Space tourists are getting their own ride.

Space Adventures, a Virginia company that arranges passage for wealthy explorers to ride on Russian Soyuz rockets to the International Space Station, plans to buy a Soyuz flight all its own in 2011, with the option of buying more.

A new investor is likely to occupy one of the two available seats on Space Adventures’ 2011 flight: Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google. He made a $5 million investment in the company that will serve as a deposit on a future flight.

 

Mr. Brin, who is president of technology at Google, said in a Space Adventures statement, “I am a big believer in the exploration and commercial development of the space frontier, and am looking forward to the possibility of going into space.”

His company is a sponsor of the Google Lunar X Prize, a $25 million competition to land an unmanned craft on the moon.

Elon Musk, former CEO of PayPal (EBAY) and Zip2, has invested more than $100 million of his own money to start Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, a company that's building a family of launch vehicles. Jim Benson, who founded CompuSearch and invented modern full-text computer indexing and search, is creating a vehicle for space tourism at Benson Space that seeks to minimize the violent impact that spacecraft encounter on re-entry into the earth's atmosphere.

Meanwhile, luxury travel experts Virgin Galactic will be giving you the groundbreaking opportunity to become one of the first ever non-professional astronauts. Virgin Galactic will own and operate its privately built spaceships, modelled on the remarkable, history-making SpaceShipOne. It is these spaceships that will allow affordable sub-orbital space tourism for the first time in the history of the universe. Virgin is taking deposits now, and the first flights are being scheduled for next year or 2010! Tickets cost $200,000 and deposits start from $20,000.  Virgin Galactic already has $35 million in bookings for flights.

Among those reported to have told Virgin  that they wished to be among the first to fly on the spacecraft are actor William Shatner, designer Philippe Starck, former Jane's Addiction and Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Dave Navarro, Alien star Sigourney Weaver, Hollywood director Bryan Singer, musician Moby, and of course, socialite Paris Hilton.

I think I will wait until Atlantis set up a gay circuit party rocket.....