Wowzer news of the day

Plane designed for space tourists

Astronaut wannabes looking for a short space jaunt may soon have an alternative to shelling out millions of dollars for a trip to the international space station. Space Adventures, a Virginia company that also offers flights aboard Russian fighter jets and a micro-gravity "vomit comet" for private citizens, announced Thursday its partnership with XCOR Aerospace in California. The aerospace company is developing a suborbital rocket vehicle designed specifically for space tourists at a bargain price when compared with private trips to the space station.

Well, I supposed I need to pay more attention to these things, not that I saw much coverage of this earlier story. And that's from 2001. Seems to me that time was that such an event would have gotten tremendous coverage, even with 9/11, a brewing war in Afghanistan, etc.