There aren't many things that excite me as much as a little Korean School girl getting a new Hello Kitty Backpack...but this does.

"A NASA-funded study estimates that if the price of a ticket to space approached $100,000, close to a million people would buy one. That's a $100 billion industry. Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen gave me $20 million in startup funding to go after that market."

"We've already licensed our technology to British entrepreneur Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, a privately held space tourism venture that plans to sell tickets to space for about $200,000 a pop and begin launches within three years. While that's not exactly cheap, it will only get cheaper. With any luck, by the time NASA's space probe hits Pluto, you'll be booking a spaceflight with a privately run suborbital airline." - Burt Rutan

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/rutan.html