Coquitlam’s Dean Horvath has his feet firmly on the ground but his eyes are on the stars.

His elite travel agency, Mason Horvath, has been given the right to book passengers on Virgin Galactic, a commercial airline with plans to send passengers who are not astronauts into sub-orbital space by 2010.

Horvath isn’t champing at the bit to be one of the first customers on Richard Branson’s privately built space ships himself — he prefers more earthly destinations. But he feels privileged to be one of three Canadian accredited space agents with the rights to book tours on the eight-seat space cruiser.

“It’s a rare opportunity,” he acknowledges, noting that his company, which specializes in corporate travel, adventure getaways and luxury holidays, underwent a significant amount of scrutiny and due diligence before landing the Virgin Galactic accreditation this summer.

But it won’t be easy to find just the right customers for the space flight.

Not only do they have to have good health and a healthy bank account, they have to be able to withstand up to six G’s of gravitational force — the equivalent of being squashed by six people — for a short time when the craft is re-entering earth’s atmosphere.

The 2.5 hour flight costs $200,000 and Horvath thinks the trip will appeal to risk-takers and people who want the bragging rights to being one of the first people in space.

“It’s for people who want that rare experience that they can talk about after.”

What they’ll get when they slap down a $20,000 deposit is their name on a waiting list (passenger number 500 and up) and the opportunity to participate in quarterly celebrations leading up the launch in exotic locales, such as an ice hotel in Sweden.

Three days of training and health checks are also required before passengers board the craft — likely SpaceShipTwo, the sister ship of SpaceShipOne, which is now undergoing testing. Three more ships are planned.

“They want to have — absolutely no question — the safety nailed,” Horvath said.

The space ship will be attached to a “mother ship” and flown to the altitude of 50,000 feet, cruising altitude for Concorde aircraft. Rockets will then kick in to propel the craft to speeds of 2,500 mph, over three times the speed of sound.

Once in space, about 100 km above the earth, passengers will be able to leave their seats, look out the window, and experience weightlessness for six minutes before beginning the descent back to earth.

So far the out-of-this-world trip has generated a lot of buzz.

“It’s almost that ultimate unique experience...there’s only 500 people who have been in space,” says Horvath who wasn’t born until after the first moon walk in 1969.

But he believes space is the next frontier for tourism and by the time his two daughters are grown space travel will be more common place.

“People are more and more stretching their boundaries. They’re tired of doing everything the same, just give us something unique.”