Look before you leap is sound advice, but it can make for timid travelling. Look at the websites of the Foreign Office and the US State Department, for example, with their warnings about everything from terrorism to petty theft in even the dullest-seeming cities, and you might decide it’s best after all to stay at home.
Not content with making the whole of abroad a dangerous place, the authorities are now taking all the romance out of space tourism. Earlier this month, the US Federal Aviation Administration published rules governing commercial space flights that are due to come into force in February. The rules apply to American companies launching from anywhere in the world and to foreign firms — such as Virgin Galactic — operating from US soil. They run to 30 pages of closely typed A4 and are full of references to hazard, incident and accident, but they boil down to this:

An operator must inform each space flight participant that the United States government has not certified the launch vehicle and any reentry vehicle as safe for carrying crew or space flight participants.

Space flight participant is FAA speak for paying passenger. The reason the FAA is not getting involved in safety certification is that Congress doesn’t want it tying up a fledgling industry in red tape. So it won’t start imposing restrictions until the end of 2012 — unless there is a bad accident before then. Meanwhile, every prospective passenger must accept that space is a dangerous place, nonetheless agree to leave his guns at home, and waive his rights (and those of his family) to sue the US government in the event of an accident. He or she must also be over the age of 18, for the FAA has decided that those under that age can’t understand what they’re getting into. Anyway, “The FAA is aware that most persons under the age of 18 will not be able to afford the price of a ride on a rocket at the prices currently being discussed.”
Those prices vary from $102,000 to $250,000. Still interested? Well, Space Adventures, a partner of XCOR, one of the two firms already licensed to send humans into space, is selling packages. It seems to have learned from companies engaged in terrestrial travel. Just as they say “accommodation on arrival”, so it says “dates to be determined.”