With the news hitting that Sergei Brin, supreme overlord of Google, will be hitting space with the worlds first private spaceflight to ISS, we can’t help but say: It’s good to be rich.

With a down payment of 5million dollars, space is one of the most exclusive (and least luxurious, see the broken space toilet story) destinations available to us puny humans. The company, called Space Adventures, has made a deal with the Russian space agency to get two seats on a specifically manufactured Soyuz flight starting 2011, that will take the millionaires to the international space station.

Now this is obviously great news, being a staunch capitalist myself (unlike my hippie co-writer Brink), i am very happy to see more competitors in the field of private spaceflight. I’m sure we all remember the famous SpaceShipOne, the first commercial space endevour that won the coveted X-Prize (a prize given to the first privately funded team to reach space). What you may not know, is that Richard Branson actually invested in the idea and is planning to launch Virgin Galactic very soon. The production of their vehicle (SpaceShipTwo) is finished, and they expect to start test-flights (of which there will be 50-100) this month. Now, taking a flight with Virgin Galactic will obviously not be as fun as actually going to ISS and living in zero-G. SpaceShipTwo “only” flies up to 110km (slightly more then SpaceShipOne) and then goes back to earth, giving only a short period of weightlessness and outer-spacy-ness, BUT it will be MUCH cheaper. The first (100) customers put in a deposit of 200.000$, from there it will slowly decline in cost over the years, and will eventually cost 20.000$ per person. Now that’s still a lot of moolah, but at least it’s something within the reach of ordinary people, and if you look at this video, i think you’ll agree that the view is worth it.