TOKYO, Feb 16: Japanese tourists who have seen everything on planet Earth are shifting their gaze skyward to the last frontier of organised travel - space.What was until recently the stuff of science fiction or the privilege of astronauts is being sold as a holiday option for the early part of the next century. A growing number of elite tour operators are selling space tickets to moneyed tourists eager to realise their ultimate childhood dream.``I want to see with my own eyes the blue earth, just as real astronauts see it from the space shuttle,'' one Japanese applicant said recently, according to Japan's largest travel agency, the Japan Travel Bureau (JTB).Many are keen to experience zero gravity and emulate the journeys taken by a number of Japanese astronauts on NASA missions. Others are encouraged by the recent announcement that senator and former US astronaut John Glenn and schoolteacher Barbara Morgan will join a space shuttle mission. The announcement was described by Apollo veteran and moonvisitor Buzz Aldrin to proclaim ``the real beginning of tourism in space.''A JTB spokesman said wealthy Japanese were the target for space holidays.One firm targeting the Japanese market is the Seattle-based Zegrahm Space Voyages, which promises trips aboard a so-called ``space cruiser,'' a vehicle being developed by Virginia-based Vela Technology Development Co. The company says it plans to begin operations on December 1, 2001. ``Zegrahm invites you to take part in humankind's first commercial flights to the edge of the universe, to become space voyagers of the new millennium,'' the firm's advertisement says.The trip, a short flight at an altitude of more than 100 kilometres, will cost 98,000 dollars. Only 25 people from the United States, Britain, France and Greece had reserved seats.In March this year, the private Tokyo-based Japanese Rocket Society is due to announce a plan for people with no training to be allowed onto commercial flights into space. Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd will design a50-passenger rocket, tentatively called the ``Kanko Maru'' (sightseeing ship).
