Description: In the ‘second space age’, human spaceflight is no longer the domain of governments. Dream-chasing entrepreneurs and clever engineers are aggressively blazing new trails into the heavens and preparing the world for an era of space tourism, ultra fast point-to-point earth travel and even orbiting hotels.

Having gained inside access into the top private space programs, science journalist Michael Belfiore will share his many insights on the history-making flights, the failures and fatalities, as well as the enduring passion and dreams of the real estate tycoons, dot-com billionaires, a video game programmer and other business mavericks for whom the sky is no longer the limit. They are fueling the highest-flying private rockets ever built, testing ‘vertical dragsters’, and preparing to launch an inflatable space station – with the mock-up already in earth orbit. Can your ticket to ride be that far behind?

Belfiore began writing about the new space age in 2004, when he covered the launch of the first privately built spaceship for the New York Post and, since then, has written about the private spaceflight industry for Reuters, Wired.com, Popular Science, New Scientist and numerous other outlets. His editorials have appeared in The Financial Times and other publications and he authors a popular blog, Dispatches from the Final Frontier, a source of news and commentary about the industry.

His book Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots Is Boldly Privatizing Space (Smithsonian Books/HarperCollins, 2007) is the first book to fully chronicle the birth of the commercial space age. He has also written scores of biographical encyclopedia entries on astronauts, business people, politicians, and other news makers for half a dozen reference publications from The Gale Group. His book Life Aboard a Space Station, published by Lucent Books in 2004, describes the experience of living and working in space for young readers.

Michael was born in 1969, the year of the first moon landing, and has been a space enthusiast since the age of six, when he read his first novel, Rocket Ship Galileo by Robert Heinlein. He became a full-time writer in 1995, first working as a freelance technical writer for the software industry, and then moving into the business world as a public relations writer for large corporations, still with a focus on technology. He lives in Woodstock, New York with his wife, fellow writer Wendy Kagan, and their daughter Amelie.