In Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey the 21st century was a world of rotating space stations, Moon bases and spaceplanes and the passengers, national government and United Nations personnel.
Space was another location for nations to play out their political games.
But recent events suggest that Kubrick's movie, based on Arthur C. Clarke's short story The Sentinel, was no where near as fantastic as the reality that could be before us; air launched Russian and US suborbital rocket glider vehicles carrying tourists on flights into weightlessness from the
If you believe the hype from the two companies now in a race to win this new market, Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and the US Space Adventures, wealthy individuals could become astronauts from 2008.
Space Adventures, which would use the Russian vehicle, is to operate its suborbital tourism service from a $115 million Singapore spaceport and boasted it would be first.
This announcement followed the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government's statement on 17 February that it would build a $265 million spaceport for Space Adventures' purposes, to be based at
Perhaps it was coincidence, or perhaps it was good public relations planning, but the announcements came just as the
While there is no stated completion date for the UAE port
However from late 2008 Virgin Galactic will use Mojave's airport, which is a Federal Aviation Administration licensed spaceport and is where SS1 won the Ansari X Prize.
And this is where there is a link between the two competitors.
The $10 million Ansari X Prize was funded in large part by the Ansari family.
That made the X Prize possible, which saw SS1 reach space, which saw Branson invest in SS2.
The Ansaris have set up a technology investment company called Prodea.
It's funding the development of Space Adventures' Explorer vehicle. It's being developed by the Russian aircraft company Myasishchev Design Bureau and is an evolution of that company's Cosmopolis(C)-21 vehicle.
In this new race Virgin Galactic has the advantage that its precursor vehicle, SS1, has actually gone into space - and twice in two weeks.
The C-21 has never been more than a full sized model, although Myasishchev and Space Adventures assert that Explorer has been under development for years.
So unless the Russians can rapidly build and successfully test Explorer it would seem that Virgin Galactic has a development advantage.
But before they gear up to be the world's first commercial suborbital service both sides should remember what schedule pressure's contribution has been to NASA's Space Shuttle fleet. Two Shuttle's lost, 14 astronauts killed.
A new commercial space race sounds dramatic and the fact that the two vehicle technologies are US and Russian harks back to the Cold War competition NASA won to get to the Moon.
But both parties should be thinking about being as safe as they can, not who can be first. The first fatal commercial suborbital flight could also be the last and that fantastic future, unforeseen by Clarke and Kubrick, may become a sorry story of hubris.
Safety is normally an important imperative where commercial passenger flying is concerned, and I suspect that none of the prime movers involved wishes to see this fledgling die before it really takes wing.
Also, we are still talking sub-orbital, which is far less of a stretch technically or financially, than going all the way.
David Jefferis