Imagine that you are 60 years old. You are a California businessman. You have so many millions of dollars that money doesn't mean much of anything. You wake up each morning one day closer to the end and wondering what you really wanted to do with your life. You remember when Sputnik first took off in 1957 and assumed everyone would be in space by 2001. You realize that your dreams may not come true if you wait around for someone else to do them for you. You decide paying 20 million dollars for a trip into space is reasonable. You are Dennis Tito.

At this moment, Tito is hovering beyond the planet with two Russian cosmonauts in the rocket ship Soyuz. The rest of us are still on planet Earth. While I am $20 million short on credit, I understand and wish I could emulate the actions of the space dreamer. Making money for the sake of making money is an insatiable activity. Why not drop some of your millions on a once proud space program for the opportunity go into space?

It was NASA who first tried the idea of taking civilians into space back in 1986, but the Challenger explosion with teacher Christa McCauliffe on board set the American space program back fifteen years. Because of NASA's apprehension, Tito had to appeal to the Russians to get into space. Astronaut or cosmonaut? The only difference is the prefix.

NASA even tried to postpone the Soyuz launch, saying that the Endeavor, which is currently docked at the space station, might not be done by the time the Russian ship arrives. Fortunately, NASA can only hinder themselves, and the flight went off as scheduled.

Tito, a former rocket engineer, took the event seriously. He went through rigorous cosmonaut training, learned Russian and wrote the big check. Now, he is the first space tourist in the history of mankind. I hope both space programs will start allowing citizens the opportunity to experience space travel. Enough with Captains Kirk and Picard telling me of their fictitious adventures. Enough with the physicists, mathematicians and a different kind of mathematician filling up all the seats. Let's get some bus drivers, bartenders and Internet columnists shooting through the stratosphere.

We all know the risks. It's the same risk a person takes when the sky dive, bungie jump or get married. If things go wrong, there will very little left to salvage at the end. Let's face it, though, there are worse ways to go out than getting blown up in a space launch. It's a risk, but apparently, a $20 million risk Tito was willing to take. I doubt Tito's family would have gotten a refund if the launch was a miserable failure.

So let's get going on these space tours. I want trips to the moon. I want space walks. I want loops around the earth. If NASA doesn't want to do them, then we'll go to Russia. Better yet, someone could start up a private space launch company. If one man is willing to pay $20 million to go into space, I bet there are a hundred who would pay one million dollars each. Where are those venture capitalists looking for the next big thing?

This pipe dream is still years away, but it's time to get started. Gradually, the price will come down until regular people will have the option of going into space for their two week vacation. We all want to blast off in one form or another, so give us the option to do it literally.

Make Dennis Tito a trailblazer in the space tourist industry. Right now, he's just the rich guy who bought his way into space. So let someone else on the ship. And then someone else. And then someone else.

Chris Jungle is a space case.