Back in 1981, after the first flight of Columbia, I distinctly remember somebody on television saying that by the end of the century, there would be commercial passenger flights to the moon. As gullible 8-year-old with a wild imagination and a love for all things astronomical, I promptly began trying to figure out how I could reserve a ticket for that first flight sometime at the end of the 90s.

Twenty-three years on, I’ve become much more wary of pronouncements like "we’ll all have flying cars in the next 5 years". And yet, in the past week I’ve started reverting back to my credulous, excitable 8-year-old self. Between Richard Branson and his wildly ambitious (and hilariously named) Virgin Galactic, and the second flight of SpaceShipOne which just bagged the Ansari X Prize, "space tourism" suddenly seems so tantalizingly in reach (again) that I’ve promptly started trying to figure out how I could cough up $100,000+ to get my ticket for that first Virgin Galactic flight.

I know it’s ridiculous. I know there will not be any regular passenger flights into space by the end of the decade - and most certainly not in the next 2 to 3 years, which is the unbelievable timeframe Branson has set. And even when, at some point, there are tourist flights into space (and I’m sure at some point there will be), they’ll be sub-orbital flights to begin with, lasting just a few precious minutes. My dreams of orbiting around the Earth, looking back at my home planet from the moon, or shooting off to distant galaxies in deepest, darkest space are, well, just that - dreams that are highly unlikely to ever become a reality for me (never say never, though).

But that’s beside the point, really. People are talking about space flight, they’re building spaceships, they’re making plans. Whether anything comes of it in my lifetime remains to be seen. But I feel that giddy sense of possibility that I first felt twenty-three years ago, and that’s enough to get me looking up at the night sky and thinking maybe, just maybe…