17 February 2006 Space travel insurance only two years away
The complexities of drawing up insurance policies for space travel may have to be dealt with sooner than companies think.
US secretary of transportation Norman Mineta has said that his department would begin issuing permits for flights into space as early as 2008.
Test flights planned by several American companies next year will have their safety regulated by the federal US government, who if satisfied would then issue a license for commercial travel.
"This timeline isn't based on science fiction," Mr Mineta told the Annual Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington DC.
"It is a timeline based on the reality of where commercial space is today and where we expect the state of commercial space to be within two short years."
At present only two space tourists have made a journey to the International Space Station since Californian Denis Tito paid a rumoured $20 million for the privilege in 2001.
Mr Tito received an insurance policy from Russian firm Avicos amounting to several hundred thousand dollars - a fee likely to be significantly lowered once space travel's affordability becomes not quite so out of this world. 
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