ZHUKOVSKY, Russia – American businessmen and Russian engineers unveiled the first space shuttle designed exclusively for tourism on Thursday, paving the way for tourists on a budget to taste life in zero gravity. For under $100,000 would-be astronauts will be able to take an hour-long flight aboard the „Cosmopolis XXI“, a snub-nosed rocket-powered shuttle about the size of a minivan. The trip includes only three minutes of weightlessness, but costs a mere sliver of the $20 million reportedly paid by space tourism pioneer Dennis Tito last year for a week on the International Space Station.

„We know the potential market is huge,“ said Eric Anderson, president of the U.S.-based Space Adventures company which organised Tito‘s flight. „We literally have people waiting to go who have already paid us, who have said (they) want to be the first to fly.“ The shuttle, a joint project by Space Adventures and Russia‘s Myasishchev Design Bureau, is due to start regular flights by 2004-05. Reuters