It is now more than 6 months since Mr Goldin promised in front of a plenary session of the 1999 Space Frontier Foundation Conference to put NASA's space tourism report on NASA's web-site. But he has still not done so.

Energiya, a space technology company, and Gold & Appel, a holdings firm, recently established a joint venture, MirCorp, whose purpose is to commercialise the orbiting space station, Mir.

A surprising number of "special reports" on the 21st century published in newspapers and magazines fail even to mention the possibility of space tourism - which shows just how blind they are. That's because the growth of space tourism is going to be a "core change" in human society through the 21st century, as the spread of air travel world-wide was a core change of 20th century society. (It would be an interesting project for a student (perhaps studying the history of technology?) to survey and record how inaccurate these turn-of-the-century articles were.)

A workshop on Human Space Transportation and Exploration is taking place from February 28-March 1st in Galveston, Texas.

After many months of 'on-again, off-again' rumours that the MIR space station could be maintained in orbit as a private business facility if some tens of millions of dollars of new investment could be raised, it appears that this is about to happen.

With powered flight starting in 1903, aviation grew from zero to nearly $1 trillion/year by the end of the 20th century. So, starting in 2003 - and a sub-orbital space flight by private citizens will be the most appropriate achievement to commemorate the centenary of the Wright brothers' historic, first powered flight - we can expect to see space tourism services growing to a huge scale by 2100. Indeed, the potential for economic growth in the 21st century is much greater than that in the 20th, due to the accumulation of financial assets and to the growth and spread of financial markets world-wide. Consequently a new idea (such as mobile phones) can grow and spread through the entire world economy in just a few years. Thus passenger space travel could grow to reach a turnover of about $1 trillion/year by 2050 (by which time aviation will be several $trillion/year).

Mr Goldin has yet to keep the promise he made before a crowded session of the Space Frontier Foundation Conference on September 24 - that he would put the historic NASA/STA report 'General Public Space Travel and Tourism' on space tourism on the NASA website.

Space.com runs with an article titled, "Wanna Be A Space Tourist?" at:

In a Mobile, Alabama Register editorial titled poorly, "Mars failures may have influenced," are the seeds of discontent that Americans feel towards a spectator "space program."

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).