4
Holidlays
Before you read
1. Would
space?
2. How much money do you think a
week in space would cost?
you like to have a holiday in
|PK
3. Do you think that
will become popular in the future?
Space
tourism
Reading
Have you ever dreamed of going into space? Well, you're not alone. In 2001 an American
businessman named Dennis Tito paid US$20 million to fly into space on a Russian
spacecraft. Tito flew to the International Space Station, where he stayed for a week before
flying back to Earth. He was the world's first space tourist.
1
2 Not many people have USS20 million to spend on a holiday! But prices are high because
it Costs a lot of money to send things into space. As the technology gets better, the cost
of space travel will come down. Within fifty years, you could be paying just US$20,000
for a short flight into space. So what will you get for your money?
3 One company, BigeloW Aerospace, wants to take passengers to the moon and back.
Another company, Space Island Group, plans to build a space hotel. Three hundred and
seventy people have already reserved their seats on the VSS Enterprise, a spacecraft owned
by Virgin Galactic. The VSS Enterprise takes its name from the spacecraft in the TV show
Star Trek. The Enterprise will fly about 100 kilometres above the Earth and the flights will
last two and a half hours and cost US$200,000. Virgin Galactic has 80,000 people on the
waiting list!
4 By the end of the twentieth century only a few hundred people had been into space. It is
amazing to think that, in the future, the same number of people could be travelling into
space every day.
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SPACE
