Space Adventures president and CEO Eric Anderson launches its moon voyage.
Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty
Got $100m (£56m) to spare? Thought not, but there are people who have: rich western entrepreneurs who seem to spend most of their time coming up with new ways to spend their cash. They're the customers Space Adventures is hoping to convince to buy a trip to the moon.
The DSE-Alpha voyage - the first to orbit the moon in more than 30 years - is promoted via a suitably whizzy website promoting space tourism and featuring a paean to moon missions which also praises "the drive of free enterprise" that is now opening up space to - well, anyone, provided you're a multimillionaire.
At present, space tourism is the domain solely of super rich entrepreneurs seeking the next thrill. But as John Spencer, founder and president of the Space Tourism Society, told the National Geographic:
Space tourism over the next 50 years will be a unique, expensive proposition. As the industry grows, we will have hundreds of thousands of people going and costs will go down.
Virgin Galactic is offering suborbital space travel scheduled to begin in 2008 for the much more achievable price of $200,000 in a scheme Sir Richard Branson's had on his mind for a while. It's not quite so impressive as checking out the dark side of the moon, admittedly, but the price tag does place a space flight of sorts within the grasp of a few more well-heeled travellers sick of luxury cruises. It can only be a matter of time until Stelios Haji-Ioannou launches EasyRocket.
