would mean a might be new discovery altogether and for scientists’ new means to explore the universe. So people get ready. It will be time soon when you will be able take your family for a space tour but only it will cost you a fortune.

So are you ready for the ride?

Source & Image Credits: CharlotteObserver