Slurping mojitos while floating in the bar of an interstellar hotel chain is not a near-future possibility. However, like space travel, space tourism is not as cutting edge as you might think. The first person to pay for the privilege, American multimillionaire Dennis Tito, travelled to the ISS almost two decades ago in 2001. The company that took him up there, Space Adventures, has since flown six other paying customers to space using the Russian Soyuz.Industry progress has been a more a drawn-out endeavour that was hoped, and no “tourists” have exited the atmosphere for almost a decade. But in that time, multiple private enterprises, include SpaceX and Amazon’s Blue Origin, have developed holiday programmes. Several companies are already selling tickets, including Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, which wants to run sub-orbital flights in a rocket-powered space plane that is launched in the air at 50,000 feet from under a giant “mothership” aeroplane. Virgin Galactic requires an upfront deposit of more than $250,000, and dozens of celebrities, including Brad Pitt and Justin Bieber, have reportedly signed up.