Writes Steven Ng: "I remember former Nasa administrator Dan Goldin's complaint over the first businessman in space, Dennis Tito. 'Goldin finds the whole matter distasteful. It's wrong, he contends, to peddle spaceship seats to rich guys looking for fun.'

"Thanks to the Russians, there have been five non-bureaucrats able to visit the International Space Station. The Russians have been rather appreciative of these people as they have helped pay for the station crew exchange flights. BTW, these flights have been a big deal in the tech community. Shuttleworth, the second of the space tourists, is the force behind Ubuntu Linux, one of the most popular Linux distributions; Anousheh Ansari is from the family that has financed the X-Prize -- which motivated Burt Rutan to build Spaceship One; and Charles Simonyi was a Microsoft software developer. They may not be a big deal to the Nasa, but these people give the rest of us hope that maybe one day we can travel into space."