A new generation of space entrepreneurs plan to offer adventurous customers a variety of progressively more exciting options for space tourism over the next century, according to industry officials and analysts.

The era of space tourism began with a pair of $20 million trips to the international space station aboard Russian government-owned spacecraft in 2001 and 2002. Over the next 100 years, officials expect commercial companies to spur the growth of the market by first providing simple rides to space before expanding to offer vacations and business opportunities in Earth orbit and beyond. In the not too distant future tourists will be able to simulate weightlessness as astronauts in training do, by riding in airplanes that dive and climb in a parabolic pattern that gives them a minute or so of weightlessness at a time.

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Within five to 10 years, a small cottage industry is expected to offer high-end customers an opportunity to make quick forays into space by taking suborbital flights into low Earth orbit similar to those taken by U.S. astronauts Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom at the dawn of the Space Age. Within 30 years, suborbital vehicles might become a favored mode of transportation for flights from New York to Paris or Tokyo in a fraction of the time it takes a modern jetliner to cross an ocean. How rapidly the tourism market develops will depend on private industry’s ability to develop increasingly affordable space transportation. For at least the next two decades — and probably longer, most experts agree that space tourism will remain the province of wealthy individuals.

The combined revenue from the various space tourism markets could be more than $1 billion per year, said Phil McAlister, program manager for the space and telecommunications industry analysis division of Bethesda, Md.-based Futron. And while space tourism “might not be for millionaires only, you’re going to have to have a pretty good chunk of cash to do this,” McAlister said.

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The development of the space tourism industry will be a key component of the development of space overall, said Eric Anderson, Space Adventures’ president and chief executive officer.

“The last 40 years have been driven by government, and we have been flying the same types of vehicles for the last 40 years and they are getting more expensive,” Anderson said. “To get to the point where we have large numbers of people flying into space, we need to drastically reduce the cost of getting there, and the only way is private companies building for the space tourism market for thousands of people per year.”

Space Adventures Ltd., of Arlington, Va., was involved in the first two space trips taken by tourists, helping American Dennis Tito reach the space station in 2001 and South African Mark Shuttleworth in 2002. The trips were taken aboard Russian Soyuz launch vehicles that had official business at the space station. The company recently reached an agreement with the Russian Aviation and Space Agency and Rocket Space Corp. Energia to sell accommodations for two passengers on a station-bound Soyuz TMA capsule that will be built explicitly for a commercial mission.

Anderson expects suborbital flights on private reusable launch vehicles will become available within the next five to 10 years, at a cost of around $100,000. “A few key people are willing to pay $20 million [to fly to the space station], but there are thousands willing to pay thousands for a suborbital ride,” he said. “They are going to come and help the industry grow.” While the first suborbital flights will be simply flying to the edge of space and returning to the same spot, within 30 years, these suborbital vehicles may become a mode of transportation around the Earth, offering transoceanic flights, Anderson said.

Peter Diamandis, chairman and president of the X Prize Foundation, thinks his competition will help raise the worldwide level of excitement about private space travel. The foundation will award $10 million to the first organization that launches a vehicle capable of carrying three people to an altitude of 100 kilometers, then repeats the feat with the same vehicle within two weeks, and Diamandis expects a winner to emerge in the first half of 2004.

This will help develop a market for suborbital flights that will mature between 2007 and 2012, with 500 to 5,000 customers per year paying around $100,000 for these flights. The orbital market will kick in by 2010, drawing hundreds of customers per year at a price of $20 million each by 2015, Diamandis said.

An October study from Futron was less optimistic about the size of the market, projecting that by 2021, more than 15,000 passengers could be flying on sub-orbital vehicles each year, while the orbital travel market could have up to 60 passengers per year.

The “Space Tourism Market Study” surveyed 450 millionaires, or people that could afford the trips, McAlister said.

Diamandis and John Spencer, founder and president of the Los Angeles-based Space Tourism Society, envision the industry moving by mid-century beyond brief jaunts into orbit and offering customers extended stays in commercially-owned space stations and trips to privately held colonies on the moon and Mars.

The Space Tourism Society, founded in 1995, has developed 30- and 50-year plans focusing on the growth of space tourism, Spencer said. The society’s vision is based around a cruise-line model, as launch vehicles are used to ferry riders to commercially owned orbiting stations, he said. The industry will develop in four phases, and currently is in what Spencer has dubbed the pioneering phase, Spencer said. That will give way to the glamour phase in 20 to 30 years, when the wealthy and celebrities who can afford the cost of space trips will be the primary customers. After 50 years, space tourism will enter the mature phase, when prices begin to fall, but space will not be available to the mass market for at least 75 years, Spencer said.

While there are differing views on how the market will develop, private companies will be the driving force behind the space tourism market, the officials said. Government roles will be limited to the exploration of deep space, developing new technologies and regulating the space tourism industry, the officials said.

“All of these are going to happen,” Spencer said. “It’s going to take longer than most of us want, and it’s going to be hard, but the reward is participating and seeing it happen.”