The Space Transportation Association based in Washington DC is one of the organisations putting most effort into changing official attitudes to space tourism, having been responsible for such historic steps as initiating and realising the historic NASA/STA joint study: General Public Space Travel and Tourism and holding the first space tourism conference in the USA (see below).

In an article entitled "The Engineering of Dreams: The Future of Commercial Space" published in the National Space Society's magazine " Ad Astra" (September/October issue), Maxwell Hunter, one of the greats of rocket engineering, makes the case conclusively for launch vehicle development to focus on carrying passengers:

Dole Food Products Inc, the world's largest fresh fruit company, is offering tickets for a sub-orbital space flight to winners of a sweep-stake it is organising.

An online article from the Orlando Sentinel article discusses the ups and downs of the commercial launch business at

The Space Enterprise Symposium will take place on Saturday, November 13 at Seattle's Museum of Flight. Five speakers will discuss commercialization of the International Space Station at the day-long event, which is sponsored by the Space Frontier Foundation, the Northwest Venture Group, the MIT Enterprise Forum of the Northwest, the Museum of Flight, and ProSpace America.

This article appeared in the business and finance section, not the human interest section. Next milestone is for it to appear in the travel section, where future space tourists will lust for the ultimate "get away from it all" vacation.

Eight excellent papers concerning various aspects of space tourism were presented to an audience of about 100 people in the session "Space Tourism and other Novel Space Applications" held on October 7th at the 50th IAF Congress in Amsterdam. (There were no other topics.)

Under the heading "Daimler-Chrysler becomes biggest shareholder in Spacehab Inc", _Space News_ reported (August 23, p 16) that the company has increased its shareholding in Spacehab Inc (which owns and operates habitable modules that fly on space shuttle flights) from 1% purchased in 1995 to 11.5%. This makes Daimler-Chrysler the largest shareholder in Spacehab Inc. and will give it more experience of crewed operations in space. This matches the company's role as prime contractor for the European Space Agency's module on the International Space Station.

Over 100 people from around the world gathered at the Space Transportation Association's "Going Public" Space Tourism conference in Washington, D.C. to learn more about the issues inhibiting space tourism from becoming a viable endeavor.