Astronaut James Newman waves at the camera during a space walk outside the Unity Module of the International Space Station
CONTENTS So You Want to Go to SPACE SUBORBIT Surfboard Spaceships and Giant-Panda G-FORCES EARTH ORBIT Around the World in 90 MINUTES ORBITAL CRUISE All Aboard Your SPACE YACHT The MOON Crater Skiing and BAMBOO HOTELS COMETS Discovering Your Own SPACE SNOWBALL MARS A Journey to the RED PLANET JUPITER A Solar System Within a SOLAR SYSTEM SATURN A Frozen PARADISE What’s Next TO THE STARS INDEX 6 18 28 38 48 58 66 76 84 94 97
So You Want to Go to SPACE Have you ever looked up at the stars and wondered what’s out there For the first few decades of spaceflight vacationing in the cosmos was something that only happened in science fiction But now journeys into space are becoming more possible for more people And that means with some preparation and a taste for adventure one of those people could be you
to take vacationers to the Moon and other places near the Earth And new technology being developed right now could mean travel to destinations like Mars the moons of Jupiter and beyond Going into space for fun has actually been possible for a while The first paying space tourist went up way back in 2001 when an American businessman named Dennis Tito took a one-week vacation in Earth orbit at the International Space Station ISS But it was expensive he had to pay U S 20 million for the experience Since then a total of seven people including former Microsoft executive Charles Simonyi and Cirque du Soleil co-founder Guy Laliberté have vacationed on the ISS As well hundreds of people have trips booked on rockets that fly shorter suborbital trips roughly 100 km 60 mi above the Earth But at U S 95 000 to 250 000 a ticket that’s still a lot of pocket change for the average person Once more people have gone though experts predict that the cost of taking a space vacation could drop down to the average price of a new car Trip of a Lifetime Getting to take a trip into space used to mean that you had to be at the top of your class in math science and lots of other subjects After that you’d have to become one of the best fighter pilots in the world or be an incredible scientist Speaking several languages and being really good at sports and different hobbies would also help But even with all these qualities you and thousands of others would still have had to compete for only a handful of professional astronaut jobs While doing well in school is always a good idea and getting paid to explore the cosmos would be pretty awesome the exciting news is that there are now more opportunities to become a space adventurer Today the dream of heading to space isn’t just for those who work for government organizations like the National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA or the Canadian Space Agency CSA Already a small number of people have gone on vacations using spaceships originally built for astronauts working in space Meanwhile the development of new materials means engineers are working to build more efficient spacecraft for quick trips into space for fun and adventure New ways of thinking have created plans for space cruisers Astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson looks out a window in the Cupola of the International Space Station A part of Earth and the blackness of space can be seen through the windows
