UNTIL now, the only people with a realistic hope of becoming “space tourists” have been multimillionaires who can afford to spend months training for a flight on a Russian .
That is likely to change dramatically in coming years. Last month Falcon 1, built by Californian company , became the first privately built rocket to enter Earth orbit, and the struck a deal with to allow scientists to monitor climate change from its spacecraft. Civilian spaceflight, it seems, is firmly on the horizon (see “Space flight into a legal black hole”)…
