How commercial space tourism is driving a fresh scramble for the stars

The space race was at fever pitch. Yuri Gagarin’s orbit around earth was a distant memory, milestones came and went in the blink of an eye, and mankind was less than a year away from walking on the moon.

Little wonder that when 2001: A Space Odyssey hit the big screens in 1968, the prospect of holiday makers checking into an orbiting Hilton hotel seemed less far-fetched than it would to modern movie-goers. And while the shifting political landscape saw these early dreams stutter to a halt, the scramble for space is now back on again.

Advanced instruments and powerful telescopes give us new and compelling scientific reasons to head for the stars, while the emerging superpowers, China and India, are keen to make symbolic statements redolent of those earlier markers put down in the 1960s. And although President Obama has taken a step back from the ambitious timelines of the Bush administration, the US still harbours strong ambitions to put man back on the moon sooner rather than later.