At eSpaceTickets.com, an astronaut wannabe can give up a little personal data for the chance to take an edge-of-space flight aboard a Russian fighter jet or a suborbital journey aboard a yet-to-be-built commercial spacecraft.

Here's how it works:

Your eSpaceTickets, if all goes as planned, will go into a drawing for a future trip to space. The more tickets you pile up, the better your chances.

If you have your own Web site, then you can also encourage space tourism by joining the company's affiliate program and placing links on your site that direct visitors to eSpaceTickets.com. You would then get additional tickets whenever someone follows a link from your site and signs up for the buyer's club.

Similar affiliate programs were popularized by Amazon.com and are widespread on the Internet, typically offering affiliate members coupons, prizes or up to 10-percent cash cuts of any purchases made.

But unlike these programs, "we deposit all commissions received from merchants into an escrow account to be used to fund the suborbital and edge-of-space flights," said Tony Webb, founder of eSpaceTickets.com. "Once those revenues have been received, we will have a public drawing."

The frequency of the drawings depends on how fast the money builds up. "It is very possible to have a drawing once a month," Webb said.

More than 600 people have signed up for the affiliate program, which was launched three weeks ago and, until today, has not had any significant media exposure.

A drawing date is not set, but the first one is planned to coincide with World Space Week, October 4-10, 2001. The initial winner would get a ride in a Russian MiG-25 Foxbat journey to the edge of space.

A trip to true outer space, 63 miles (101 kilometers) up into suborbital flight, would not happen before 2005, "with the global consumers and investors providing their best support."

That flight might be aboard the Space Cruiser, being developed by Virginia-based Vela Technology Development Corporation. VelaTech has a deal with eSpaceTickets to provide a future seat in exchange for cash now.

"In exchange for the use of our name and copyrighted images, eSpaceTickets.com will contribute a portion of their earnings...to the development of the Space Cruiser," said Pat Kelley, president of VelaTech.

Kelley envisions VelaTech as a leader in commercial space activity, but he realizes there's a slight chicken-and-egg problem.

"The human desire to explore what lies beyond the next hill is strong in all of us, and the more we enable the ability to satisfy that desire, the more people will exercise it," Kelley told SPACE.com. "People who today say they would 'never' travel into space will one day consider it, if we can make the trip safe and enjoyable, as well as affordable."

"Dennis Tito has done us all a favor," he said, "both in revitalizing and making imaginable the dream of space tourism, and in showing the character and spirit to overcome bureaucratic resistance."

Webb has financed the startup of eSpaceTickets himself but is looking into venture capital possibilities.