Turismo alrededor de la Luna !

El desarrollo de los viajes espaciales privados están corriendo en paralelo al trabajo de la NASA. A los viajes suborbitales que ya se han
realizado se agregarán muy luego los viajes alrededor de la luna. En este caso hablamos de la empresa Space Adventures, en tanto Jeff Bezos, el fundador de Amazon, también ha formado una empresa para viajes espaciales

Estas son actividades que desde Chile nos pueden parecer excentricidades pero sirven para mostrar la ambición de algunos emprendedores.

$100m to visit far side of the moon

For $100m, space tourists will be able to journey to the far side of the moon with Space Adventures, the Virginia-based company that pioneered space tourism, as soon as 2008, Space Adventures officials said on Wednesday.
Two seats aboard a Soyuz spacecraft piloted by a Russian cosmonaut will sell to the public for $100m (€81m, £56m) each, Eric Anderson, chief executive of Space Adventures, said. Lunar trips lasting eight to 21 days will run an elliptical orbit around the moon and come within 100km of its surface.
No one has yet signed up, but the company says it has identified more than 1,000 people with the financial means to make the trip. "This is the same mission that many governments say requires billions of dollars," Mr Anderson said. "It's a very reasonable price."
Millionaires Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth paid Space Adventures $20m for trips to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2001 and 2002 respectively. Greg Olsen, head of a New Jersey technology company, is to become Space Adventures' third ISS tourist in October.
For the lunar mission, Space Adventures has teamed up with the Russian Federation's Federal Space Agency and Energia, the Russian aerospace company.
In an indication of the growing appetite for space tourism, Space Adventures has pre-sold 115 sub-orbital space flights at $100,000 each, although it does not yet have vehicles to make the trip. Its space tourism packages include astronaut training and rides in Russian Mig jets.
Details of the lunar mission came a day after space shuttle Discovery returned safely to Earth, shortly after Nasa announced it would suspend future shuttle flights indefinitely due to safety concerns. But Space Adventures pointed out that Nasa's concerns bore little relevance to the company's lunar flights in simpler spacecrafts.
Space tourism gained new attention last autumn after Sir Richard Branson, head of the Virgin entertainment and travel group, formed Virgin Galactic, a space-tourism company that aims to take people to space beginning in 2007.