Gerry Doyle, space writer

Notice: "writer" rhymes with "rider," and if you say it really fast, it's practically the same word.

This is important because today Richard Branson--sorry, SIR Richard Branson, and I need to be careful about this stuff because getting on his bad side is the last thing I want to do--will tell us all how we can launch ourselves into space.

It's actually pretty simple. You pay him a quarter-million dollars, climb on SpaceShipTwo, and off you go.

Ding! You are now free to move about ionosphere.

Flying, and more fantastically, space, have been two of my passions since I can remember being passionate about anything. I love the idea that we've finally gotten to the point where space travel (if you count a suborbital flight back to the place where you launched as "travel") is just a matter of buying a ticket. Yes, those tickets are outside the reach of most of us. Especially if most of us are journalist-authors.

But someday. It'll happen. And I can't wait to complain about how there's no in-flight movie and all you get to eat is a packet of space peanuts.