Commercial space flight

It's pretty exciting that we seem to be about to enter the era of commercial
space flight. Richard Branson - eccentric billionaire has invested a heap of
money in a space plane called SpaceShip 2. The original - "SpaceShipOne"
won the Ansari X prize for "building and launching a spacecraft capable of carrying
three people to 100 kilometers above the earth's surface, twice within two weeks"

Richard Branson is owner of Virgin airlines - among many other ventures.
His new space venture is called Virgin Galactic and is already taking bookings
for flights in around 2009.

Apparently there have been companies as far back as the 1970's take bookings
for future space flights, but this looks like the real deal.