Space tourism. Artwork of a spacecraft ascending to orbit and returning to Earth. At lower left, the spacecraft has been carried to the upper reaches of the atmosphere on a specially designed aeroplane. After detaching, a rocket (yellow exhaust) is used to ascend the remaining distance to orbit (dotted red line). The passengers (centre) experience free-fall, before the rocket is engaged again to re-enter the atmosphere. The final stage is gliding back to Earth (blue arrows) using the spacecraft's wings. This artwork shows the SpaceShipOne system used by Virgin Galactic. The first commercial flights could take place by 2011.