It all began on December 17, 1903, this was the day that a chap named Orville made the first ever flight over a beach in North Carolina. It was only 20 feet high, lasting 12 seconds and covering just 120 feet (shorter than a modern jumbo jet) but it was the start of a new age.

Fast forward just 41 years and the Germans put the first rocket into space, in just 41 years we’d gone from discovering how to fly, to putting a self-propelled body through the outer atmosphere and into the blackness of space.

The next major developments in space travel came in 1957, courtesy of the Soviets, who, in two months covering October and November, launched the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth (Sputnik 1) and the first living creature, Laika the dog. Laika headed into space on November 3, 1957 but died within hours of take off due to over heating, a fact only revealed by the Russians in 2008.

Laika was aboard Sputnik 2 and although it was never designed to be retrievable, the flight did prove that organic life forms could survive through take-off and high speed ascending. The result of Laika’s albeit involuntary self-sacrifice was the first human flight into space on April 12, 1961, taking Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on a complete orbit of the Earth.

With the space race in full swing the US needed to prove they had what it took to beat the Soviets. So, with a little help from some Nazi rocket scientists, foremost Wernher von Braun, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA as it’s more commonly known got to work. The result of that work can be summed up in one of the most famous quotes of all time, over to you, Neil:

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

What followed were another 5 manned trips to the moon by US astronauts and many more unmanned by the Russians. More recent developments in space have been centred around the International Space Station and the Hubble telescope looking deep into the universe.

Until recently the domain of space travel had only been open to astronauts funded by billion-dollar government backing and purely for scientific purposes. But in recent years space tourism has emerged as super rich business people are prepared to pay millions of dollars to tag along for an orbit or two.

And just as with car ownership back at the beginning of the last century, the rich are the only ones who currently have access to space travel, but this is changing. Richard Branson and his company Virgin are promising to open up space flight to the public with their Virgin Galactic programme.

In 2005 Virgin Galactic opened up its reservations list and allowed those who could afford it to pay a deposit to reserve a place on SpaceShipTwo, their space-craft. Several hundred people have already booked their flight which will cost $200,000 and with every new booking, a new astronaut is ready to be born. Space flight for everyone is just around the corner – bring it on.