The competition to ride into space, as well as to provide rides, is heating up. According the linked article, Space Adventures had a little soire in London to show off potential services to well-heeled clients, and it does indeed look as though (assuming that NASA gets the Shuttle flying again), there will be a purely commercial space tourism mission coming up. And also according to the article, Richard Branson would like to lose his space Virginity.

There's also a continued shift in perception underway:

...not everyone with an interest in British space exploration was excited about the prospect of the UK's first space tourist. Professor Colin Pillinger, the Open University scientist leading the Beagle 2 project to Mars, was among them.

"I'll believe it when I see it," said Professor Pillinger. "I doubt very much whether Nasa will let people just drop into the International Space Station for a cup of tea.

This kind of snooty dismissal is not atypical of responses from space science types. But what's different is the next quote from him, which shows that at last, he and his colleagues may be starting to get it. I should also note that he doesn't know what he's talking about, because in fact NASA has done just that, twice.

"The only possible benefit I can see from all this is that if more people are going into space, rockets will become cheaper for the rest of us."

Exactly. That's the point.

And that should be benefit enough for you, if not for those of us who want to go, so maybe you'll at least stop poo-pooing it?

Typical research scientist attitude-- distainful of money until it comes to his own pet projects. Not limited to space, as I've seen it in geologists-- travel to exotic or foreign places as a tourist is a waste of , but you dare not prevent me from attending those annual conferences in San Fran., Tokyo and Vienna, or cut the funding for my research projects in Kamchatka.

I'll say one thing-- the astronomers have figured out how to fund their biennial trips to solar eclipses by getting rich tourists to pay for a guided tour and then tagging along. Maybe time for so called "space scientists" to do a case study.

I'm kind of surprised that so far no one in South America has tried to set up a launch site on the equator (not counting ESA, I'm talking locals)

I've thought it would be a perfect opportunity for one of the Carribbean banking havens to expand into some form of heavy industry. Especially now, when we seem to be at a point where a concern with money can find multiple possible launch vendors thirsty for capital.

Hmm, I think Brazil did some stuff back in the 90's, but the government cut the program after the first two launches failed.