The first flights of the new airlines that will take tourists past the edge of space are poised to take off in 2012, and getting a seat on one is not all that different from booking a trip someplace on Earth. You can sign up on the web site of, say, Virgin Galactic, the most prominent of the new space tourism companies, or go to a travel agent and put down a hefty deposit. Soon you will be able to buy travel insurance, just as you can for any other vacation.  

Until now, space tourism has been limited to the ultrawealthy: Just seven people have paid tens of millions of dollars for a trip to the International Space Station aboard a Russian rocket. But that could change this year, when Virgin Galactic intends to start offering flights just beyond the space barrier on a rocket ship it has built, featuring five minutes of weightlessness during a 2 1/2-hour jaunt. At US$200,000 a seat, this will open the final frontier to far more people.  

“Hopefully by next Christmas, myself, my daughter and my son will be the first people to go up into space,” Richard Branson, the owner of Virgin Galactic, said in a videotaped interview in November (with a touch of his signature grandiosity).  

At least two other speciality airlines have jumped in as well, taking reservations (and deposits) for future space flights.  

Allianz, the big insurer, will introduce an insurance product in 2012, lending space tourism the trappings of the regular travel industry.  

“Just to be able to sell space travel as a regular part of your business, really, just how cool is that?” said Lynda Turley Garrett, president of Alpine Travel of Saratoga, California, who is one of 58 accredited space agents for Virgin Galactic in the United States.  

In five years, she has sold three seats, including Culver’s. But she expects that to change once passengers start going up and coming down to tell their friends.  

By 2017, “it’ll be just like scheduling a flight to LA,” Garrett predicted.  

Culver, who has worked as a mission controller at NASA and now gives motivational talks, has always wanted to go to space; she applied four times to become a NASA astronaut, with no luck.  

To book her spaceflight, she wanted a face-to-face conversation, so she looked through the list of Virgin’s space agents and was pleased to find one near her San Jose, California, home. She and Garrett spent some time chatting, then went to lunch and chatted more.  

Soon afterward, Culver put down her $20,000 deposit, becoming one of 475 people who have reserved a place on a Virgin Galactic flight. Most of them have already paid the full ticket price to rise above the 100-kilometre-high altitude that is considered the entrance to outer space. (People who pay in full will get the first seats.)  

These flights will not orbit the Earth. Rather, they will be up-and-down “suborbital” jaunts more akin to a giant roller coaster ride, offering about five minutes of weightlessness at the acme of the flight. The trip is not for the faint of stomach: NASA used to train astronauts on a fast-diving airplane that offered intervals of weightlessness and was nicknamed the Vomit Comet – apparently for good reason.  

For Virgin’s customers, the ride to space will culminate a three-day trip to the newly built Spaceport America in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Part of the time will be spent on training and preparations. Part of it will be fun on the ground. “Typical Virgin, there’ll be parties going on,” Garrett said.  

On the third day, a carrier airplane with the SpaceShipTwo rocket ship slung underneath will take off from the runway and fly to 15,240 meters, where the rocket ship will be launched.  

At that point, the force of acceleration will press passengers deep into their chairs – someone who weighs 77 kilograms will feel like half a ton. Then the roar of the engine will fade to silence, the blue sky will fade to black, and weight will turn to weightlessness.  

“You’ll be able to unbuckle, move about the cabin, do somersaults, get your picture taken with the Earth’s curvature in the background,” Garrett said.  

After that, the passengers will strap back into their seats before SpaceShipTwo reenters the atmosphere, exerting another few minutes of crushing forces. Once it has slowed, it will glide back to the runway.  

For Culver, the Virgin flight will fulfil a dream, albeit an expensive one. “In California, it would be similar to buying a house,” she said.