IN 1982, an Australian spy plane snapped photographs of a miniature space shuttle being fished out of the Indian Ocean by a Soviet ship. The craft turned out to be a BOR-4, which the Russians were testing as part of their short-lived space shuttle programme.
So intrigued was NASA by the photographs that it developed its own mini-shuttle, the HL-20 - intended as a possible astronaut rescue vehicle until the project's funding was cut in the early 1990s.
But a modified version of the HL-20, called Dream Chaser, could yet reach the final frontier, if its developer, SpaceDev, has its way. Dream Chaser is one of a number of commercial vehicles in the pipeline that may dramatically lower the cost of access to space.
Not only could these vehicles give tourists a taste of space, they could also carry cargo and crew to the International Space Station after the space ...
