Hello, it's Sunday the 11th of July and thanks for joining me for the latest on travel and destinations

from the Green List and the travel desk of the Independent. Today, journey into space. Will

Orbital Tourism take off? Planning your August trip? Not so fast. And how to avoid peak prices on the West Coast main line.

Of course, this podcast is completely free, as is my weekly travel email.

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If everything goes according to plan, in a few hours time, Sir Richard Branson

will be going into space. He will be among the first passengers on Virgin Galactic, this

remarkable development which is taking people to the edge of space. The idea is that you are

able to escape from the Earth's atmosphere. And like the pioneering space astronauts, people

like Yuri Gagarin, first man into space, you will be able to see the world from a location

that very few other people have done so. And I just wanted to, of course, wish Sir Richard

and his team well, and of course Elon Musk, who's doing the same thing in a couple of weeks' time,

but also just

remind people of the history of space tourism, because it has been going on a while. And I remember

back in the 1980s, yes, I was allowed when there was a company called Society Expeditions. And they said, right, this was

mid-1980s. By 1992, we will be able to take people commercially into space aboard the space

shuttle. Now, that never happened. Apart from anything else, there was the space shuttle into space aboard the Space Shuttle.

Now, that never happened.

Apart from anything else, there was the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster,

and that was put back.

And then 20 years ago, a very wealthy millionaire, billionaire, possibly,

Dennis Tito bought his seat on a Soyuz rocket. He went up to the International Space Station, which is actually, I think, an amazing trip because you're

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