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| | British entrepreneur Richard Branson said Monday that his Virgin Company plans to launch commercial tourism space flights over the next few years. The Virgin transport, entertainment and communications group has signed an agreement with pioneering aviation designer Burt Rutan to build an aircraft based on Rutan's SpaceShipOne vessel, Branson said. The new service will be called Virgin Galactic and expects to fly 3,000 new tourist astronauts in its first five years. Fares will start at 115,000 pounds (US $208,000, Euro 169,000) for a suborbital flight, including three days' training. Kinds of space tourism: SpaceShipOne — the first jet aircraft, designed and funded by private resources, which penetrated into the conventional border of space at an altitude of 100 km. In 2005, ROSCOSMOS and Space Adventures signed a MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) for selecting the astronauts, nonprofessionals and investors for the realization of the commercial project “Moon Flyby”. Space Adventures gets exclusive rights on marketing and the selection of astronauts-nonprofessionals and investors for commercial flight to the Moon, suggested by RKK. RКК "Energia" acquired the rights to the technical execution of the given project. The flight is planned on a modified spacecraft “Soyuz”. Realization of the project could be within the next five years. Besides tourism on Russian spacecrafts, there exist private funded projects, which through several years are trying to design their own rocket carrier, own spaceships and “orbital hotels” for a longer stay of tourists in orbit. The first private piloted suborbital flight occurred on June 21, 2004 on SpaceShipOne. The announced aim of the designers of the project is to make the space flights accessible for a rather small payment. Other projects are also under development. Space tourist list: 1. Dennis Tito (USA), April 28, 2001 2. Mark Shuttleworth (Republic of South Africa), April 25, 2002 3. Gregory Olsen (USA), October 1, 2005 4. Anousheh Ansari (USA), September 18, 2006 5. Charles Simonyi (USA), April 7, 2007 Africa, as a whole, lags behind in international tourism because many countries of the region are economically under-developed and have no political stability and also military conflicts and epidemics are registered in many parts of the continent. Risks of tourism * Ecological hazards. First of all, tourism affects environment by excessive concentration of production and people in the tourist centers, masters natural complexes, which were unused earlier, and strengthens influence of other branches (agriculture, construction, timber harvesting, hunting); * Loss of cultural values. Commercialization of lives and tourism development in individual regions leads to the vulgarization of traditions and degradation of prestige of national cultures. Sex tourism and the transportation of art products by tourists cause special concern in the world community; * Negative influence on the environment. Constantly, the environment threatens human beings with various natural calamities. The social environment has problems such as epidemics, HIV-infection, criminality, spread of drug addiction, violence, terrorism, piracy and military complications. Annually, 30 states belong to a number, adverse for tourism; * Technogenic hazards. One of the most serious risks in tourism are transport incidents, accidents and catastrophes. Many problems are created by large-scale accidents in atomic power stations, chemical plants and military objects. Annually, accidents and fires in tour industries lead to traumas and deadly cases among tourists.
Existing international law contains some environmental norms. During research and use of outer space and celestial bodies, the states should avoid harmful contamination and also avoid adverse changes in the Earth's environment as a result of the transportation of extraterrestrial matter (Article IX of the Outer Space Treaty, 1967). In this regard, planning of interplanetary expeditions (for instance, to Mars), among other things, includes the technical work related to biological safety for preventing the uncontrolled entry of terrestrial microorganisms to other planets and vice versa.
From the point of view of a country's civil rights, space objects fall under the category of property (Article 130 of Civil Code of Russian Federation). So, spacecrafts are the fastest moving property in the world. This decision of lawmakers, at first glance, seems strange. The fact is that, from a legal point of view, the real estate is characterized not so much by mechanical immobility, as the necessity to get state registration of ownership on it. Applying these requirements to space objects is dictated by their high costs.
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