The space travel agency, Space Adventures, announced plans to develop a commercial "spaceport" in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to take tourists on sub-orbital flights. The proposed facility in Ras Al-Khaimah, the most northern of the seven emirates that form the UAE, would be the first of several such spaceports envisaged under a global development project budgeted at more than 250 million dollars.
Other potential locations have been identified in Asia, specifically Singapore, and North America.
The company said it had already received clearance from the UAE authorities to operate suborbital spaceflights in their air space.
"The close proximity to Dubai, one of the worlds leading luxury tourist destinations, makes (Ras Al-Khaimah) a choice location for spaceflight operations," said Space Adventures president and CEO, Eric Anderson.
"Suborbital flights will offer millions of people the opportunity to experience the greatest adventure available, space travel," Anderson said.
Currently the only operating space tourism agency, Space Adventures first made its name by sending US millionaire Dennis Tito into space in 2001.
Since then, two other ultra-wealthy tourists have made similar trips, South African Mark Shuttleworth in 2002 and last year another American millionaire businessman, Greg Olsen, who paid 20 million dollars to spend eight days aboard the International Space Station.
The sub-orbital flights would send tourists 60 miles above the surface of the earth on solid fuel rocket craft dropped from conventional planes.
The cost of each flight would be more than 100,000 dollars.
Space Adventures' main rival in sub-orbital tourism will be Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, which is building a spaceport in the US state of New Mexico.
