In the not-so-distant future, just about any body in good physical shape will be able to go into space—anybody that is, with $100,000 in spare cash. Although NASA has not yet bought into the concept of consumer space travel, private American companies (and possibly the Russians soon after) expect to offer suborbital flights for amateur astronauts before the end of 2005.

Space Adventures of Alexandria, Virginia is offering seven-day packages culminating with a two-and-a-half-hour flight into space. The tickets, which cost $98,000 and require a hefty deposit, are reported to be selling rapidly. During the trip, amateur astronauts will feel the pull of multiple G-forces on takeoff and reentry, and be able to clearly see the curvature of the Earth, though not the great blue marble as seen from the moon. The space trip will feature a two and a half minute period of weightlessness, during which tourists will do aerial back-flips on videotape...that is, if the trip ever takes place.

If a ride in space costing $600 per minute seems a little ridiculous to you, just wait a few years. Robert Bigelow, who is president and owner of the Budget Suites of America motel chain, believes in the future of space travel. He has committed $500 million towards the construction of a 100-passenger, half-mile-long luxury cruise ship that will orbit the moon (presumably at a lower cost).

British entrepreneur and balloonist Richard Branson—a man with a nose for opportunity as well as publicity—wants to get into the act with Virgin Galactic(!) Airways. Former astronauts, like Buzz Aldrin, are also pushing to take the masses to space. There is even a course taught, at the Rochester Institute of Technology, called “Space Tourism Development,” to train the next generation in space hospitality management.

Perhaps the real future is in space vacations. A joint study by NASA and the Space Tourism Association estimates space travel and tourism could be a $10- to $20-billion market. Bigelow Aerospace, also owned by Robert Bigelow, is exploring the construction of space hotels that would be partially assembled on Earth and carried into space for final assembly.

But don’t pack your bags yet; the cost to launch anything into space is still prohibitive. NASA’s space shuttle costs work out to about $10,000 per pound to put satellites into orbit, and rockets aren’t much cheaper. Bigelow Aerospace believes launch costs need to fall to $550 per pound before space hotels become a reality.

A California company, Space Island Group, thinks it has the solution: a space station built from used external fuel tanks left in orbit by space shuttles.

If big space hotels are not cost effective, how about a little orbiting bed and breakfast? MirCorp, a Netherlands-based company that attempted to salvage the Mir space station, hopes to launch a tiny space station for tourists. The space bungalow, to be called Mini Station 1, will hold only three visitors at a time. Bring your own Tang.

On the other hand, if you have $20 million, you can now reserve a seat aboard the Soyuz rocket, like tycoons Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth, who lodged at the orbiting International Space Station. All you have to do is learn to speak Russian and spend six months training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia. Space Adventures, which also offers rides in Russian military aircraft, is brokering the trips.

Even if space hotels do not become a reality in your lifetime, don’t be too chagrined. Space cabins are not exactly the Ritz-Carlton—or even a Budget motel, for that matter. Simple activities like using the toilet, bathing, and eating are a chore in space. Although the food is no longer served in squeezable tubes, as it was on the early Apollo missions, it has more calories than flavor (think TV dinners).

Weightless sleep is reported to be heavenly, but 70 percent of astronauts experience space motion sickness (symptoms include nausea, vomiting, and headaches) in response to micro-gravity. The body’s reaction to weightlessness also means strenuous daily exercise is required to keep muscles from atrophying.

Microbes thrive in the closed environment of a space cabin, making staph infections and other illnesses common. It’s expected space visitors would be given a complete physical exam and quarantined prior to takeoff to reduce the risk of infecting other travelers. Even with filtration systems aboard, a crowded cabin can stink to high heavens from stale air and body odors.

Another appetizing thought: Scientists expect longer space trips will mandate “closed systems,” meaning that all water aboard the spacecraft —including human waste—will be purified and reused. Furthermore, as the Challenger shuttle disaster made clear, the odds of a fatal catastrophe in a space trip are enormous. They are estimated by NASA to be about 100 to 1, or 70 times higher than the odds of dying in an automobile accident this year.

If you don’t have the money or live long enough to see the price come down, there is one more way to get to space. For just $5,300, Celestis Inc., of Houston, Texas, will launch a portion of your cremated remains into low-Earth orbit. If you were truly destined for the moon, for $12,500 Celestis will deliver your ashes to the Sea of Tranquility aboard NASA’s Lunar Prospector satellite.