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|  Andy Thomas, an Australian astronaut, is promoting a $150 million project designed to turn the Woomera rocket range into an international spaceport for tourists. He contends that the project is in Australia's best long term interested. Under his scheme, the Australian Federal Government will spend $150 million over 10 years to upgrade Woomera and build new infrastructure. In fact, Thomas believes that by pursuing this project, Australia would be doing what the State of New Mexico in the United States of America already is undertaking. New Mexison has allocated $150 million to build a facility for space tourists near the White Sands missile range. The space tourism adventure market is worth billions of dollars and is being led by Virgin entrepreneur Richard Branson, who has formed the company Virgin Galactic to send tourists into space in what he hopes is the not too distant future. There are other companies working towards advancing the space tourism industry including US based Space Adventures, which recently announced plans to build spaceports in Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. In fact, Space Adventures has sent three civilians into space already, including Dennis Tito in 2001, Mark Shuttleworth in 2002 and Greg Olsen in 2005. Each man paid $27 million to stay on the International Space Station for several days. |
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