On April 12, 1961, a young man from a small Russian village experienced something no one had ever experienced before: the thunder and shake of over 800,000 pounds of rocket thrust erupting beneath him. As Vostok 1 broke free of its launch restraints, Yuri Gagarin triumphantly yelled, “Let’s go!”

What are you doing on April 11th? If you didn't say, "Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight to space," then you've answered WRONG.

With Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo in flight testing and XCOR and Blue Origin well along in developing their vehicles, suborbital space tourism is about to become a reality…but that reality will belong only to the wealthy for the next couple of decades.

Most of us, this writer included, have probably never heard of Kerala and have no idea where it is, much less why it would be a subject of interest in space tourism.

There are hundreds of operational satellites in orbit above us…as well as thousands of decommissioned satellites and their detritus, known as space junk. To date, 19,000 of these not-so-heavenly bodies are currently being tracked, but it is estimated that over 600,000 pieces over 1-centimeter wide exist.

Satellite and missile defense manufacturer Orbital Sciences is about slicing off a piece of that space tourism pie: Orbital announced, via Twitter, its second entry into the commercial crew and cargo delivery business with a private space plane called Prometheus.