It was only a matter of time before the burgeoning aerospace industry in Costa Rica expanded to include the tourism sector. Terranova Diseño de Viajes (Terranova Travel Planning) recently became Central America’s first Accredited Space Agent (ASA), a designation bestowed upon by Virgin Galactic, which belongs to British billionaire Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin business empire.

Rudy Jimenez, co-founder of Terranova Travel Planning, was recently interviewed by Vivir y Comer (To Live and To Eat), a gastronomy and lifestyle magazine published by Grupo Nacion. This is a publication targeted towards the well-to-do in Costa Rica who can afford $250,000 to board a spacecraft, travel to an altitude of 100 kilometers (360,892 feet), experience the feeling of weightlessness through five minutes in a zero-gravity condition, and possibly glimpse at the curvature of the Earth from a stratospheric point of view.

Although Virgin Galactic has not yet flown its first tour, it expects to do so in late 2014. Space tourism is not exactly new; in 2001, millionaire American engineer Dennis Tito became the first tourist to travel outside the Earth’s atmosphere aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and spend a week visiting the International Space Station (ISS). Mr. Tito’s space vacation cost him $20 million; in founding Virgin Galactic, Sir Richard Branson wants to make space tourism affordable for the masses.

Hopeful Tico space tourists would have to shell out $250,000 (about 134 million colones at today’s exchange rate) to accomplish their dreams. This is not the same as a rainforest canopy tour or a zip line through the Monte Verde Cloud Forest; there’s an entire week of training at a spaceport in the Mojave Desert in California, where Virgin Galactic operates from.

Sir Richard Branson has a special affinity for Costa Rica. His family is close friends with the powerful Figueres family in Costa Rica; plus, as we have previously reported, he was present at the signing of a new law criminalizing the shark fin poaching trade. Aside from space tourism, Costa Rica is presently active in the aerospace industry. The engineering of space propulsion systems is being accomplished by the Ad Astra Rocket Company of Guanacaste, founded by Hall of Fame Astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz, and the Central American Aeronautics and Space Association (ACAE) expects to launch its first research satellite in 2016.