There have been better golfers than Alan Shepard, but his shot on February 6th, 1971, stands out in history. A six-iron aimed nowhere in particular, it was off the ground for a full 30 seconds before landing 200 yards away in the fine white dust of the surface. Shepard left the ball where it was, and bounced back to his spacecraft. Someday, someone will go back to the moon, find the ball and take a putter to it. Actually, it was Shepard's second shot. He screwed up the first, sending it 100 feet into a crater. He had been practising for months, sneaking into the test labs late at night, figuring out how to swing a club in a heavy space suit. He bought the balls himself so that it wouldn't cost the taxpayer any money, had the club specially made so that he could fit it onboard the cramped spacecraft, and surprised the NASA controllers by producing it at the end of the mission. This was at the tail-end of the lunar visits, when the race had been won and the public had stopped cheering. In that distant, frozen darkness Shepard didn't think anyone would notice his sporting first. In space, no one can hear you scream "in the hole!". He may have travelled 240,000 miles to do more than just hit a golf ball, but Shepard was only being human. He had visited a distant, unspoiled spot, admired it for a while and then turned it into a leisure destination. Dennis Tito knew this, and had the will and the cash to back it up. If the 60-year-old Tito finally takes his holidays today and becomes the first space tourist, NASA won't be too keen on the idea of his turning up at the International Space Station for a tour, but it will be the same old story of tourists arriving at an unspoilt spot and annoying the locals. All this millionaire wants is the chance to do a little sightseeing, take a few photos and go to a place a little off the beaten track. The ISS is attractive given its self-contained, basic accommodation with great sea views. Which sea? It depends on what time of the day you look out your window. Tito's original plan was to take a 10day break in January on Mir, just before the station they call Starship Lada was steered towards the Earth and plunged into the Pacific Ocean. When the Russian space agency put Mir forward as the ultimate holiday destination, it had been hoped that more like him - with big dreams and big bank accounts to match - would step forward and pay the $20million ticket price to keep it in orbit.
Tito, however, became the only civilian at Star City, once the home to heroes of another era, but now a place where over-ambitious millionaires get their kicks, and where he trained with only his two Cosmonaut Sherpas and a group of lowly-paid scientists for company. But he had paid a lot of money to fulfil a childhood dream, and nothing - not the spartan conditions, not the notorious stink aboard Mir, not the one-in-a-hundred chance of his not surviving - could put him off. He may have been alone in the crumbling, overgrown surroundings, but he is not alone in the dream. More than 130 people have already put a deposit on a two-hour sub-orbital flight with Space Island Group, optimistically scheduled to take place in 2005. At $98,000, these are not people who would otherwise have spent a fortnight in Benidorm, but research says that 10,000 Americans would be willing to pay $1 million to go into space. Another company, Zegrahm Expeditions, is planning a sub-orbital flight for 2002, but the Russians are already giving people a taster with flights on an aircraft which flies in a series of parabolic arcs to simulate weightlessness. They call that plane the "vomit comet". On a planet where it sometimes seems as if you can't wander the central dunes of the Sahara without bumping into a backpacker looking for a cheap hostel and an Internet cafe, space is the final tourism frontier. "See the world," the slogans might read, "all at once". There is no doubt there are a lot of bored millionaires looking for that ultimate kick, a lot of civilians who watched the heroics of the square jaws and buzz cuts of times past and dreamed of following them. The cash is there, the demand too; all they're waiting for is the technology to catch up.
SENDING a rocket into space is an expensive business. Putting a simple satellite into space already costs $10,000 per pound, and as yet no private company has managed to put a rocket into orbit. But the race is on. In 1996, a group of Missouri entrepreneurs established the X Prize, with a $10 million reward for anybody who could demonstrate that they can get three people up there and back. They don't even have to go all the way; a 100-kilometre high, sub-orbital glimpse of space will do. To date, 19 blueprints have been entered, but the breakthrough is still a very optimistic three years away. Even when that stage is reached, getting the costs down to $200 a pound - which NASA hopes will be possible by 2020 - will still set holidaymakers back $100,000 to $200,000 per ticket before they even visit the lunar gift shop. And what will they do when they get there? Probably the same things that they do down here, if one Las Vegas project is anything to go by. Billionaire Robert Bigelow, a man who made his cash building budget hotels, has promised $500 million for an enormous cruise starship that will bring people to the Moon's orbit and back. En route, guests will be able to amuse themselves doing zero-gravity aerobics, sucking on gourmet space food and - inevitably - joining the 300,000-mile-high club. Being Las Vegas, that the whole project is centred around a cosmological casino should be no surprise. It will only be a matter of time before an alien planet turns up a little green Elvis impersonator. It's all pretty ambitious considering most private rockets have struggled just to get off the ground. NASA administrator, Dan Goldin, dismisses the promises as "gimmicks to overcome the unbelievable lack of technology that they have", but it doesn't stop the dreaming - or the scheming. The Hilton Hotel Group now plans to expand off-world, and several Japanese corporations have long been researching the idea. Lunar astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, has been touring the world for the non-profit organisation ShareSpace, touting a plan for extra-terrestrial tourism. And the ultimate sanction: Richard Branson has registered the company name of Virgin Galactic Airways.
But there is another way of getting to the stars. After their deaths, both LSD guru, Tim Leary, and Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry, had their ashes ejected into space. It will put a $12,500 dent in your loved one's inheritance if you wish to do likewise. Why only visit, when you can stay an eternity?