space tourism industry slowly matures into what some analysts predict could be a billion dollar enterprise with thousands of passengers by the end of the next decade . `` This is just the beginning of the golden age of space flight , '' said Peter Diamandis , chairman of the X Prize Foundation , which awarded the $ 10 million Ansari X Prize in 2004 for the first privately funded human flight to the edge of space . `` Looking back a thousand years from now , this will be the period of time when the human race irrevocably moved off the planet . '' Look back roughly ten years , though , and the idea of sending tourists into space seemed more like science fiction than a viable business plan , said John Gedmark , executive director of the Personal Spaceflight Federation , a trade association representing the space travel industry . `` No one ever thought this was real at all , '' said Gedmark . `` It was just completely unthinkable . '' But that perception began to change in 2001 when American multimillionaire Dennis Tito became the world 's first so-called space tourist , traveling aboard
LONDON , England -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- The view will be one unlike any other . Climbing up through the clouds at a rate faster than the speed of sound , the sky will darken to a deep blue and then to black . Below , entire mountain ranges , coastlines and cities will shift into focus as the horizon bends around the curvature of the Earth - the thin veil of its atmosphere shimmering against a backdrop of stars . An emerging space tourism industry may give thousands of travelers a new view of Earth . And then , of course , there will be the feeling of weightlessness . `` It is just life changing , '' said Col. Richard Searfoss , a retired NASA shuttle commander . `` To be outside the atmosphere and see the curvature of the Earth and see so much land area at once , it gives you a sense of separateness but connectedness . '' The view of Earth from outer space is a sight that in the history of mankind only a few hundred people have ever seen . But that could soon change as what was once an almost nonexistent