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US millionaire Dennis Tito, who became the first private space tourist when he paid Russia $20 million for a trip to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2001, wants to send a married couple on a round trip to Mars when planetary alignment is favorable for this 2018.

The trip will take advantage of the alignment of heavenly bodies in January 2018 to fly around Mars and return to Earth in the relatively short time of 501 days. This opportunity will not arise again until 2031.
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Despite Curiosity, our space program has pretty much moved to private companies. Now there’s a company that’s trying to raise cash to build an elevator to the moon. They hope to have it ready in less than a decade.

LiftPort’s Space Elevator Project is trying to raise $3 million on Kickstarter, and it’s already gone past its $8,000 goal for the first phase. A space elevator could take robots, cargo and humans to the surface of the moon, and space tourist dollars could eventually make the project pay off.
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The UK–not the US–is the headquarters of Virgin Galactic, which Richard Branson hopes will create an entirely new tourism market–in space. Are private companies taking over this task because there are secrets NASA doesn’t want us to know? (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show).

In the Guardian, Robin McKie quotes commercial director Stephen Attenborough as saying, "Things are going incredibly well. (On the office walls) are computer graphics images, but next year we hope to replace them with photographs of the real thing: our first commercial flights into outer space."
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