There are now just 733 days left to decide how to spend the

There are now just 733 days left to decide how to spend the night of Friday 31 December 1999. And while policemen busy themselves putting the crash barriers up in London’s Trafalgar Square and Edinburgh’s Princes Street for Wednesday night’s drunken and snogging masses, on the other side of the world plans are already in motion for what Pacific islanders hope will be the party of the millennium.
And not only because the weather is rather nicer in the Pacific. Still wondering where to spend New Year’s Eve? If you think you’re having a hard enough time deciding what to do this year, consider the scale of the problem that you’ll be confronted with in exactly two years’ time. These 13 million visitors outweigh the 11 million who visit Universal Studios sites in Florida and California annually and that’s not counting the 107 million who visit US science museums, planetariums and parks.Perhaps this common interest shows that man has been pursuing the wrong objectives with space technology. Rather than send a space elite reaching for other worlds, a more rational approach would be to concentrate on cheapening the process of getting more people into orbit.Watch this space.space fact fileGuide book:Cadogan have even brought out a great stocking filler: TheTraveller’s Guide to Mars… Don’t leave Earth without it.Reserve your place in space:Space Adventures, Fairfax, Virginia 001-703 359 8859.Zegrahm Space Voyages, Seattle, Washington: 001-202285 3743; Web site: www.spacevoyages Wildwings Space Travel 24 hour brochure line: 0117 9610 874.For more information:Space Tourism Society: 001-310 472 0846.Web site, with futuristic space images: www.Space-Tourism-Society.OrgSpace Transportation Association Web site: www.spacetransportation . Surveys show that 60% of North Americans are interested in travelling in space and in Japan 80% of those over 40 said they wanted to visit space at least once in their lives.Cape Kennedy has 2 million visitors a year, the new $70 million visitor centre at the Johnson Space Craft Center receives 3 million visitors a year, while the Smithsonian International Space Museum in Washington DC has 8 million.

Since then, British woman Helen Sherman has spent nine days at Mir, while two Japanese businessman paid pounds 5 million to join a Russian space trip last year.Despite the low profile of these visits, public interest remains high. He has a concept of an international lottery system which will generate funds and also guarantee space trips for ordinary people – that is if you can afford pounds 50 per lottery ticket.Three people have already taken a package tour of space, though the facts have not been widely publicised following the death of Christie McCullough, the teacher who died in the 1986 space shuttle disaster. A recent cartoon in Florida Today showed life at the hotel ‘Mir-riott’ revealing the advertising coup this would create.Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, believes space tourism should not be restricted to the very rich. Many believe that weightlessness may hold or even reverse ageing: an unbelievable concept for the health resort industry.But who’s putting up the cash? NASA says it doesn’t want to be involved with space tourism, but it will offer knowledge and has just co-sponsored a two-day workshop in the States along with the Space Transportation Association. The British National Space centre is not involved in commercial space ventures and commented that they would never send a human into space when they could send a robot instead.It seems that companies are putting time and money into research, but when it comes to the big money required, there is nobody as yet to sign the cheque.Companies like WAT&G rely on big hotel names and developers to commission their resorts. What’s exciting many people is experiencing sex in weightlessness.

WAT&G are even considering the possibility of having a honeymoon suite on board.Taking space walks is another possibility followed by visits to space stations like Mir or the International Space Station, due for completion in seven years.”The notion of space walking from an oxygen rich resort is rather like going scuba diving,” said Wolff “You put on a suit and enter another dimension. We are thinking of off-setting the cost of construction and operation by inviting multiple use.”Visitors could also experience a spot of hydroponic gardening and it has been suggested that surgery could be better applied in low or zero gravity. “The plan is to have bedrooms without windows, first because it would be ultra expensive and secondly it exacerbates space sickness. Guests are sure to feel a little queasy seeing days and nights flashing before their eyes.”Adapting what we like to do on earth, the implications are spell-binding as everything takes on an extra dimension. Games like soccer, played on a two dimensional pitch on earth, suddenly become three dimensional. And now it gets even more weird.”If you circle the earth every 90 minutes, you have daylight and night every 45 minutes,” said Wolff.