Now it's getting trendy

Wired has the story by Priya Ganapati of the next space tourist, none other than Esther Dyson:

If you have a couple million dollars, are a technology visionary, and wonder what your next challenge will be, consider a chance to take a spin around the earth.
Technology heavyweights are fast queuing up for an opportunity to blast off into space. Following in the steps of former Microsoft executive Charles Simonyi and video games developer Richard Garriott, Silicon Valley luminary Esther Dyson is the latest to start training for a space flight.
Dyson, who is an investor in Space Adventures, a company that aims to open space flight for private citizens, will not be flying anytime soon, but will be training as a backup for Simonyi who will be heading on his second space trip next year.
"The training is going to be exciting, wonderful, and horrible," she said at the Singularity Summit conference in San Jose. "I am going in with some trepidation because I don’t know what’s really going to happen. But at the same time I wanted a change."
Dyson will be part of a small elite group. Simonyi, who led the development of key Microsoft Office applications, became the fifth space tourist when he took his first space flight on 7 April 2007, on board the Soyuz TMA-10 along with two Russian cosmonauts. Following a successful ten-day trip, Simonyi signed up for a second flight for next year.
On Friday, game developer Garriott returned from a twelve-day visit to the International Space Station as a working tourist.
Dyson will be piggybacking on Simonyi's upcoming trip for her training. "The experience Space Adventures sold was not just Charles' ride on the Soyuz rocket, but also the entire ground experience for some 50 of his friends," she wrote in a Flickr note. "Space travel is today accessible only if you have the millions," she told audiences at the conference. While Dyson may not have the $1 billion net worth estimated for Simonyi, she is an industry visionary.

Rico says he won't be able to afford to go in his lifetime, but he'll deal with the disappointment...